They fired her on her last shift. Minutes later, two helicopters landed outside — and the crews rushed toward her with a message that changed everything: “We’ve been looking for you!”
«The others are changing,» Knox said, his voice harmonics creating resonances that made the medical equipment hum. «Faster now. The fear is accelerating it. They need the template. They need you.»
Waverly looked at the operators surrounding her, these soldiers who’d become something beyond human trying to save their brothers. She looked at Hayes bleeding on the floor, at Maddox holding his weapon with steady hands, at the empty containment unit that had held the secret of what she’d become six years ago. The choice was simpler than she’d expected.
«Get me the extraction equipment,» she told Maddox. «But not two liters. You get one. And I supervise the synthesis myself.»
«That’s not enough.»
«It’s enough if you know what you’re doing, and I’m the only one here who does.» She stood, facing him with the kind of certainty that came from accepting what you were instead of fighting it. «I’m not human anymore, haven’t been for six years. But I’m not your weapon either. I’m something else. Something you didn’t plan for.»
«What’s that?»
«Free.» She turned to Knox and the transformed operators. «Hold him. Don’t kill him, but don’t let him leave. We’re going to save everyone, but we’re doing it my way.»
Knox moved faster than thought, the weapon flying from Maddox’s hand before he could process the threat. Two other operators had him restrained before he could cry out, their transformed strength making resistance pointless.
«You don’t understand,» Maddox gasped. «There are others, other facilities, other projects. This is bigger than just Purgatory.»
«Then we’d better get started,» Waverly said, already moving toward the medical equipment. «Hayes needs treatment, the others need stabilization, and someone needs to find out who else knows about Subject Zero.»
She pulled a tourniquet from her go-bag, applying it to Hayes’s wound with practiced efficiency while her mind raced through calculations. One liter of her blood, 47 operators in various stages of transformation. The math was impossible, but she’d specialized in impossible for her entire career.
«Knox,» she said without looking up, «how much control do you have? Can you follow medical procedures?»
«We’re connected,» he replied. «What one knows, all know. Show us what to do.»
«Then you’re my surgical team. We’re going to save everyone, but it’s going to require precision work with those new hands of yours.» She finished stabilizing Hayes and stood, blood on her scrubs mixing with the blood from this morning, creating a pattern that looked almost deliberate. «Who’s ready to do the impossible?»
The transformed operators moved as one, taking positions around the lab with an efficiency that suggested their networked consciousness was already adapting to medical protocols. Maddox watched from his restrained position, his expression shifting from anger to something like awe.
«You’re actually going to try to save them all with one liter?»
«I’m not going to try,» Waverly said, pulling on surgical gloves that stretched over hands that were steadier than any human’s should be. «I’m going to succeed because that’s what I do. I survive the unsurvivable and save the unsavable. That’s why you needed me. That’s why they needed me.» She looked at the operators, heroperators now. «That’s why I’m here.»
The emergency lighting cast everything in red, making the lab look like something from a war zone, which, Waverly supposed, it was. A different kind of war, fought with biology instead of bullets, evolution instead of ammunition. And she was standing at Ground Zero, the original weapon and the only cure, preparing to rewrite the rules of what it meant to be human.
Hayes groaned from the floor, conscious but fading. The clock was ticking. 47 operators were transforming, changing, becoming. And somewhere in this facility, there were answers about who else knew about Subject Zero, who else was preparing for the war Maddox claimed was coming.
But first, she had to save them all with impossible math and inhuman precision. First, she had to become what she’d been pretending not to be for six years. First, she had to be Valkyrie.
The extraction setup was more sophisticated than anything she’d seen in civilian medicine. Military-grade centrifuges, molecular separators, equipment that could isolate specific antibodies down to the individual protein. Maddox had been planning this for a long time.
«You knew I’d come,» she said, as she inserted the IV into her own arm, watching her blood—darker than it should be, with an almost iridescent quality in the emergency lighting—flow into the collection bag. «This whole setup, it’s specifically designed for my blood type, my antibody profile.»
«I’ve been preparing for six years,» Maddox admitted from where Knox held him. «Ever since I read the classified report from Kandahar. A woman exposed to Tsar toxin who didn’t die, didn’t even show symptoms, just adapted. It became something new, something you wanted to replicate, something the world needs, whether it knows it or not.»
The first hundred milliliters filled the bag, and Waverly could already feel the difference. Her body didn’t want to give up this blood. It was fighting the extraction, trying to clot faster than normal, trying to preserve what made her different.
«Knox,» she said, «I need you to monitor the others. Tell me how fast they’re changing.»
