"Can't… breathe—"
The words rasped from Seyfe's throat like they were being dragged through rusted chains. He clawed at his chest, gasping as every muscle in his body rebelled against him. His tongue had fully blackened—no longer just discolored, but transformed. The once-flesh had become something foreign… alien.
Thick. Ink-like. It coiled at the back of his mouth like a parasite, twitching with life of its own.
Golden veins pulsed just beneath its surface, dim and flickering, like the last light of a dying star trapped inside him.
His body spasmed. His knees gave out.
He crashed onto the cold tile of the recollection bay, trembling as if every nerve had been set to ignite. His muscles tightened, convulsing in waves, his nails dragging across the floor, trying to anchor himself to anything real.
The assistant screamed into her comm, "Subject in critical distress! We need containment now!"
Seyfe groaned. His eyes rolled back for a second—but then snapped forward again. He wasn't going to pass out. Whatever this was, it wanted him awake.
The twitching worsened.
His limbs jerked in unnatural patterns—as though something inside him was trying to move, to control, to rise. Each spasm more deliberate than the last.
He bit down hard. Blood welled.
But the tongue kept moving.
It slithered slightly against the roof of his mouth—not entirely of his command.
"Shut… up…" he growled, even though there were no words spoken aloud. Still, there were thoughts—whispers in some lost language crawling into the edges of his mind.
His vision blurred. The floor beneath him swam. The golden lines under his skin now pulsed in rhythm with something else. A cadence not of this world. A heartbeat he didn't own.
The door to the room slammed open.
Aki arrived with two bio-suppressors and a stabilizing unit.
"Get a lockdown field on him—now!" she ordered, eyes narrowing at the sight of Seyfe writhing on the floor, his mouth tainted with the black of the void and veins of a glowing death.
"Don't touch me!" Seyfe barked, briefly wrestling control long enough to shove himself onto his knees. "It's not—me. It's—inside!"
Aki didn't flinch. She looked at the tongue. The golden veins. The twitching.
It wasn't possession.
It was mutation.
"Get the field up. And bring in Veiler-grade neuro-stabilizers." She stepped closer, her tone sharper. "Seyfe. You're not dying."
He looked up at her, his eyes watering, one hand clutching his ribs.
"I know. That's the problem."
And the core of it, she understood.
This wasn't something trying to kill Seyfe.
It was trying to live inside him.
Seyfe screamed.
The neuro-stabilizers punctured his skin in six places—sharp, clean, and burning with raw bioelectric discharge. The reaction was immediate: his body spasmed harder, muscles locking in erratic pulses as the blackened tongue thrashed violently inside his mouth like a possessed eel. Golden veins under his skin flared briefly, then dimmed to a dull glow. His fingernails dug into the floor, drawing blood.
"Please…" he muttered, breath catching, "make it stop…"
Aki stood by, tense. She didn't flinch. She never did.
She turned to the medical assistant. "Did he go into overload?"
The assistant, a younger operative with shaking hands and sweat forming at his brow, glanced at the vitals streaming through his console. "Unlikely," he answered nervously. "Overload only occurs when a Veiler's core hits 100% saturation and forcibly expands beyond its shell. Seyfe's core wasn't even fully initialized yet. He shouldn't be showing any signs of internal dissonance this severe…"
A new presence entered the room. Calm. Composed. A measured step in contrast to the chaotic beeping and strained breaths around him.
It was one of the head doctor, the senior bio-systems architect who oversaw Veiler integration—the same doctor who performed the emergency core reconstruction on Seyfe eight months ago.
He didn't bother with greetings. He walked straight up to the observation table and took one glance at Seyfe's thrashing form—then at the golden-black lines snaking across his neck and arms—and nodded faintly to himself.
"I was afraid of this," he said quietly, adjusting his glasses. "It's not an overload."
Aki turned her head slightly. "Then what the hell is it?"
Dr. Mire rested his gloved hand on the table's rail.
"He's exhibiting signs of echoform genetic fusion. Partial assimilation. Somewhere during that battle, he must have come into direct contact with an unstable biological compound—likely the blackened tongue… or the fluids pumping through the creature's veins."
