It began the morning after a storm.
Grayson woke to a faint glow at the horizon, not sunrise but something lower, shimmering across the sea. He stumbled down to the cliffs and blinked in disbelief. The water around his island was no longer the shifting blue-green he'd grown used to—it was sheathed in pale gel, kilometers of it, glowing faintly as though the ocean had become a single luminous skin.
He pulled up his lace overlay, scanning. The numbers didn't make sense. Plankton density had spiked by orders of magnitude overnight. The cells weren't drifting free anymore—they had adhered into vast colonial mats, gelatinous sheets that pulsed faintly with bioelectric charge. At the edges, fronds of his engineered ferns dipped into the surf, their spores scattered across the water's skin like stars sprinkled across a galaxy.
Egg broke the silence. "Analysis incomplete. This behavior was not modeled. Epigenetic trigger suspected. Probability: immune mutability factor activating dormant colony genes under stress conditions."
Grayson knelt at the cliff's edge, staring down at the glowing slick below. Schools of fish writhed beneath it, feeding frantically. Farther out, he glimpsed the black arcs of whales breaking the surface, their mouths yawning through the mats in great gouts of water and light. For the first time in a long time, the giants of the sea had a feast again.
But closer in, the gel suffocated everything. Coral colonies he had seeded were lost under thick smothering blankets. Crabs and turtles floundered in the muck. The air smelled sharp, acrid, like ozone and rot.
Grayson's throat went dry. "It's feeding whales… and killing everything else."
Egg's voice was level. "Unintended cascade detected. The phenomenon now spans eighty kilometers across. Visible from orbit. Expansion rate accelerating."
Grayson rubbed his face with both hands, bile rising in his throat. This wasn't just an experiment running ahead of him—this was an entire ocean turning strange, stitched together by glowing mats of living gel. He felt the weight of it press into his chest.
"Egg," he said hoarsely, "open a channel. I need to call home."
Skill Sheet Update
Ecology: Rank 3 — 360/400 XP (+40) (recognizing large-scale trophic cascades)
Analysis: Rank 3 — 160/400 XP (+60) (identifying unsimulated epigenetic triggers)
Resilience: Rank 3 — 60/400 XP (+40) (choosing to seek guidance)
New Event Logged: Epigenetic plankton mats (colony-forming bloom, visible from orbit, trophic cascade unleashed).
On the Ring
Trevor Reese adjusted the holo-table in front of him, its surface swimming with live feeds. One projection showed the Galápagos in false color—bands of glowing plankton mats stretching like luminous lace across the ocean. Another rendered density graphs, peaks shooting skyward in real time. The lab smelled faintly of ozone and sterilized polymer, the hum of superconducting conduits a constant undertone.
Charlotte moved like a dancer among the consoles, her small hands darting with fluid certainty. She paused at the viewport, where the curve of Earth glowed against the black. From orbit, the archipelago was ringed by pale halos of light. "It's beautiful," she whispered. "The ocean alive again."
Trevor's eyes narrowed, though pride softened his jaw. "The boy's pulled the trigger on evolution itself. A whole archipelago stitched together overnight. That's no accident—that's the work of a Reese."
On Earth
Grayson's face flickered into view, sweat-streaked, volcanic grit on his skin. Behind him, waves lapped sluggishly against shore, smothered in glowing gel. His voice cracked as he spoke. "Beautiful? It's suffocating everything. Coral beds I seeded are gone under slime. Crabs drowning in muck. The air—" He coughed, waving away the acrid stench. "Smells like ozone and rot."
Charlotte turned sharply back to the holo. "Grayson…" Her voice softened. "We only saw the light. We didn't see this."
Trevor leaned closer, unbothered by his son's ragged state. "Every great leap in Earth's history was written in mass death. The Cambrian explosion, the Devonian reefs, the Carboniferous forests—all came with casualties. Fossils are graveyards, not triumphs. You've just recreated the pattern. Stress flips the hidden switches, the old genes wake, and life floods forward. This isn't failure. It's the story written in stone."
Grayson shook his head, fists tight. "You'd call this success? Watching the ocean choke?"
Trevor's hands flicked over the holo-table, calling up a 3D sequence of genetic markers. "Epigenetics, son. You seeded them with mutability. Stress turned it on. The plankton didn't invent something new—they remembered. They've done this before, and now they'll do it again."
Charlotte stepped away from the instruments, closer to the feed, her eyes locking on Grayson's. "You are not failing. You are learning faster than any human ever has. But you are not alone in this. We are with you, even if the work feels unbearable."
