Phase Two

The battlefield felt frozen in time, the scorched ruins of New Vale reduced to silent witnesses of what came next. Fires smoldered, smoke hung thick in the air, and the scent of burned flesh clung to every breath. But it wasn't the carnage that made my chest tighten.

It was Orin's words.

"Phase Two is coming."

They hit harder than any Apex.

I stepped forward, my armor cracked, my gauntlet still sizzling from the neural dive that had nearly killed me. My voice was low but sharp. "Explain. What the hell is Phase Two?"

Her eyes met mine—cold, exhausted, and burning with something worse than hatred. Regret.

"Phase One—the Awakening—was never about the mutants," she said. "The Apexes? The swarms? Just prototypes. Phase One was a failure."

Hart's voice snapped like a whip. "Prototypes for what?"

Orin's face hardened. "For us."Her voice was tight, each word edged with bitterness. "Phase Two isn't about monsters. It's about people. Horizon realized controlling mutants was a dead end. So they changed targets."

I felt it before she said it—Hypermind's calculations running ahead, the equation too simple, too cold.

"They wanted to make human Apexes."

Orin's lips pressed into a thin line. "Apex genetics. Neural fusion. Controlled awakenings. They tested it on us—Echo Division. We were their soldiers. Then their lab rats."

Hart's voice was a loaded gun. "You mean weapons."

Orin didn't flinch. "That's what we became. But the integration… it wasn't stable. Some of us burned out—neural overload. Others mutated beyond control." Her voice dropped, hollow. "The ones that survived… we became something else."

I scanned the soldiers behind her—Echo Division. Their armor, once pristine Horizon tech, was scorched and patched with battlefield repairs. But their movements—too precise, too fluid—spoke of something inhuman.

Hypermind flickered. Their vitals—too stable. Neural patterns—spiking at frequencies only Apexes produced.

They weren't just soldiers. They were something in between.

"You're hybrids," I said quietly.

Orin's eyes met mine, cold and raw. "We didn't ask to be." She raised her hand, and I saw the air ripple—a faint resonance distortion cracking the air around her fingers. "Horizon built us. But they didn't get what they wanted. They couldn't control us."

Hart's voice was flint. "So why the hell call us? Why not let it all burn?"

Orin's voice cut like a blade. "Because Phase Two isn't just for us. It's for everyone."

I felt the cold certainty before she even said it.

"Horizon's activating a neural broadcast—the Override Signal—across every resonance tower still standing. They're trying to trigger forced awakenings in every survivor left in the zone".

Hypermind parsed Orin's data, and the truth slammed into me:

Override Protocol: A neural wave designed to force Apex-level awakenings in human hosts. A direct hack into the human genome using Apex resonance frequencies.

No adaptation. No preparation. Just mutation or death.

Hypermind's projection ran cold:

Mortality rate: 98%.

Apex-class emergence: 0.9%.

Neural degradation for survivors: Critical.

Hart's fists clenched, her voice like crushed glass. "They're rolling the dice. Killing everyone who can't survive the mutation, and keeping whoever's left as weapons."

Orin's lips twisted bitterly. "The dead don't matter. Horizon only needs a handful to win."

Hypermind's analysis was brutal:

Override Signal Active: Now.

Full Cascade Event: 12 hours.

Projected Apex Conversions: 1 in 100.

The rest would die screaming.

Suddenly—

Priya gasped and dropped to her knees. Her body jerked, and a shudder wracked through her, her eyes going wide with shock.

"Priya!" Hart was on her instantly, grabbing her shoulders.

But I saw it—Hypermind screaming alerts—Priya's neural signals spiking into lethal ranges. Her skin mottled with dark veins, and her pupils—her pupils were flickering, human one second, Apex gold the next.

The Override signal—it was hitting her.

Her body seized, and she screamed, her back arching in agony. "I—can hear it—inside—"

Her muscles spasmed, and I saw her veins crawling with black lattice lines—like the Apex neural patterns I had seen in Orin's soldiers.

Orin's voice was cold. "She's resonating. The signal's… changing her."

Hart's voice was pure steel, her sidearm raised instantly—

"No." Her hand shook. "No, she's not."

Priya's body convulsed, her pulse spiking beyond safe limits. Her neural tissue was burning. She was seconds from brain death.

But I felt something—Hypermind feeding me solutions—insane, untested, lethal solutions.

I could sync my neural signature to hers—push Hypermind into her Apex pathway and override the Override. Force stability.

Or… kill her instantly.

Her voice, shaking but clear, broke through the pain—

"Do it." Blood on her lips. Her eyes, burning, begging. "I trust you."

I lunged, my gauntlet sparking as I slammed it to her chest, Hypermind flooding with power—

The world—

—broke.

I wasn't in Bastion. I wasn't in New Vale.

I was in her.

The Override signal was a storm, black and endless, ripping through her neurons, tearing her apart. I saw her memories—fragmenting, splintering—her body struggling against an Apex evolution that didn't care if she lived.

And within that storm—something ancient. The Apex lattice—raw instinct—the hunger to survive. It was rewriting her.

So I rewrote it.

Hypermind lashed through the lattice—analyzing, counterwriting, forging a pattern. Apex evolution was chaos. I forced structure.

The Override wanted a monster.

I gave it an engineer.

---

The lattice screamed, fighting me—raw Apex will—

I took it—

And redesigned it.

With a shockwave, we broke free.

I collapsed, my body hitting the ground, my gauntlet cracked and burning. My nose bled freely, and every nerve in my body howled.

But my eyes—

My eyes were on her.

Priya.

---

She breathed. Her body—still human. But her pulse…

Her pulse was Apex.

Slowly, she opened her eyes.

And they flashed—gold—then human again.

Her voice was a whisper, laced with something… more.

"…I'm here."

Hart's voice cracked with something raw. "Priya?"

She stood, her wounds already closing. Her fingers flexed, and the air around her hummed—a faint ripple of Apex resonance, under control.

Priya looked at me, her eyes still flickering between gold and human.

"What… did you do?"

Orin's voice broke the silence—sharp, stunned. "You… stabilized her." She stepped forward, her eyes burning with something like awe. "She's… Apex-class. But still—herself."

Hart's eyes snapped to me, shock and disbelief in her voice. "What the hell did you do?"

I wiped blood from my mouth, my voice raw and shaking. "I… engineered her awakening. I rewrote the signal. She's…"

Hypermind finished the sentence for me.

[Human Apex Variant: Controlled. Unique.]

"…She's the first."Orin's voice was tight. "You just did what Horizon failed to do." Her eyes narrowed. "Do you understand what that means?"

The cold realization crashed through me. Horizon didn't care about controlling the Override.

They wanted it to run wild. To filter the population. Because the survivors—the 0.9%—

Would be like Priya. Apex-class. Human weapons.

And Horizon would collect them.

Orin's voice was iron. "We've got bigger problems. The Override signal isn't coming from a tower."

Hart's voice, sharp. "Then where?"

Orin's eyes met mine.

"Horizon's command node—the true source of the Override—is mobile." She paused, voice grim.

"They call it the Leviathan."

A new shape.

A colossus. Moving. Devouring everything in its path.

The Leviathan.

---

Hart chambered a round. "Then we end it. Now."

Priya's voice, steady—new, powerful, inhuman but hers. "I'm with you."

I felt Hypermind sync with her new signal—two pulses. Human and Apex.

I rose, my gauntlet flickering, voice hard and sure.

"Horizon made a war." My eyes burned. "Let's finish it."