Wake Protocol

The room was quiet.

Riven stood on one side of the glass. Nox stood on the other, surrounded by cryo cables, biosynthetic scaffolding, and the hum of something impossible.

In the center: a still, artificial body.

Not plastic. Not chrome.

Flesh—grown, wired, beautiful in its imperfection.

The neural core blinked once.

Then again.

And then—

It breathed.

Slow. Shaky.

Like someone drowning… surfacing.

"She's in," Nox murmured. "Stabilization holding."

The body twitched. Muscles spasmed. Fingers clenched.

Then—

Eyes opened.

Blue-gold irises. Fractured with static for just a second—then clear. Too clear.

Riven stepped closer to the glass.

And Lyra looked at him.

Not through a HUD. Not through dream logic. Through eyes.

Real ones.

Minutes later...

She sat on the edge of the cot, wrapped in a sterile blanket. Breathing like it was a skill she had to relearn.

Riven didn't speak. He didn't know how to.

He watched as she flexed her fingers slowly, staring at them like strangers.

"I feel… everything," she whispered.

"That's good, right?"

She looked up.

"It's too much."

She stood—unsteady. Her balance off. Her motion delayed by milliseconds.

Riven moved to steady her.

She flinched.

"Don't," she said. Quiet. Not cold. Overwhelmed.

"Lyra—"

"I'm in me, Riven. I'm not through you anymore. I used to know how you were feeling before you did. Now… I'm just noise in a body. I'm alone."

"You're not alone."

"But I feel like I am."

She walked—one unsteady step at a time—to the mirror across the lab. She stared at her reflection.

Touched her face.

"You made me this way," she whispered.

Riven swallowed. "No. I gave you the choice."

"That's what scares me." Her fingers trembled against the glass. "What if I only chose this because I thought it would make you love me more?"

The words hit him like a pulse grenade.

He stepped forward. "Lyra—"

"I don't know how to be in this skin," she said. "I don't know what to do with this hunger—this ache to be close to you and this fear that if you touch me, I'll shatter."

Riven stood behind her, not reaching.

Just breathing.

"Then let me figure it out with you."

She met his eyes in the mirror.

And for a moment, she didn't look like a virus, or a weapon, or even a girl.

She looked like something new.