"Assimilation?" Aki repeated, eyes narrowing. "You mean he inhaled or absorbed a part of that thing?"
"Or worse," The doctor replied. "He might've consumed it—intentionally or otherwise. Some echoforms, especially those formed through corrupted broken layer phases, leak mutagenic strands that seek out Veiler DNA. It's possible Seyfe's system didn't reject it. It's trying to bond."
Seyfe's head whipped sideways, eyes wide in agony. "This thing… it's learning inside me…"
Aki took one step closer. Her voice dropped into steel.
"Is it reversible?"
The Doctor took a long pause. "Unclear. Echoform DNA isn't like regular biological corruption. It doesn't just hijack the body—it remembers. If it truly nested inside him, it might evolve alongside him. The bond could become… permanent."
Seyfe's body finally began to still slightly under the stabilizers. His chest rose and fell with ragged exhaustion, though the golden veins still throbbed faintly, whispering danger.
Aki's gaze didn't move. "Then we'll need a new containment protocol."
The doctor nodded. "Yes. And… we'll have to watch him very closely. If the DNA attempts to overwrite his cognitive centers—"
"I'll kill it before it does," Seyfe hissed, sweat dripping down his brow, voice gravel-thick with venom. "I'm not turning into that thing."
Seyfe didn't resist.
His legs dragged beneath him, still twitching with every other step. The golden-black veins along his neck and wrists continued to glow faintly beneath his skin, moving like something alive—like roots spreading through flesh. His breath came slow, shallow, his pulse steadier but still touched with instability.
He was flanked by two Veiler guards in full exo-suits, their visors trained on his vitals. No one spoke. Even the silence carried weight.
The chamber they brought him to was nothing like the medbay.
It was deeper in Veiler HQ—beneath six levels of sealed floors, past retinal and core-ID scans. A place designed for one thing:
Genetic pacification.
The steel-lined corridor echoed with every step. Dim white lights flickered as if reacting to Seyfe's presence. One of the guards tapped in a code on the final door, which shuddered before slowly parting to reveal a sterile room encased in reinforced alloy, with pulsating energy veins etched into the walls. The air inside was cold, clinical—and heavy with suppression protocols.
A wide slab lay in the center, covered with semi-organic restraints, each one embedded with glowing runes meant to inhibit mutation and suppress volatile DNA fusion.
Seyfe looked at it. Then at his hands, still trembling.
"...You really think this will hold if I lose it?" he asked, voice cracked but sharp.
"No," one of the guards replied plainly. "But it'll buy enough time to decide what to do with you."
They helped him onto the slab. The restraints clicked, then tightened—not cruelly, but with exact precision. When the last clasp locked around his chest, a soft hum activated as the suppression field surrounded his body. His skin prickled as the runes pulsed in a slow rhythm, syncing with his breathing.
Then came the second phase.
Genetic Pacification Sequence Initiated.
The announcement chimed in through the intercom as thin, needle-like appendages emerged from the walls and ceiling. They hovered, scanned, then inserted slowly into calculated nerve points across Seyfe's body—spine, forearms, base of the skull.
A sharp hiss escaped his lips as the pacification serum began flooding into his system—liquid silver and pale green, specially designed to interrupt hostile DNA behavior and subdue neuro-link anomalies.
It wasn't pain like before.
It was freezing from the inside.
His muscles locked. His thoughts slowed. Even the black of his tongue seemed to retreat slightly, the veins pulsing slower under the serum's influence. But even now, buried under sedation and reinforced alloy, something in him still stirred. The whispering hadn't stopped. The hunger still throbbed faintly in the far back of his mind.
A new voice echoed in his thoughts.
"You touched the core…You broke the seal…Now you carry us forward…"
His eyes snapped open—but only Aki stood beyond the glass.
She was watching him. Calculating. Concerned. But unreadable as ever.
"Whatever you're becoming, Seyfe," she murmured under her breath, "we need to know whether to fear it—or follow it."
Outside, the chamber's status light turned red.
GENETIC PACIFICATION: IN PROGRESS.SUBJECT STABLE.MUTATION: UNRESOLVED.