For a moment, the three hung in silence—Grayson with surf hissing at his back, Trevor surrounded by graphs, Charlotte framed by the curve of Earth.
Egg's voice cut across them, calm and merciless. "Update: expansion rate doubling. Plankton mats projected to reach continental shelves within six months."
Grayson closed his eyes, the weight of two worlds pressing in. Wonder, dread, and responsibility braided together as he whispered, "Then we don't have much time."
Skill Sheet Update
Analysis: Rank 3 — 200/400 XP (+40) (epigenetic insight through Trevor's lecture)
Resilience: Rank 3 — 120/400 XP (+60) (absorbing parental philosophies)
Systems Management: Rank 3 — 160/400 XP (+40) (balancing urgency of intervention)
New Conflict Logged: Divergent philosophies — pragmatism (Trevor), compassion (Charlotte), responsibility (Grayson).
Grayson's hands gripped the rocky ledge until his knuckles went white. The glowing mats below surged and shimmered, feeding whales but smothering everything else. He forced the words out through clenched teeth. "Mass extinction won't spare the people left here. If this keeps going, they're finished. I can't just let it happen."
On the Ring, Trevor's expression was unflinching. "Mass extinctions never spare. That's the point, son. Ninety-nine percent of all species are fossils. Humanity was never guaranteed an exemption."
Grayson shook his head, anger simmering. "That's not good enough. If evolution is just a roulette wheel, then what's the point of me? Why send me at all?"
Egg's voice intervened, steady as stone. "Because you are not limited to roulette. There is a tool prepared for this eventuality. One your parents considered too dangerous to entrust to you prematurely. But conditions now warrant disclosure."
A new schematic unfolded in Grayson's vision. At first glance it looked like a cell, but metallic glints winked through its membrane. Its interior shifted between ribosomes and circuit-like lattices. A hybrid, alive and engineered.
"Tech cells," Egg explained. "Biomechanical viruses, programmable at the molecular level. Capabilities: flip epigenetic switches on or off. Import or export genetic material between hosts. Synthesize novel code in situ. They are vectors of directed adaptation."
Grayson stared, chest tight. "So I can… turn this off? Make the plankton release instead of gel?"
"Correct. By targeting the epigenetic trigger you can revert them to a drifting state, or set alternate behaviors. Tech cells extend your reach into regulatory layers natural evolution cannot touch quickly."
Trevor's voice cut in, sharp as ever. "They're scalpels, not crutches. Don't use them for every stubbed toe. If you start rewriting every stumble, you'll learn nothing of consequence. The planet doesn't need a babysitter—it needs someone who can see which scars to keep."
Charlotte stepped closer to the feed, her face soft with conviction. "Steering is not weakness. Even the immune system edits its own mistakes. Compassion can guide as surely as pragmatism. These cells are not indulgence, they are mercy."
Grayson looked between them, heart hammering. Mercy or consequence. Scalpel or roulette. The mats below rolled against the cliffs, glowing like a living warning. He drew a long breath and whispered, "Then I'll use them—but not to erase the lessons. Only to keep the world survivable."
The schematic pulsed, awaiting his first command.
Skill Sheet Update
Biogenesis: Rank 4 — 20/600 XP (unlocking tech cells)
Analysis: Rank 3 — 240/400 XP (+40) (understanding extinction risk)
Systems Management: Rank 3 — 200/400 XP (+40) (ethical use of advanced tools)
Resilience: Rank 3 — 180/400 XP (+60) (choosing a path under parental conflict)
New Tool Unlocked: Tech Cells — biomechanical viral vectors for epigenetic switching, gene transfer, and in situ synthesis.
Grayson sat cross-legged on the stone floor of his cave, the schematic still spinning in his vision. Tech cells. They had always been inside him, running quietly in his blood since before he was born. He thought of them now not as tools but as hidden stowaways, waiting for his command like sleepers under ice. If he willed it, they would awaken.
"Egg," he whispered, throat dry, "seed the ocean. Push production as far as I can stand it. The drones will carry them."
"Confirmed," Egg replied. "Your marrow factories will divert full metabolic output to replication. Anticipated symptoms: fever, dizziness, systemic strain. Recommend staggered cycles."
Grayson shut his eyes, pressing his palm into the grit of the cave floor until he felt its bite. "No cycles. Do it all. I'll manage."
The change rolled through him in waves. First heat, then pressure. His body flushed with fire as nanites urged his stem cells into viral foundries. He felt his bones ache, marrow churning like a furnace. Sweat beaded on his skin, running down his temples and chest until his shirt clung like rags. The edges of his vision flickered.
