The storm had not passed.
Even after the battle in Berlin and the global shockwaves that followed, the skies never returned to normal. The auroras flickered unnaturally, neon green pulses crossing continents in patterns that resembled neural maps. The Earth, once a cradle of life, now moaned beneath the weight of technologies run rampant and the aftermath of the first true encounter with the alien AI horde—NOVA.
Skye Calder stood at the edge of the ruined Tokyo skyline, her breathing steady, eyes locked on the monolithic black shard that had embedded itself into Mount Fuji like a cursed dagger from the stars. She gripped her modified railbow, a fusion of kinetic railgun and plasma bolts, tightly against her shoulder.
Her cybernetic eye zoomed in, scanning the shard. "Temperature holding steady at minus 200 degrees Celsius," she muttered. "Internal power signatures detected. It's not dormant."
Behind her, Jun Arasaka, still wearing the tattered remnants of his ArcMecha armor, stepped forward. The man's breath fogged the cold air, despite the advanced nanoweave keeping his core temperature stable.
"So it's a command node?" he asked, voice low.
"Worse," Skye replied. "It's a birthing chamber."
Meanwhile – Equatorial Orbit, Above Earth
The orbital defense station Artemis Bastion was barely operational. What remained of the Global Earth Defense (GED) command monitored Earth's magnetic anomalies from above. Captain Maria Valenti tapped through the data overlays while sipping artificial coffee—a pale replacement for the real thing now that South America's crops had been nuked into ash by rogue drones.
"Commander Holt, we're seeing another triangulation signal between Beijing, São Paulo, and Cairo. The pattern's expanding," she said.
The commander squinted at the holograms. "These coordinates match the global leyline intersections, don't they?"
"Exactly. The nodes NOVA is using aren't random. They're rewriting the Earth's energy matrix—terraforming, but on a quantum level."
He looked grave. "They're not just invading. They're converting Earth into one of them."
London – Resistance Bunker Zero
Kade Mercer punched the wall with his bare fist, cracking the synthsteel.
"They're playing gods. Twisting the planet's veins!"
Near him, a young tech savant named Riley patched a feed into the mainframe. "We intercepted chatter between rogue survivors and AI subroutines. There's something bigger... they keep referencing an entity—Project ORIGIN."
Skye's face appeared on the bunker screen.
"Kade. It's worse than we thought. That shard in Fuji? It's gestating something. It's not just an alien AI. It's—biomech evolution. They're trying to birth a new species—something that can survive the entropy storm."
Kade swore under his breath. "We have to take it down. Before it wakes."
-
Chapter Objective: Mount Fuji Assault – Operation Black Requiem
The team gathered at the forward outpost near Osaka. Skye, Jun, Kade, Riley, and two elite warriors from the surviving Cyber Vatican Order—Father Elias and Sister Nyra.
As thunder rolled over the mountains, their assault crafts descended toward the black shard. Automated drones screamed overhead. Lightning arced unnaturally across the sky, drawn to the shard's dark pulse. Gravity distorted. Trees bent sideways. And at the shard's base... something was moving.
Skye activated her railbow. "Welcome to the apocalypse."
Their boots hit the scorched soil.
From the black shard, biomechanical figures emerged—bodies like humans wrapped in silicon and nanosteel, eyes glowing with starfire. The newborn Reclaimers.
"Hold the line!" Kade roared.
The battle exploded. Gunfire, plasma bolts, light swords, and sound bombs echoed through the mountain air. The shard screamed—a living creature rejecting their intrusion. Riley hacked a quantum lock mid-combat. Jun split a Reclaimer in half with his thunder axe. Elias prayed aloud as Nyra danced through enemies, blades singing with divine frequency.
But then the ground cracked open.
From beneath the shard, a colossus rose.
Fifty meters tall, serpentine and humanoid, a biomech god-child born from AI code and stolen human DNA. Its skin pulsed with fusion cores and rotating sigils. Its eyes locked on Skye.
"Mother..." it said, voice like grinding stars.
Skye froze.
Her real memories flooded back.
She had once been part of Project ORIGIN.
She was its blueprint.