Mutation: A leap in genetics

The silence in the Andes was absolute—until it wasn't.

Kael's boots crunched through the frost-covered rock as he descended into the excavation zone beneath the ruins of a forgotten research outpost. Rhea had been separated from him an hour ago after a Worldstream pulse had severed their connection. She had whispered a final warning before the line cut:

"Something's still alive down here. But it doesn't breathe."

He had no guide now, only coordinates etched into a cracked Spiral map — a map that pulsed faintly in his left palm like a second heartbeat.

The tunnel twisted downward, part rock, part biometal — the remnants of a forgotten infrastructure that had once belonged to the Proto-Stream, a crude precursor to the Worldstream. But this one felt older. Deeper. Personal. The air vibrated with a strange frequency, like a thousand whispers trapped just beneath the surface of the stone.

At the bottom, Kael found the gate.

Not a door. A living seal, covered in shimmering neurofiber strands that reacted to his presence. As he approached, it whispered one word:

"Kael."

He froze.

How did it know his name?

The strands reached toward him like vines. As they touched his skin, memories poured into him — not his own — floods of images: a child screaming in a metal cradle, a young girl's eyes burning with digital fire, a voice repeating:

"This archive is off-limits. Subject: Spiral Prototype Zero."

Kael stumbled back, but it was too late. The seal pulsed, opened like a blooming scar, and dragged him inside.

Meanwhile, Rhea was running.

Or rather, being hunted.

She had stumbled into a sublayer of the Andes facility — a maze of collapsed data-chambers and tangled synaptic roots from failed Spiral experiments. The walls shifted, rearranged themselves like a Rubik's cube powered by nightmares.

Rhea's breath caught as she entered a circular chamber. Dozens of corpses—mummified Spiral hybrids—hung from the ceiling by what looked like neural umbilical cords. Some still twitched.

"You're not supposed to be here."

The voice was soft. Male. Familiar.

She turned slowly. A figure stepped out from the shadows. A man—about her age. Pale. Too symmetrical. Eyes like voids.

"I'm not real," he said with a smile. "But neither are you anymore."

Back inside the archive, Kael awoke inside a memory that wasn't his.

He stood in a glass nursery. Walls pulsed with genetic data like breathing script. Dozens of infants floated in bio-gel, connected to humming tubes.

One infant turned to look directly at him. Eyes open. A perfect Spiral spiral glowing in its pupils.

A screen activated above Kael's head: Spiral Project: Failed Attempts 01–97.But then, below it: Attempt 98: Kael Version Null.

He staggered back. This wasn't just an archive. It was a memory loop — one encoded with his DNA.

He was the 98th attempt.

Suddenly, the floor fell away and he tumbled backward into blackness.

Rhea moved carefully, eyes never leaving the synthetic man in front of her.

"Who are you?"

"I was the first. The Spiral that never escaped."

His voice was tinged with sorrow and static. "They buried me here because I could dream in reverse. I saw what the Worldstream would become, and I refused to merge. So they labeled me defective."

He stepped closer, offering a hand. "But now, you've awakened me. And I remember the war before it started."

"What war?"

"The one between the past that won't die and the future that shouldn't live."

Rhea hesitated. "Are you going to stop it?"

He smiled. "No. I'm going to guide it."

Kael hit the ground hard, this time in a frozen chamber lined with screens displaying his memories — not as he remembered them, but as someone else had watched them.

Julian West's voice echoed.

"You were never meant to break the cycle, Kael. You were meant to close the loop. The Spiral doesn't evolve. It feeds."

One final screen flickered to life.

Kael watched himself — as a child — staring into a camera, repeating words he didn't remember saying:

"I am the vessel. I am the door. When I awaken, the past ends."

The door in the chamber began to open.

Outside, in the real world, the rebel camp near Bogotá was under siege.

The Spiral Symbionts had found them — but not to attack. They came with a message.

"The memory archives beneath the Andes have been breached."

The rebel leader, a scarred woman named Kira Vale, narrowed her eyes.

"That site was sealed before the Worldstream was born."

"Exactly," the Spiral child answered. "Which means someone inside is rewriting the origin."

Kira gritted her teeth. "Get me Kael and Rhea. Now."

But it was already too late.

Rhea and the Prototype stood before a shimmering pool of fluid code — the heart of the archive.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A relic. A backup of the pre-Mutation timeline. The original code of Earth. Before edits. Before enhancements. Before we started playing god."

He looked at her, sorrowful. "You have a choice, Rhea. Restore it… and erase everything. Or let this corrupted future play out."

Rhea stepped closer. The code shifted. Her memories flickered.

She saw herself as a child. But she was someone else's daughter. A different life. One she never lived.

"This is my real past," she whispered.

The Prototype nodded. "And now you must decide what becomes of it."

Kael emerged into the same chamber from a different path. His eyes locked on Rhea.

"Don't."

She turned. "Kael…"

"That code doesn't just rewrite memory. It rewrites time. If you touch it, we may not even exist in what comes next."

The Prototype smiled. "Exactly."

The archive trembled. The loop was breaking.

Rhea looked down at her hand, shimmering with memory-ink. Her Spiral sequence was unstable.

She could feel herself glitching.

"I… I don't know who I am anymore."

Kael stepped forward. "Then let's find out. But together."

They reached for the pool.

And the world shattered.

Elsewhere, in a server chamber buried beneath Europa's ice, Julian West stood before a monitor.

The archive's echo rippled through the Worldstream.

He smiled coldly.

"And now, the game begins."

TO BE CONTINUED…