The hospital room smelled like lavender and new life.
Melissa Kgomotso lay motionless, her limbs heavy with exhaustion and a strange, glowing disbelief. There was a silence around her, not the kind that screamed loneliness, but one that swaddled and soothed like an old lullaby. And there, nestled against her chest, was Eve, her cute little princess.
Tiny fingers with ten perfect nails curled instinctively around Melissa's thumb. Soft coos and quiet breathing became the new soundtrack of her existence. The child was flawless. Not a cry, not a sound of protest. Just peace. For the first time in what felt like a thousand lives, Melissa knew stillness.
"She's got your chin," Max said softly, standing beside the bed with a bouquet of fresh lilies.
Melissa blinked slowly and glanced up. His eyes weren't the firestorm of corporate dominance today. They were tender. Bare. Vulnerable.
"She has your lashes," Melissa murmured.
Max smiled, genuine. He leaned closer to place the lilies on the bedside table, then gently touched Eve's cheek. The baby stirred, let out a soft sigh, and went back to sleep.
The moment was sacred.
A sudden and inexplicable warmth filled the air, like all the years of war between them had melted for the sake of this one, tiny human.
Max bent down and brushed a kiss across Melissa's forehead. She closed her eyes. The tears she had denied herself fell silently.
Across many leagues of miles in a sterile, high-tech lab hidden beneath the rolling sand dunes landscape , Avery stared at the digital readouts on his screen with a frown. The data was a mixture of promise and confusion. Fact is Eves body had not rejected the serum but her body had done the impossible it has merged with the synthetic genome strands. The serum was now part of her cellular fabric, dormant and undetectable.
The implications should have thrilled him.
But Avery, pacing like a caged animal, didn't see success.
He saw silence.
No heightened strength. No superior intellect. No visible mutation. The dormant serum meant no performance to track. And no performance meant failure.
"Scrap it," he snapped. "Shut down Project Helix. Destroy the remaining vials."
His assistant hesitated. "Sir, if we just..."
"DO IT."Avery shouted as his words echoed off the cold, glass walls.
Avery didn't know he'd created something the world wasn't ready for.
Eve, barely days old, held inside her a dormant force that could rewrite humanity but only when triggered by unimaginable stress akin to when only when death called her name.
Back at the hospital, Melissa had fallen asleep with Eve in her arms.
Max didn't leave but sat by the window, his hand resting protectively on the side of Melissa's bed to watch and guard her agsinst anything.
Something inside him had shifted.
For years, he had climbed mountains for the empire. Now, all he wanted was to build a little house at the foot of one with the two women sleeping beside him.
But he didn't know how to tell Melissa.
Not yet.
And just before dawn, as the world outside shimmered with early light, he whispered to Eve:
"You changed everything, little one. Even your mama doesn't know how much." Eve giggled as if she understood what is being said.