The clinic at the surface airlock became a pilgrimage site. Not just for the sick, but for the curious, the desperate, the hopeful. Within months, a small settlement had sprung up around it—"Hope's Outpost," they called it. Tents at first, then prefab structures brought by those who decided to stay. Baseline humans living in the shadow of the mountain, drawn by the promise of what lay inside.
Aris oversaw the medical work, but it was Lin who managed the delicate human logistics. She understood baseline psychology in ways the Longevos were still learning. She knew when to be compassionate, when to be firm, when to simply listen as parents wept over children who might live because of treatments grown in underground gardens.
Elara, now five years old with the cognitive capacity of a gifted ten-year-old, became the clinic's unofficial ambassador. Her hybrid nature disarmed people. She looked like a child, but her eyes held a weight that made adults speak to her as an equal. She could explain complex medical concepts with startling clarity, her Bridge-Born mind translating between Longevo science and baseline understanding.
"Your daughter's cells are confused," she told a father whose little girl had a rare degenerative disorder. "They're trying to follow instructions that got mixed up. We can give them new instructions. Not to make her like us—just to make her well."
The father, tears streaming, had only one question: "Will it hurt?"
Elara took the girl's hand. "Less than being sick. And I'll be here."
She was. During procedures, Elara would sit with patients, her small hand on theirs, humming tunes that seemed to ease pain. Aris, monitoring vitals, noticed something extraordinary: when Elara was present, recovery times improved by twenty percent.
"It's not just psychological," Aris told Kael one evening in their quarters. "Her cells are emitting low-level regenerative fields. She's literally healing them just by proximity."
Kael watched his daughter through the observation window. Below, in the clinic's recovery ward, Elara moved from bed to bed, stopping to adjust a pillow, share a smile, listen to a story. The patients—baseline humans from across the collapsing world—looked at her with something beyond gratitude. With reverence.
"That's dangerous," Kael said softly.
"I know," Aris said. "But what do we do? Lock her away? She was born to do this."
The Ephemeral League watched from a distance. Their base, Bastion, had grown into a proper city—a geometric marvel of white alloys and clean lines, a deliberate contrast to New Alexandria's organic stone. From there, they broadcast their counter-narrative.
"Every treatment is a transaction," warned a smooth-voiced commentator on their network. "Every cure a chain. They offer health today in exchange for your grandchildren's freedom tomorrow."
Some believed. Others, holding children who could now breathe without pain, didn't care.
Then came the incident that changed everything.
A group of Ephemeral League purists infiltrated Hope's Outpost. Not with weapons, but with cameras. They documented a treatment—a boy with muscular dystrophy receiving stem cell therapy derived from Longevo-modified plants. The procedure worked. The boy, who hadn't walked in three years, took tentative steps.
The footage should have been a triumph. But the Ephemeral League edited it differently. They zoomed in on the boy's eyes, which had taken on a faint golden shimmer—a temporary side effect of the treatment. They added ominous music. The narration said: "They're not healing humanity. They're rewriting it."
The broadcast went viral. Panic spread, not among those who had been helped, but among those watching from afar. Governments that had been cautiously neutral began issuing travel warnings. The UN proposed "regulatory oversight" of Longevo medical practices.
Worse, some families who had come for treatment now feared what had been done to their loved ones. A mother at the outpost demanded her daughter's treatment be "reversed."
"You can't," Aris explained patiently. "Her cells have been repaired. There's nothing to reverse."
"Then you infected her!" the woman screamed, gathering a crowd. "You're turning our children into them!"
Kael, monitoring from security, felt the situation spiraling. He started for the surface, but Lin stopped him.
"Let me," she said. "I speak their language."
On the surface, Lin faced the growing crowd. Some were patients, some were family members, some were newcomers drawn by the commotion.
"My daughter is half-Longevo," Lin said, her voice carrying without shouting. "Is she a monster?"
The crowd hesitated. Many had met Elara.
"She heals people," Lin continued. "She comforts children. She reads too many books and forgets to brush her hair in the morning." She looked at the frightened mother. "Your daughter isn't infected. She's healed. She'll run and play and live the life she was supposed to have. Is that so terrible?"
The mother wavered. "But her eyes..."
"Will return to normal in a week," Lin said. "It's a temporary biomarker. Like a bruise that fades."
The tension eased, but didn't dissolve. Later, in council, the Compact faced a hard truth.
"Our help is being weaponized against us," Leila summarized. "We can't stop helping—that would be morally monstrous. But we can't continue blindly."
Elara, sitting beside Lin, spoke up. "We should ask them."
"Ask who, sweetheart?" Lin said.
"The patients. What they want." Elara's Bridge-Born logic was relentless. "We're deciding for them. That's what the League says we do. So we should stop deciding."
And so, the Compact instituted the first informed consent protocol for transhuman medicine. Every treatment explained in simple terms. Every side effect documented. Every patient given the right to refuse, even at the last moment. And—most controversially—every treatment's underlying science published openly for the world to scrutinize.
The Ephemeral League called it a publicity stunt. But when independent scientists verified the published research, a new conversation began. Not about fear, but about ethics. About the right to healing. About what humanity might become if disease became optional.