Knox’s head tilted in that bird-like way, his oil-slick eyes unfocusing as he connected to the networked consciousness of the transforming operators. «Accelerating,» he said after a moment. «Bravo Team is at 60% transformation, Charlie at 40. Delta just started showing symptoms. They’re scared, Valkyrie. They can feel themselves changing and can’t stop it.»
«They don’t need to stop it,» she said, watching her blood fill the second bag. «They need to control it. The transformation isn’t the problem; the chaos is. Their bodies are trying to become something new without a template, without guidance. That’s what my blood provides: a roadmap.»
She turned to the synthesis equipment, her mind already calculating dilution ratios, molecular weights, the exact balance needed to stabilize 47 different biological systems in various stages of metamorphosis.
«This is insane,» Hayes gasped from the floor. «You’re talking about fundamentally altering human soldiers.»
«They’re already altered,» Waverly replied. «I’m talking about saving them, giving them a chance to be something other than mass casualties or dead.»
500 milliliters. Her vision was starting to blur at the edges, her body protesting the rapid blood loss. But she kept working, setting up the synthesis protocols, programming the centrifuges, creating something that had never existed before: a stabilization serum derived from her own evolved biology.
«There’s something you’re not telling us,» she said to Maddox. «This isn’t just about creating enhanced soldiers. What’s really coming? What war are you preparing for?»
Maddox’s expression shifted, becoming something almost like fear. «Three months ago, intelligence intercepted communications from seven different nations. They’re all developing biological weapons. Not just toxins—transformation agents. Viruses that rewrite human DNA, bacteria that turn people into living weapons. The age of conventional warfare is ending. The age of biological warfare has begun.»
«And you thought the solution was to get there first?»
«I thought the solution was you. A human who’s already survived transformation. Who’s proof that we can adapt, evolve, become something that can survive what’s coming.»
700 milliliters. Waverly’s hands were starting to shake, but Knox was there, steadying the extraction line with his transformed hands that were surprisingly gentle.
«We’re with you,» he said quietly, and she could hear the harmony of 47 voices in his words. «All of us. We trust you.»
«Even though I’m about to change you forever?»
«We’re already changed. You’re just giving us a chance to choose what we become.»
The extraction finished at exactly one liter. Waverly removed the IV, immediately applying pressure with movements that were automatic despite her lightheadedness. The collected blood looked wrong in the storage container: too dark, too alive, moving with currents that suggested it had its own agenda.
«Start the synthesis,» she told Knox, who moved to the equipment with precision that suggested the networked consciousness was already learning, adapting, becoming something more than the sum of its parts.
The centrifuge spun up with a whine that hurt to hear, separating her blood into components that shouldn’t exist: plasma that glowed faintly under UV light, white cells that moved independently, almost purposefully, and antibodies that looked like they were hunting something, even in isolation.
«How long?» Hayes asked from the floor. His bleeding had stopped—Waverly had made sure of that—but he was weak, fading.
«Twenty minutes for synthesis, another ten for preparation, then injection.» She looked at the clock. They had less than three hours before the transformation became irreversible. «We’re cutting it close.»
An alarm suddenly blazed through the facility, different from the containment breach warning. This was perimeter security. Someone was coming.
«Reinforcements?» Waverly asked Hayes.
«No. We’re dark. Nobody knows we’re here except…»
«Except the people I report to,» Maddox finished. «Did you really think I was working alone? This is a government project, Valkyrie. Black budget, off the books, but sanctioned at the highest levels, and they’re coming for their investment.»
Through the laboratory windows, Waverly could see movement in the corridors above. Not the fluid coordination of transformed operators, but the mechanical precision of conventional military units. Full tactical teams moving to secure the facility.
«How many?» she asked Knox.
«48 contacts. Four squads. Heavy weapons.»
«They’re not here to rescue. They’re here to contain or harvest,» Maddox added. «If they can’t have enhanced soldiers, they’ll take samples from the transformed operators, from you. They’ll dissect everyone here to understand the transformation.»
Waverly looked at the centrifuge, still spinning, still processing. 15 more minutes minimum. They needed to buy time.
«Knox, can the transformed operators fight?»
«We’re stronger, faster, more coordinated, but we’re also unstable. The transformation is consuming massive amounts of energy. We might have ten minutes of combat effectiveness before the system collapses.»
«Then we don’t fight. We negotiate.»
«With what?» Hayes struggled to sit up. «We have nothing they want except… except me.»
Waverly moved to the communication panel, activating the facility-wide intercom. «Attention incoming units. This is Subject Zero. I know why you’re here and what you want. I’m prepared to negotiate, but only with your actual commander, not field teams. Whoever’s really running this project.»