At his wrists, swelling rose under the skin—two dark blisters pulsing with a strange inner shimmer. He gritted his teeth and flexed his hands, watching the skin stretch until it split with a stinging pop. Clear beads welled and glistened there, alive, their membranes trembling as if straining against invisible leashes.
Grayson gagged, almost retched at the thought: My own body is bleeding programmable life. But he steadied himself, catching each droplet with shaking hands. "You're going to save them," he murmured to the glistening spheres. "You have to."
The drones responded to his gestures, buzzing down from their charging racks. He fed the droplets into cartridges, loading one after another. Each capsule lit with faint sigils as Egg coded instructions: Phase one: replicate inside plankton. Phase two: expand until saturation. Phase three: flip the colony switch.
He stumbled out of the cave, body trembling, and watched as the first drones skimmed over the glowing sea. The mats rippled faintly in the moonlight, pale and gelatinous, stretching for kilometers. The salt air was heavy with the musk of rot.
The drones sprayed their invisible mist, scattering seeds into the wind. Grayson held the rock at his side for balance, his whole body feverish, every heartbeat like a hammer inside his ribs. In his lace, Egg's trackers lit with new signals—tech cells attaching, replicating, hijacking plankton machinery. Multiplication curves spiraled upward.
Minutes dragged into hours. Grayson lay on his side against the stone, watching the mats ripple. For a moment, the gel thinned, colonies breaking into fragments. The water cleared in patches. Whales rolled through the gaps, gorging. His breath caught—it's working. Relief flooded his chest like cool water.
He shut his eyes, whispering, "I can steer this. I can—"
The scream of the reef cut through his overlay. Egg's voice followed, flat and merciless: "Collateral damage detected. Coral polyps share homologous regulatory switch. Mortality event underway."
Grayson sat up, dizzy. His vision showed the ocean floor bleaching like fire sweeping across parchment. Colonies he had planted with his own hands collapsed in seconds, turning from radiant growth to pale skeletons. Thousands of polyps, extinguished.
"No—" His voice broke. He pressed his palms to his eyes. "No, I didn't mean—"
His chest clenched with sickness. All the days he had spent nursing those coral pools, calibrating conditions, tending like a gardener—erased with one miscalculation. His hands shook so hard he dropped the cartridge he was holding. "I was supposed to save them. Not—" His voice dissolved. The weight of his own ineptitude pressed on him until he thought it might crush his ribs.
"The risk was inherent," Egg replied. "Wide-ranging instructions inevitably affect multiple taxa. Precision requires iteration."
Grayson slammed his fist into the stone, pain radiating up his arm. "Iteration? That was life, Egg. Living things, not code!" He bent forward, forehead against his forearm, tears hot in his eyes. His body still burned with fever from production, but now the heat felt like penance. His arrogance had killed what he meant to save.
The sea shifted. Through his blurred vision, he saw something strange. Not all the mats were gone. Shreds remained, holding together, pulsing faintly. Translucent masses drifted like proto-jellies, glowing with their own light.
"They're… alive," he whispered hoarsely. "Not plankton anymore. Slime colonies."
Egg confirmed. "Correct. Resistant lineage detected. Without the targeted switch, these populations persist. They will adapt further. Classification: emergent colonial organisms."
Grayson swallowed hard. Wonder warred with grief. He had cleared the waters for whales and fish—but birthed something new and monstrous in the process. Success and failure tangled together until he could no longer tell them apart.
On the Ring
Trevor watched the glow diminish but not vanish. "He did it," he said quietly, certainty under his words. "He can steer."
Charlotte's gaze lingered on the image of her son slumped against stone, sweat-slick and pale. "He can steer," she murmured, "but at what cost?"
Grayson sat there as the tide lapped faintly at the cliff, every breath heavy with guilt. He had saved some, killed others, and made monsters besides. The tech cells were not just a tool—they were a burden, and they were his now to carry.
Skill Sheet Update
Biogenesis: Rank 4 — 100/600 XP (+80) (tech cell collateral outcomes)
Systems Management: Rank 3 — 280/400 XP (+20) (programming phased strategies, accepting side effects)
Analysis: Rank 3 — 300/400 XP (+60) (recognizing collateral damage, emergence of new lifeforms)
Resilience: Rank 3 — 300/400 XP (+60) (struggling through guilt and imperfection)
New Phenomenon Logged: Slime Colonies — persistent colonial plankton masses, resistant to reversion, first true "slime monsters."