Director Korr's point of view:
Except for the low, ticking pulse of biometric monitors and the hum of high-density projectors, the room was quiet.
Director Korr stood in the middle of the observation room, with one-way glass and mirrored walls on either side. Kael Riven, Subject 7-KR12-13, is on the opposite side. Who wasn't the Null? The boy who caused the Gene Stone to bleed after touching it.
Korr examined him closely, observing each involuntary movement and breath. Head down and still, Kael sat by himself on the reinforced bench. Korr, however, was not observing his posture. He was observing his readings.
Pulse: steafy. EEG: spiking intermittently into unknown frequencies. Genetic drift: accelerating by 0.4% per hour. Containment field integrity: 92%. Dangerous.
Beautiful.
"You're looking at an extinction event," said a voice behind him.
Korr didn't turn. He knew who it was. Dr. Elira Vex. Too smart for her clearance, too independent for her lab coat. He let the silence stretch.
Finally, he spoke.
"I'm looking at a solution."
Vex stepped forward, folding her arms. "That's not a solution. That's a cataclysm with a heartbeat. We still don't know what the Overlord Gene wants, let alone how it's rewriting his structure."
"We don't need to know what it wants," Korr said, "We need to know if we can control it."
"That's what they said last time."
Korr's jaw twitched. Last time. She always circled back to the same myth. The First War. The old spirals. The Overlords who turned the planet into a battlefield of gods and monsters.
But myths didn't matter now. Only outcomes did.
He turned from the glass at last, his sharp gray eyes narrowing.
"Let me be clear, Doctor. GenCore exists to ensure humanity survives the chaos outside the walls. That means one thing: control. Controlled genes. Controlled power. Controlled bloodlines. Everything in the city survives because we write the code of survival."
He gestured to Kael's projection DNA still warping like an unsolvable equation.
"But this…this is free-form evolution. Not ranked. Not aligned. Not bound to any hierarchy. It doesn't obey our systems it overwrites them. And that is unacceptable."
Vex didn't flinch. "Then why keep him alive?"
"Because we don't have the full sequence yet," Korr replied coldly. "Because we haven't seen what the gene does under stress. Under anger. Under loss. We're not observing Kael Riven."
He turned back to the glass.
"We're observing the rebirth of dominion."
There was a buzz from his wrist comm. A security alert. Kael's vitals were spiking.
Heart rate: 130 bpm. Blood markers flaring red.
"Interesting," Korr muttered. "He's hearing it again, isn't he?"
Vex paled slightly. "You shouldn't push it. The Spiral has memory. You force too much and"
"And we'll get results."
He turned toward the control console, fingers moving over the interface. "Initiate Phase Two. Dream Induction. Let's see what the gene remembers when we burn away the boy."
Vex stepped forward, voice low. "And if it doesn't forget him?"
Korr didn't look up. "Then we'll burn them both."
The system began to hum. In the containment cell, Kael arched his back as red tendrils of light crawled under his skin like veins of living code.
Somewhere deep in his brain, the Spiral whispered not in language, but in design.
And Director Korr watched it unfold, not with fear, but fascination.
Because he didn't want to kill the Overlord Gene.
He wanted to own it.
---
End of Chapter 7