The sky opened.
Not in a crash of thunder or divine light but in silence, razor-thin, almost invisible. A fracture in the upper atmosphere flickered as if reality had blinked. A shimmer of light refracted through the breach, glinting off metal and flame. And then, from the orbital heights above the planet, it descended a chrome speck cutting the heavens with surgical intent.
The drone.
Riven saw it instantly.
His thermal optics highlighted it against the cool violet of the sky: a white-hot blur in motion, no larger than a raptor bird but ten times as deadly. He didn't need the system to tell him what it was.
But it did anyway.
[INCOMING ENTITY: HUMAN SCOUT CLASS ORBITAL OBSERVATION DRONE MK-IV]
[AFFILIATION: EARTH | DEEP SCIENCE DIVISION | CERBERUS INITIATIVE]
[PRIMARY DIRECTIVE: OBSERVE, RECORD, REPORT]
[CONDITIONAL PROTOCOL: TERMINATE IF THREAT VERIFIED]
So. They had found him.
Somewhere in a shadowed corner of Earth, buried beneath kilometers of concrete and protocol, someone had read the signal spike. Someone saw the anomaly etched in space an echo of S.O.L.A.R.I.S waking. And their response?
Send a machine.
Not a message.
Not a retrieval team.
Just a drone quiet, precise, disposable.
As if he were still an asset.
As if he were still theirs.
Riven stepped out of the alien ruins, slow and deliberate, the wind at his back scattering broken ash across bone-colored stone. The claws on his right hand were still wet with Vorhax blood, iridescent and steaming where it hissed against his skin. He didn't wipe them off.
Let Earth's drone see.
Let it transmit his silhouette half-man, half-something else, eyes glowing with thermal overlays and evolution's cruelty.
"Let them watch."
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: EVOLUTION PATH SELECTION REQUIRED]
Choose One Primary Path:
Bio-Combat (Mutation / Offense)
Adapt to kill. Bone blades. Acid glands. Organic armor. Dominate the battlefield.
Neuro-Tech (Cognition / Control)
Master data. Interface with systems. Override tech. Infect logic.
Void Adaptation (Stealth / Environment)
Survive anywhere. Cloak your presence. Morph to match the terrain, the vacuum, the unknown.
His mind pulsed. The alien DNA inside him writhed, eager to bond, to change, to become. His new body was hot with potential, and the system offered paths like gates to godhood.
The Bio-Combat route thrummed with primal promise. Kill. Adapt. Kill again. Flesh and bone warped into weapons. The old part of him scarred and angry ached to choose it.
But another voice stirred. Cold. Tactical. The system within him the logic-thread that whispered not rage, but dominance.
The drone above him… it was data. Earth's arrogance had always been its machines. The idea that code and metal could replace the divine chaos of life.
What if he made their hubris his own strength?
He extended his hand.
[PATH SELECTED: NEURO-TECH]
[Installing Neural Expansion Layer I…]
[Cognitive Speed: +300%]
[System Sync Ratio: +40%]
[New Trait Acquired: DATA WEAVE (Lv. 1)]
Can interface with exposed technology for basic override or corruption.
[New Feature Unlocked: Sovereign Subroutines]
Develop AI-based tools for enhanced operation: memory logs, drone hijacking, synthetic communication parsing.
Then came the bloom.
His brain ignited not in pain, but acceleration. Like thoughts branching fractally across every neuron. He felt his consciousness unspool and double, then triple, thinking on parallel threads, calculating probabilities mid-breath. Every gust of wind, every change in electromagnetic frequency, every waveform of the drone above he sensed them.
A pulse. A signal.
The drone's onboard system encrypted, yes, but faintly predictable pinged his mind.
Like a string plucked in the dark.
He heard it now.
Not in sound but in intention. It scanned. Recorded. Its presence crawled through the local space like a spider's web, monitoring everything from atmospheric pressure to heart rate variances.
He closed his eyes, extended his fingers.
And reached.
[REMOTE OVERRIDE ATTEMPT DETECTED.]
[COUNTERSIGNATURE INJECTION: S.O.L.A.R.I.S PROTOCOL // AUTHORITY OVERRIDE]
[OVERRIDE SUCCESSFUL.]
[HARDWARE SYNC: 89%]
[LIVE CONNECTION TO EARTH: ESTABLISHED]
The drone stuttered mid-flight, lost altitude, spiraled once and dropped.
Riven caught it one-handed.
The metal felt hot. Alive, in a way machines shouldn't. He turned it in his grip and tore open its armor like foil. The interior pulsed tiny lights flashing, a central data core glowing faint violet. And inside… a signal trace. Earth was listening. Still. Now.
He leaned close to the data core.
And whispered:
"I'm not the experiment anymore."
"I'm the reckoning."
Then he crushed the drone.
The core imploded in a burst of static and ozone, molten metal dribbling between his fingers. The severed connection howled into his neural interface like a phantom scream.
[SOVEREIGN DOMAIN ESTABLISHED PLANETARY CLAIM 1: BROKEN MOON]
[TERRITORY: 1 / 1000]
[OBJECTIVE UNLOCKED: LOCATE ANCIENT STARFORGE CORE]
First Sovereign Site Detected: 13.7 km northwest.
Status: Dormant. Encoded. Guarded.
The wind changed.
Something… shifted. Like a pressure drop before a storm. The ruins ahead shimmered, then twitched, as though the fabric of space bent inward.
A doorway opened.
No a gate.
A black arch formed between two shattered pillars, lined in glyphs that didn't reflect light. Energy pulsed around it, distorting gravity slightly, like the world leaned sideways.
Something stepped through.
Not human.
Not machine.
And not alive, in the way Riven now understood life.
A silhouette. Cloaked in silver threads that moved like fluid glass. It floated, not walked. Its face hidden by a mask of prismatic angles, shifting and unreadable. Behind it came a scent: ozone, blood, and burnt computation.
[WARNING: SOVEREIGN SIGNATURE DETECTED]
[IDENTITY: REDACTED]
[STATUS: HOSTILE / ASCENDANT]
[PREPARE FOR INTER-SOVEREIGN CONTACT]
Riven stared.
The figure paused, tilting its masked head.
Not an enemy. Not yet.
But a rival.
Another Sovereign.
Another player in this cosmic crucible.
He turned away from the wreckage of the drone. Every instinct told him to prepare for combat. But not now. Not yet. The ruins pulsed beneath his feet stone that wasn't stone, carved with neural pathways. Somewhere ahead, a Starforge Core lay dormant.
Power ancient enough to make Earth's satellites look like toys.
He would claim it.
And when Earth sent another drone another team, another kill order they wouldn't find an escaped test subject.
They'd find something else.
Something they couldn't classify. Couldn't kill. Couldn't control.
[SYSTEM REMINDER: NEURAL TRAIT TREE EXPANDED]
NEXT UPGRADE UNLOCKED: MEMORY PARASITE (Lv. 1)
Can implant false signals, corrupted memory logs, or siphon short-term data from exposed neural networks.
Subroutine Slot 1 Available – Suggestion: Drone Reconstruction AI / Protocol Hijack Suite
Would you like to initiate construction?
Riven gave a low, thoughtful laugh.
He wasn't just becoming alien.
He was becoming inevitable.