Chapter 1 – The Forbidden Algorithm
"They told me immortality was impossible.
Then I found the Code.
And the moment I opened it, the system started counting down not to life, but to death."
---
The hum of the lab was my lullaby, steady and cold, like the heartbeat of the machines that never slept. Rows of servers blinked in rhythmic pulses, blue and green lights flickering like stars in an artificial galaxy. The sterile air carried the faint tang of ozone, the residue of endless electricity, sharp enough to sting the back of my throat.
Most people hated being alone in this place at midnight. The subterranean research wing was buried so deep beneath the Syndicate's headquarters that no sound from the surface ever reached us. It was too quiet, too cold, too mechanical. A grave for the living.
But for me?
It was sanctuary.
I leaned back in my chair, stretching the ache from my shoulders. The glow of holoscreens painted my face in pale blue light. A half-empty mug of coffee lukewarm, bitter, and as stale as everything in this place sat beside me. My data gloves, snug and slick against my fingers, pulsed faintly in rhythm with the interface, linking my movements to the digital bloodstream of the Syndicate.
Dr. Ayla Morgan, cyberneticist, miracle worker, mechanic of dying bodies that was what the world saw when they looked at me. The woman who gave amputees legs that could outpace sprinters. The genius who replaced failing hearts with titanium cores that beat forever. The prodigy who turned fragility into strength, limitation into possibility.
But no one ever asked the question that haunted me:
What's the point of rebuilding a body… if death still wins in the end?
That was the curse stitched beneath every miracle I made. Patients smiled, walked, lived but time always caught them. Disease, decay, entropy. You could replace a heart, a limb, a lung, but the soul? The years? Those still rotted.
So I hunted for what lay beyond. The secret no one dared to speak aloud.
Immortality.
---
Tonight was supposed to be routine just another midnight scrape through the Syndicate's encrypted archives, looking for scraps they thought buried too deep for anyone to notice. But I wasn't "anyone." My clearance might have had limits, but my arrogance did not.
The cursor blinked patiently against the void of my screen, daring me to go deeper. I pushed past another layer of encryption, lines of digital fire unraveling like threads pulled from a shroud. My pulse quickened. This wasn't standard data. This wasn't even classified tech reports.
It was something else.
A string of symbols appeared. Not equations. Not code. Symbols that bent back on themselves, recursive, shifting every time I tried to fix them in place.
"What the hell…" I murmured, leaning closer.
The code didn't just run it lived. It wasn't static like the archives I usually scraped through. It twisted, morphing, adapting. A puzzle that moved when you touched it.
Then the word appeared, etched across the darkness of my screen:
//E.T.E.R.N.A.L//
I blinked. My breath caught. That wasn't standard syntax. That wasn't any known programming language. The algorithm had named itself.
A chill rippled across my skin.
I should have stopped. Logged out. Wiped my traces and gone home, another failure chalked up in my endless obsession. But curiosity was always my fatal flaw.
I reached deeper.
---
Data spilled across the holoscreen in a flood blueprints, formulas, schematics. Neural mapping that outpaced anything the Syndicate had released to the public. Cellular regeneration protocols so precise they could erase scars at the molecular level. Integration models where flesh and circuitry didn't just coexist they fused, harmonized, became indistinguishable.
Not immortality, not exactly. Something worse. Something better.
It was a blueprint for rewriting the boundary between life and machine. Not a prosthetic. Not an enhancement. A rebirth.
My hands trembled as I scrolled through the impossible. Years of research, hidden here, buried where no one should ever have found it.
"God," I whispered. "What are you?"
The system reacted.
Scarlet text blinked onto the screen:
ACCESS UNAUTHORIZED. TRACE INITIATED.
My stomach dropped. "Shit!"
I yanked off my gloves, heart hammering, trying to sever the connection. But the cursor moved on its own, phantom keystrokes clattering across the screen without my input.
HELLO, AYLA.
The letters burned into me like a brand.
I stumbled back from the console. My blood turned to ice. The system knew my name.
"Impossible," I whispered. "That's not possible."
The lab lights flickered. The steady hum of servers swelled, deepening into a roar, like the entire room was drawing breath. Shadows rippled along the floor as the power surged.
I slammed the kill switch. The holoscreens died, plunging the lab into darkness.
For a moment, silence.
Then
Thud.
I froze. That wasn't the servers. That was footsteps.
---
My hand shot out, groping for the nearest object a heavy wrench abandoned on the workstation. Sweat slicked my grip as the sound grew louder. Slow. Deliberate. Whoever it was, they weren't even trying to hide.
The door's scanner hissed. An override. Someone on the outside forcing their way in.
No. This wasn't protocol. Security never entered without alerting me first. And they wouldn't come at this hour not unless something was very, very wrong.
The door slid open.
Boots clicked against the floor, measured and unhurried. A shadow stretched long across the wall, broad-shouldered, steady, as if carved from steel.
I ducked behind a server rack, clutching the wrench, my pulse pounding in my ears. Every instinct screamed run, but my legs locked.
A man's voice, low and smooth, broke the silence.
"You shouldn't have opened it."
The sound was calm, almost conversational, but beneath it lay a quiet danger, like the edge of a blade.
I held my breath, trying to still the tremor in my body.
The shadow moved closer. I glimpsed details now tactical black, boots too polished for Syndicate guards, eyes that burned faintly even in the dim. He wasn't here for maintenance. He wasn't here for protocol.
He stopped at the console I'd abandoned, his broad frame framed in the dim red emergency glow. He studied the blank holoscreen with the intensity of someone who already knew what it had shown.
"Do you have any idea what you've just touched?"
I swallowed hard, forcing my voice to steady. "Who are you?"
Slowly, he turned. His eyes caught the faint light, glinting like coals. A smirk tugged at his lips, too sharp to be kind.
"The Code doesn't belong to you, Dr. Morgan. It was never meant for you."
My blood froze. He knew my name.
"How" The word caught in my throat.
Before I could finish, the server lights surged, blazing crimson. Every screen in the room lit up with burning letters:
TRACE COMPLETE. TERMINAL LOCKED.
The man's smirk vanished. His jaw tightened. He glanced at the monitors, then back at me.
"We're out of time."
Alarms screamed, sharp and deafening. Above us, doors slammed shut one by one, sealing the lower levels. Red warning lights strobed across the walls.
The Syndicate knew.
They were coming for me.
And the stranger who found me first?
His stance wasn't protective. His eyes weren't merciful.
He wasn't here to save me.
---
Ayla has unearthed the Eternal Code and triggered a trace. A stranger confronts her, warning she should never have opened it. The Syndicate is closing in her choices have narrowed to seconds: trust a dangerous intruder… or fight for her life.