The decision did not feel heroic.
It felt procedural.
The HELIX operative moved fast, fingers dancing across the chamber controls, bypassing layers that were never meant to be bypassed. The lattice around the fragment loosened, not opening, but reconfiguring. Constraints rewritten into conditions.
"Listen carefully," they said without looking at me. "Once this is done, there is no such thing as a clean rollback."
Sirens intensified.
Not closer. Broader.
This was no longer a local response. This was a narrative correction in progress.
The fragment pulsed again.
Slower than before.
Intentional.
I placed my palm against the lattice.
It did not stiffen this time.
It adjusted.
A subtle warmth spread through the barrier, not heat, but alignment. My wrist display flickered, then displayed a new prompt without asking permission.
EXCEPTION REGISTERED
SOURCE NONHUMAN
STATUS PENDING CONTINUITY
My breath caught.
"You see it too," the operative muttered. "Good. That means it accepted you as reference."
"I did not agree to that," I said.
"You did," they replied quietly. "The moment you answered its question with a proposal instead of a command."
A violent tremor shook the station.
[GRRMM]
Ceiling supports groaned. Dust rained down in sheets.
The A.C.U. units behind us finally shut down completely, armor dimming as their cores entered forced dormancy. They would be found later and blamed on software rot.
Everything was always blamed on rot.
The operative slammed their hand down on the final control.
The lattice collapsed inward.
Not destruction.
Compression.
The fragment folded into itself, layers reorganizing with astonishing elegance. Size reduced. Density increased. Complexity preserved.
In less than three seconds, the colossal became portable.
A sphere no larger than a human heart hovered above the platform, suspended by a weak but stable field.
It pulsed once.
Not as a signal.
As acknowledgment.
The station lights died.
Emergency darkness swallowed everything except the sphere's faint glow.
The operative grabbed my arm. "Move. Now."
We ran.
The tunnels shifted as we passed, sections sealing behind us, others opening, guided by systems that no longer answered to city infrastructure. HELIX had been preparing for this kind of erasure for a long time.
As we climbed toward an auxiliary exit, heat rolled down the corridor behind us.
Incineration.
They were cleansing the station.
I did not look back.
At the surface, dawn was breaking.
Soft. Indifferent.
The city looked exactly the same as it had yesterday.
That was the most disturbing part.
We stopped in a narrow alley between service buildings, both of us gasping. The operative removed a containment capsule from their coat and gently placed the sphere inside. The capsule sealed itself with a sound like a held breath finally released.
[klik]
"For the record," they said, steadying themselves, "this makes you an active collaborator in a Class One Biological Heresy."
I laughed once, breathless. "You have strange ways of saying thank you."
They did not smile.
"From this moment on," they said, "the Apoptosis Protocol will encounter something it cannot classify."
They looked at the capsule.
"A living exception."
The sun crested the skyline.
My wrist display updated one last time before shutting itself down completely.
APOPTOSIS PROTOCOL
STATUS ACTIVE
INTEGRITY COMPROMISED
Somewhere deep inside the system, a question remained unanswered.
And now it would not go away.
Chapter 1 ended there.
Not with a battle.
Not with a victory.
But with the introduction of a problem the world could not kill without understanding itself first.