The coordinates led underground.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
An abandoned transit artery beneath the eastern wards, sealed after the third infrastructure collapse and quietly removed from public maps. My wrist display tried to reroute me three times before giving up and switching to passive mode.
The stairs down were damp.
[tap]
[tap]
[tap]
Each step echoed longer than it should have, as if the space was inhaling between sounds.
The air changed first.
Less recycled. More mineral. A faint organic warmth layered beneath the cold concrete smell. That was wrong. Underground spaces were supposed to feel dead.
This one felt busy.
I stopped when the corridor widened into a station shell stripped of signage. No ads. No schedules. No cameras that I could see.
Then the lights came on.
Not all at once. Segment by segment. A soft bioluminescent glow traced veins along the walls, pulsing slowly, deliberately, like something thinking.
My breath hitched.
This was not standard power.
A voice emerged from the far end, unamplified, human.
"You arrived alone. Good."
A figure stepped forward.
Late twenties maybe. Short hair. Neutral clothing that refused to belong to any known institution. No visible weapons. That was more unsettling than armor.
"I'm not here to recruit you," they said calmly. "I'm here to correct your vocabulary."
I swallowed. "I didn't say anything."
"You did," they replied. "In your report. In your posture. In the way you stopped when the cell hesitated."
They gestured toward the wall.
A section of concrete peeled back silently.
Inside was a containment chamber.
Not empty.
The fragment.
Larger than before.
Suspended within a lattice of translucent material that flexed microscopically, responding to its movements. The cell fragment rotated slowly, its internal structures rearranging themselves with quiet precision.
Not thrashing.
Not panicking.
Thinking.
"That's impossible," I whispered.
The figure shook their head. "That's inaccurate."
They stepped closer to the chamber, placing a bare hand against the barrier. The lattice stiffened where their palm touched, adapting instantly.
"Apoptosis," they continued, "was never death. It was negotiation. A suggestion cells agreed to because it benefited the whole."
They turned to me.
"We turned it into a command."
The fragment pulsed.
[fffwh]
A ripple passed through its membrane, mirroring the lattice response with a delay of exactly 0.3 seconds.
My stomach dropped.
"It's syncing," I said.
"Yes," the figure answered softly. "With us."
I took a step back. "You're HELIX."
They nodded. No pride. No denial.
"Officially, we don't exist. Functionally, we clean up after your world panics."
My voice came out rough. "You caused this."
"No," they said. "We listened to it."
The lights dimmed slightly, as if the station itself agreed.
"Cells have always adapted," the figure continued. "Cancer was the first proof. HeLa was the first confession. Immortality is not a bug. It's a refusal."
They looked at me, eyes sharp now.
"And today, for the first time at scale, a cell refused correctly."
My wrist display vibrated violently.
An emergency override alert.
A.C.U. units inbound.
The figure smiled, thin and tired.
"You were flagged because you noticed the hesitation," they said. "Because you didn't look away."
They stepped back into the shadow.
"Decide quickly. You can go back upstairs and help them pretend this is containable."
The fragment pressed against the lattice, curious.
"Or you can stay and learn why the protocol failed."
Sirens echoed through the tunnels above.
This time, closer.
I realized something then.
The world was not under attack.
It was being answered.