POV: Dr. Elira Vex
The lights in Lab Sector Nine flickered, then turned red. Alarms started blaring. Across her screen, warnings popped up in bright letters.
Emergency Protocol Activated. Kael Riven Has Broken Containment.
Dr. Elira Vex froze for a moment. She watched the video feed, stunned.
Kael wasn't lying on the ground anymore. He was standing, glowing red, and floating slightly above the floor. The strange spiral mark on his chest pulsed with light, alive, powerful, and not human.
"He's not just waking up," she whispered. "He's changing everything around him."
Her earpiece buzzed.
"Subject is changing the laws of physics within the room," said the AI assistant calmly.
Elira pulled the earpiece out. She didn't need a machine to tell her what she already feared, Kael was no longer just a test subject.
He was something new.
She turned to the security monitors. Armed guards were closing in, shouting commands. But she knew they wouldn't help. Guns couldn't stop someone like Kael. He wasn't breaking out, he was breaking reality.
She pressed a button and connected with Director Korr's command center.
His face appeared on her screen. Cold. Focused.
"You saw it?" she asked.
"Yes," Korr said. "You were right. He's not a mistake."
"No," Elira said quickly. "He's more than we expected. He's warning us, not trying to destroy anything."
Korr stared at her. "We woke him up for a reason."
"You don't understand," she said. "He's not just powerful, he remembers things from the past. Things we can't control. You'll kill him before you even find out what he really is."
"Enough," Korr said. "Your access is revoked. Step away from the system."
The screen went black.
Elira stood still. She had only seconds.
Kael wasn't fighting. He was confused. He was overwhelmed. And now GenCore was going to treat him like a weapon that needed to be destroyed.
She rushed across the lab, shutting down cameras and redirecting power to create a distraction.
Then, from a hidden drawer, she pulled out a glowing data shard. It held her secret copy of Kael's genome, the spiral code.
Not for research.
For protection.
If Kael really had the Overlord Gene, he might be the only one who could stop GenCore's cruelty. He wasn't just a subject anymore.
He was a symbol.
She slid the shard into her coat pocket.
And whispered to herself:
"It's time to help him change everything."
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End of chapter 9