Chapter 2 - Blunder

The soldier on the table sat up, gasping. He touched his throat where the jagged green shards had once pierced his windpipe. Now, there was only smooth, pale skin and a faint, healthy warmth. He looked at Edward with a religious fervor that bordered on worship.

Peace, brother, your service to the prophet is not yet ended.

As the soldier was led away by Crimson Cape acolytes, Edward turned back to his monitors, his mind racing through chemical formulas that didn't exist in the textbooks of this world.

Edward pulling up a scan of a forgotten's DNA strand.

Mobius was so focused on the atomic weight and the leeching properties that he missed the resonance frequencies, he treated tiberium like a poison to be purged, rather than a catalyst to be harnessed. In my old world, we called that 'bad data', here, they call it 'Global Defense Policy'.

He tapped a key, bringing up a map of the surrounding yellow zone.

Several "Shiner" camps—slums for those mutated by the crystals—dotted the wasteland. To GDI, they were a tragedy. To the brotherhood's extremists, they were target practice. But to me, they are the key to the next step. If I can reverse the 'Shiner' mutation while keeping the immunity, I won't just have an army. I'll have a species.

A voice crackled on comms. It was his head of security, a woman who had seen the First Tiberium War.

Doctor, the GDI zone troopers above are deploying a mobile sensor array. They're looking for high-energy signatures. We need to power down the refinement vats.

Do it. Transition to internal batteries and mask the thermal output with the cathedral's old geothermal vents. And send a messenger to the 'Broken Talon' camp of the forgotten. Tell them the doctor has more serum, but I need volunteers for the phase two trials.

After ordering the head of security, Edward enter in deep thought as the lights of lab, dimmed to a deep crimson red.

GDI thinks they are the protectors of Earth, But they are just doctors trying to cure a patient who has already evolved. Kane saw the light. I will be the one to make sure humanity doesn't go blind looking at it.

He picked up a vial of the liquid tiberium antitoxin. It glowed with a soft, bioluminescent hum—a perfect fusion of biochemistry and extraterrestrial power.

Eighteen years in this life, and I've already done more for this planet than Mobius did in eighty. Just wait, Kane. When you step out of the shadows, your Crimson Cape will be ready.

Edward reached the "Broken Talon" camp. A dozen Forgotten stood there, their bodies distorted by jagged crystalline protrusions. Their leader, a massive man with a shard of green glass where his jaw should be, stepped forward. The leader of the camp Umbra watched the nod scientist coming.

The Doctor comes with gifts?

I come with the truth, Umbra. GDI told you that you were 'expendable' because they couldn't fix you. They lied because they were led by a man who couldn't see past his own nobel prizes.

Edward pulled out a pressurized injector filled with shimmering Liquid Tiberium Antitoxin.

Ignatio Mobius... that man was a fraud. A glorified gardener who saw a new ecosystem and tried to pull it out like a weed. He called tiberium a 'cancer' because he was too incompetent to map its resonance. He spent billions of GDI's credits on containment while the solution was staring him in the face: you don't fight the crystal, you re-code it.

In the GDI Council chamber, the silence was deafening. On the massive tactical screen, Edward pressed the injector into Umbra's arm.

The reaction was instant. The jagged green crystals on the mutant's face didn't shatter; they melted back into liquid, absorbed by the skin. The grey, necrotic flesh turned pink and healthy. Umbra let out a roar—not of pain, but of a man feeling his nerves wake up for the first time in years.

Edward shouted to the gathered crowd, his voice echoing off the ruins of the wasteland.

Behold, the failure of GDI science. They use your taxes to build ion cannons to burn this world, while the brotherhood uses the very resource they fear to mend it. Mobius was a hack who feared the future. I am the future.

In the sterile safety of the GDI Space Station GDSS Philadelphia, a Senator stood up, face pale.

If the public sees this... if the Yellow Zones find out Nod has a cure made from the crystals... we lose the world by sunset.

Edward, oblivious to the eyes in the sky, knelt down to check Umbra's vitals, his mind already calculating the dosage for the rest of the camp.

Upon seeing the recovery of Umbra, the mutants were shocked to see that Edward's cure worked, Many who are skeptical about liquid tiberium antitoxins, now see those vials as the cure they were looking for.

Edward told the excited mutants to fore a line, and very soon, the mutants were cured one by one, they all without exception revert back to being a human, but retained the immunity to tiberium and ability to be healed by the exposure to tiberium.

I wish if GDI councilmen would me here, I would personally show them their greatest blunder, I wonder what would have been their reaction, of course they would have panicked that they waste billions on useless things, when the same funds and those crystals could have cured the people affected by tiberium poisoning.

Edward, gave a chuckle at the thought of GDI councilmen panicking, if they ever learn the truth about tiberium, Ignatio's bad data and Kane's visions to be right all along.

Of course, Edward don't know, that this is exactly what happening in GDI Space Station GDSS Philadelphia, right now, Edward has no idea that he is watched, and actions is watched by GDI councilmen, who realised that they commited the greatest blunder in human history.