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!”
Another pause, longer this time. In the laboratory, 47 operators waited for judgment, their synchronized breathing the only sound. Hayes had managed to sit up fully, leaning against a medical cabinet. Maddox remained still in Knox’s grip, calculating his next move. Rothschild stood frozen, watching her life’s work slip away.
«I’m sending a medical team,» the secretary finally said. «A real one, not military. Doctors who specialize in biological anomalies. They’ll evaluate everyone and determine what support is needed.» He paused. «Subject Zero, will you cooperate with the evaluation?»
«If the operators are guaranteed protection and choice about their futures, yes.»
«They’ll have both. General Rothschild, you’ll remain in custody pending full investigation. Mr. Maddox, your immunity deal depends on full cooperation and disclosure. And the operators?» He looked at them through the screen, these soldiers who had become something beyond his understanding. «The operators will be given full medical discharge with honors if they choose, or reassignment to a new unit we’ll create for enhanced individuals. Their choice.»
«What about me?» Waverly asked.
«You’re the template, according to what I’m reading here. The original. That makes you either invaluable or incredibly dangerous, depending on perspective.»
«I’m a nurse,» she said simply. «I was six years ago, I am now. I just happened to be a nurse who survived something impossible and came out changed. If you’re asking what I want, it’s to help others through the same transformation. Not as weapons, but as evolution.»
«You want to transform more people?»
«I want to give people the choice. The biological weapons General Rothschild mentioned are real. The threats are real. Baseline humanity might not be enough for what’s coming, but the choice to evolve should be individual, informed, voluntary.»
«That’s a conversation for later. Right now, I need this situation contained and understood. The medical team arrives in 30 minutes. Everyone remains in place until then.»
The screen went dark, leaving them in the red-tinged emergency lighting of a laboratory that had just become the most important room in human history. 47 operators stood transformed, but stable. Their evolution was complete, controlled, conscious.
«You’ve destroyed everything,» Rothschild said quietly, her rainbow eyes reflecting the emergency lights like prisms. «Years of planning, preparation, controlled development. Now it’ll be chaos. Committees, oversight, bureaucracy slowing everything down while our enemies accelerate their programs.»
«Or,» Waverly countered, «it’ll be democracy, choice, evolution with conscience instead of coercion.»
Knox released Rothschild’s wrist but remained close enough to intervene if needed. The general rubbed her wrist—not because he’d hurt her, transformed bodies didn’t bruise easily, but from habit, from muscle memory of when she’d been baseline human.
«You don’t know what you’ve started,» Rothschild said. «When the world learns transformation is possible, stable, even beneficial, everyone will want it. Athletes for performance, soldiers for combat, civilians for survival. How do you control that? How do you prevent chaos?»
«You don’t control it,» Waverly replied. «You guide it, the same way I guided these operators through their transformation. Not with force, but with knowledge, support, choice.»
«Choice,» Rothschild laughed bitterly. «I haven’t had a choice since I was transformed 12 years ago. Every day pretending to be human, every night knowing I was something else. You think that’s freedom?»
«I think that’s fear. Fear of being discovered, rejected, weaponized. But what if instead of hiding, you would have been able to be open? What if there had been others like you, a community, support?»
«That’s fantasy.»
«That’s what these 47 operators are now. A community of transformed individuals. Not alone, not hiding, but together.» Waverly gestured to the operators who stood in loose formation, connected but individual. «This is what you really wanted, isn’t it? Not weapons, but family. Others who understood what you’d become.»
Rothschild’s composure finally broke completely. For the first time in 12 years, she allowed her transformation to fully manifest. Her skin took on a subtle iridescent quality. Her movements became impossibly fluid. And when she spoke, her voice carried harmonics that created resonances with the transformed operators.
«I’ve been alone for so long,» she admitted, the words pulled from depths she’d kept locked for over a decade. «The only successful transformation, the only survivor of the first experiment. Everyone else died or went insane from the change, but I adapted, evolved, became something new. And then I had to hide it, pretend it never happened. Act human while knowing I wasn’t anymore.»
«You’re still human,» Knox said, and his voice carried the weight of 47 souls who understood transformation. «Just human-plus. Enhanced, evolved, but still capable of choice, emotion, connection. That’s what makes us different from weapons. We choose.»
The medical team arrived exactly 30 minutes later, as promised. Not military doctors, but specialists in biological anomalies, genetic mutations, evolutionary medicine. They entered the laboratory with equipment Waverly recognized from theoretical papers she’d read—devices designed to measure and understand transformation at the molecular level.
