Part 2: The Other One
Beneath a slab of ice two meters thick and twenty years forgotten, something blinked.
Prototype 0 opened its eyes.
There was no warmth in them. No soul. Only light.
The cryopod exhaled steam like breath from a corpse. The walls of the chamber were lined with frozen teeth, specimens preserved, failed organs shelved in vials, bones wrapped in data tags. But this thing was not failed. Not rejected.
It was now unleashed.
The chamber's lock disengaged with a hiss. A soft, synthetic voice purred overhead:
REACTIVATION PROTOCOL – PROJECT 0
OBJECTIVE: HUNT MODE
The thing inside moved.
No one saw it stand.
It didn't stand.
It unfolded.
Joints cracked. Muscle cables flexed beneath exposed ribs, its back arched into a low curve, knees inverted, claws dragging against the metal floor as it took its first step in over a decade. But its body didn't stiffen with time. It flowed.
As if it had been waiting for this moment.
Its face was not a face. It had been human once, long ago, but now it was a mask of translucent cartilage stretched tight across a skull modified for killing. The skin was tight around its cheekbones, eyes sunken back into pits that gleamed with cold, white luminance.
Its lips split open, revealing rows of irregular, saw toothed canines. And it sniffed.
"Kairo..."
The word dripped from its vocal processor like a gurgle through blood. It wasn't speaking. It was remembering.
Buried in its neural firmware was a fragment of code:
OBJECTIVE: ERASE PROTOTYPE-7.
REPLACE DOMINANT GENOME.
It moved to the edge of the cryo platform and dropped to all fours. The tips of its claws sparked as they scraped the alloy floor. When it ran, it didn't make noise. It simply blurred, dragging cables and heat behind it like entrails.
Above it, red warning lights followed its path. Systems tried to track it. Tried to lock it down, the security grid flashed error after error:
TARGET NOT CONTAINED
TARGET UNPREDICTABLE
TARGET NOT HUMAN
It left the bunker in a trail of claw marks and frost. Within minutes, it was over the ridge, running.
It had Kairo's scent.
Not chemical. Not biological.
But something deeper. Something wired into its design, Kairo wasn't a man to it.
Instead.
He was unfinished business.
And 0 would cross tundra, crawl through fire, rip through cities if it meant sinking its claws into its elder sibling's throat and showing Paragon who the true god was.
It didn't need orders anymore.
It needed only one thing:
To be the last monster standing.