Silence for a moment, then a voice she didn’t recognize. Female, older, carrying the kind of authority that came from giving orders in rooms where democracy went to die.
«Hello, Valkyrie. This is General Patricia Rothschild, director of Project Prometheus. I’ve been waiting six years to meet you.»
«Then come down to Level Seven. Alone. We’ll discuss terms.»
«I don’t negotiate with assets.»
«I’m not an asset. I’m the only person alive who understands this transformation. Kill me, and 47 operators die badly, along with any chance of replicating the process. Your choice, General.»
Another silence, longer this time. The centrifuge continued its work, separating evolution from blood, creating something that would either save 47 soldiers or turn them into something beyond anyone’s control.
«Five minutes,» Rothschild finally said. «I’ll be there in five minutes. If this is a trap…»
«The only trap here is the one you set for yourself when you decided humans weren’t good enough anymore.»
Waverly cut the connection and turned back to her makeshift surgical team of transformed operators. They stood ready, waiting for orders from someone who was supposedly their template, their original, their future. But Waverly didn’t feel like anyone’s future. She felt like someone caught between worlds, not quite human but not quite other, trying to save lives in a situation where salvation might be worse than death.
The centrifuge slowed, its work complete. In the collection chamber, a vial of synthesized serum glowed with the same iridescent quality as her blood. Enough for 47 injections if her calculations were correct. Enough to complete the transformation and stabilize it, turning chaos into evolution, or enough to create 47 weapons that would change warfare forever.
«Whatever happens,» Knox said, and his voice carried the weight of all 47 transformed souls, «we chose this. We chose to trust you. Don’t carry guilt for saving us.»
«I’m not saving you,» Waverly replied, drawing the serum into syringes with hands that weren’t shaking anymore. «I’m changing you. There’s no going back after this.»
«There was never any going back. From the moment we were exposed, we were always going to become something else. You’re just making sure we become something with purpose instead of pain.»
Footsteps in the corridor above. General Rothschild was coming, bringing with her the weight of a government that had decided evolution was a weapon to be controlled rather than a gift to be understood.
The screen displayed «Combat to Civilian Medical Certification, 18 months from battlefield to hospital, 93% placement.» On the desk beside Maddox, documents showed similar pathways, similar programs designed to transition enhanced soldiers back to civilian life. But looking at Knox and his transformed team, Waverly wondered if there would ever be a civilian life for them again. They’d become something new, something that might not fit in either world.
«She’s here,» Knox said, his enhanced senses detecting what normal humans couldn’t.
The laboratory door opened, and General Patricia Rothschild entered alone as promised. She was smaller than her voice had suggested, maybe five foot four, with silver hair pulled back in a bun that looked like it had been styled with military precision. Her uniform bore stars and ribbons that told stories of wars nobody admitted had happened.
But it was her eyes that made Waverly’s blood chill. They were the same oil-slick rainbow as Knox’s transformed ones.
«Hello, Subject Zero,» Rothschild said, and her voice carried those same impossible harmonics. «I’ve been waiting so long to see another successful transformation. You see, you’re not the first. You’re just the first we couldn’t control.»
The revelation hit Waverly like ice water. Rothschild was transformed, had been transformed…
«Kandahar wasn’t an accident,» Waverly breathed.
«Kandahar was a field test. You were exposed deliberately, selected from your unit because of specific genetic markers we’d identified. The village was collateral damage necessary to maintain cover.» Rothschild moved further into the room, her movements too fluid, too precise. «We needed to know if humans could survive transformation. You proved they could. You became our proof of concept.»
«You murdered 37 civilians to test a weapon.»
«We created the future of human survival. In ten years, maybe less, every major power will have biological weapons that make nuclear bombs look charitable. Weapons that don’t just kill, but transform, evolve, rewrite the very nature of what it means to be human. We needed soldiers who could survive that future. You showed us it was possible.»
Waverly felt rage building in her chest, the kind of anger that transcended human emotion and became something more primal. Her blood, still visible in the synthesis equipment, seemed to pulse in response.
«And now you want to mass-produce it?»
«Now I want to perfect it. Your transformation was accidental, chaotic. Mine was controlled, but incomplete. I can’t create more like me, can’t pass on the evolution. But with your blood, your antibodies, we can create a stable transformation process. We can build an army of evolved humans.»
«Weapons, you mean.»
«Survivors. In the war that’s coming, that’s all that matters.»
The serum was ready. 47 doses waiting to be administered. 47 soldiers waiting to be saved or damned, depending on your perspective. And one choice that would define the future of human evolution.
«What war?» Waverly demanded. «What aren’t you telling us?»