The lead doctor, a woman in her forties with kind eyes behind thick glasses, approached Waverly first. «Subject Zero, I’m Dr. Elizabeth Chen. I’m here to help, not to study you like specimens. Though I admit, from a scientific perspective, you’re all fascinating.»
«We’re people,» Waverly reminded her. «Enhanced people, but yes, people first.»
«That’s why I’m here. To make sure you’re treated as such.»
The evaluation took four hours. Each operator was examined, their transformation documented, their stability confirmed. Waverly watched from a chair someone had finally thought to provide, her own exhaustion catching up with her now that the immediate crisis had passed. She’d given a liter of blood, synthesized 47 doses of stabilization serum, and fundamentally changed the nature of human evolution in a single morning.
Not bad for someone who’d been fired from a nursing job six hours ago.
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Maddox had been transferred to federal custody, his immunity deal dependent on full disclosure of Project Prometheus. He’d passed Waverly on his way out, pausing just long enough to say, «You could have ruled them all. Could have been their queen, their goddess. Why choose to be their equal?»
«Because evolution isn’t about superiority,» she replied. «It’s about survival. And we survive better together than alone.»
General Rothschild was technically under arrest but had been allowed to remain for the medical evaluation. Her 12 years of stable transformation made her invaluable for understanding long-term effects. She sat apart from the others, still processing the collapse of everything she’d built.
«What happens to us now?» Operator Beckett asked as Dr. Chen finished his examination. «We can’t go back to regular units. We’re too different.»
«There’s talk of creating a new division,» Dr. Chen replied. «Enhanced Operations. Voluntary only, both for transformation and assignment. You’d be the founding members, the ones who teach others what it means to be transformed.»
«And if we don’t want to be soldiers anymore?»
«Then you don’t have to be. The transformation doesn’t obligate you to service. You’re free to choose your own paths, though you’ll need regular medical monitoring and support.»
Hayes, who had finally received proper medical treatment for his wound, spoke up from his stretcher. «What about command structure? Who leads enhanced operators? Can baseline humans even understand their capabilities enough to command effectively?»
«I’d recommend integrated command,» Waverly suggested. «Enhanced and baseline working together, each understanding their strengths, compensating for limitations. Evolution doesn’t replace the past; it builds on it.»
Knox moved to stand beside her, his transformed presence both alien and familiar. «Would you consider it? Leading us. You’re the original, the template. You understand the transformation better than anyone.»
«I’m a nurse,» Waverly said for what felt like the hundredth time. «Not a commander.»
«You’re a guide,» he corrected. «Which is what we need. Not someone to give orders, but someone to show us what’s possible.»
Dr. Chen had been taking notes throughout the conversation, her tablet filled with observations about group dynamics, networked consciousness, and the psychological aspects of transformation. «The connection between you all… can you explain it?»
«It’s like…» Beckett paused, searching for words. «Like being in 47 places at once, but still being yourself. I can feel what they feel if I focus, know what they know if I reach for it. But I’m still me, still an individual.»
«A network without loss of self,» Dr. Chen murmured. «Collective consciousness while maintaining individual identity. That’s theoretically impossible.»
«So was surviving Tsar toxin exposure,» Waverly pointed out. «Impossible is just another word for ‘haven’t figured it out yet’.»
The evaluation continued, but Waverly found her attention drifting to Rothschild, who sat alone, transformed but isolated, connected to no one. Twelve years of hiding had left her outside even this new community of evolved humans.
Waverly stood, moving across the laboratory with the fluid grace that marked her as transformed. She sat down next to Rothschild, not touching, but close enough to feel the resonance between their transformed biologies.
«You’re not alone anymore,» she said quietly.
«I’m under arrest. My career is over. Everything I worked for is destroyed.»
«Everything you worked for is sitting in this room, alive and stable. 47 successfully transformed operators. That’s not destruction; it’s evolution.»
«Evolution I won’t be part of. They’ll lock me away, study me, use me to understand transformation while keeping me from it.»
«Or,» Waverly said, «you could help. Share what you’ve learned from 12 years of transformation. Help others adjust, adapt, survive. Not as a general, but as a guide.»
«They’d never allow it.»
«They allowed you to hide for 12 years. They allowed Project Prometheus to exist. They allow a lot of things when the alternative is worse.» Waverly met Rothschild’s rainbow eyes. «You’re the only person with long-term transformation experience. That makes you invaluable. Not as a weapon, but as knowledge. Knowledge they’ll extract and discard, or knowledge you could share freely and remain relevant. Your choice, General. Isolation or integration. The same choice you’ve been avoiding for 12 years.»
Before Rothschild could respond, alarms began blaring again. Not the contained warnings of before, but something urgent, immediate. Every screen in the laboratory lit up with emergency broadcasts.
«Seoul,» Dr. Chen breathed, staring at her tablet. «It’s happening again. Another biological attack. Thousands affected.»
The footage was chaotic. Streets filled with people transforming, their bodies changing in ways that looked agonizing, uncontrolled. Not the stable transformation of the operators, but something savage, painful, destructive.
«It’s not Tsar Toxin,» Rothschild said, her trained eye analyzing the footage. «It’s something else. Something designed to cause chaos rather than evolution.»
«Can we help?» Knox asked, and 47 voices harmonized in his words.
«You are 47 operators against thousands of transforming civilians,» Hayes pointed out. «What could you do?»
«We could guide them,» Waverly said, understanding crystallizing in her mind. «The transformation is chaotic because they have no template, no guidance. But we’re stable, networked. We could provide that stability, that template.»
«You want to go to Seoul?» Dr. Chen asked incredulously. «Into an active biological attack zone?»
«We’re immune,» Beckett pointed out. «Already transformed. We can’t be infected again.»
«You don’t know that.»
«Yes, we do.» Waverly stood facing the doctor. «Once transformed, the body doesn’t accept further transformation. We’re locked into our evolution. That makes us the only ones who can enter the zone safely.»
«The secretary would never authorize…»
«The secretary just watched 47 operators successfully transform and stabilize. He knows we’re not weapons, but we might be the cure.»
The screens showed Seoul descending into chaos, military units surrounding the affected zone but unable to enter, medical teams standing by helplessly. Thousands of people transforming without guidance, without stability, without hope.
«How long will it take us to get there?» Knox asked.
«Military transport, six hours,» Hayes calculated, his command instincts overriding his injury. «But you’d need equipment, medical supplies, some way to synthesize stabilization serum on site.»
«My blood,» Waverly said simply. «I’m the template. With proper equipment, we could synthesize enough to stabilize thousands.»
«That’s insane,» Dr. Chen protested. «You’ve already given a liter today. Your body can’t—»
«My body isn’t baseline human anymore. It can handle more than you think.» She turned to the screen showing Seoul’s agony. «Those people are dying because someone weaponized transformation. We can save them. Isn’t that worth the risk?»
The laboratory fell silent except for the emergency broadcasts and the synchronized breathing of 47 transformed operators. The choice hung in the air like another kind of transformation: the moment when reaction became action, when victims became heroes.
«I’ll go,» Rothschild said suddenly. «12 years of hiding, of being the only one. If we can save those people, stabilize them, give them what I never had—community, understanding, choice—then my transformation meant something.»
«The government won’t let you—»
«The government needs us,» Rothschild interrupted Dr. Chen. «We’re the only ones who can enter the zone. The only ones who understand transformation from the inside. They’ll authorize it because the alternative is watching Seoul die on international television.»
Waverly moved to the communication console, activating the connection to the Pentagon again. The secretary appeared immediately, his situation room now packed with advisors and military officials.
«Mr. Secretary,» she said without preamble. «You’re watching Seoul. We can help.»
«You’re 48 transformed individuals with no equipment, no support, no authority.»
«We’re 48 people immune to biological transformation weapons. We’re walking antibodies, living templates for stable evolution. Send us to Seoul with medical equipment, and we can stabilize the affected population. That’s thousands of people who will die or go insane without intervention. Mr. Secretary, this is what we’re for. Not weapons, but salvation. Let us prove that transformation doesn’t mean destruction.»
The secretary looked at his advisors, at screens showing Seoul’s nightmare, at choices that had no good options.
«If I authorize this, you’re going into hell with no backup, no extraction plan, no guarantees.»
«We’re already in hell,» Knox said. «We’ve been there since the transformation started. The only difference is now we can help others through it.»
Another pause, shorter this time. The secretary had the look of a man making a decision that would define history.
«Do it,» he said. «Full support, whatever you need. Dr. Chen, you’re Medical Command. Hayes, you’re Military Liaison. Get them to Seoul and pray this works.»
