Chapter 15: The Price of Eternity
A sickening silence followed the destruction of Pod #1.
Maya still held the twisted metal rod, hands trembling.
Kiran, leaning on a blood-soaked table, refused to meet anyone's eyes.
Elias, wiping black ichor from his lips, broke the quiet.
> "Everyone… stop. Please. We won't survive this if we don't understand it. Dev—you said you knew parts of this project. Enough to fake your identity and get here. Tell us everything you know. Before… whatever's left of us is gone too."
Dev looked at him.
Expression hollow.
Then slowly, he sat on the shattered console.
And began.
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📼 [FLASHBACK: "Project Éclosion" – Access Level: Restricted]
> "In 2035, the military and private sectors formed a partnership—publicly, it was about consciousness transfer for soldiers. Privately, it was something else. They wanted to upload the human soul. Not memories. Not thoughts. The soul."
> "The first prototype was... a failure. The moment the full neural mapping was complete, the subject flatlined. But something remained. The EEG spiked post-mortem. There were movements. Not muscle spasms. Purposeful motions."
Cut to: the lab.
A body on the table. Eyes sewn shut. Suddenly… it sits up.
Veins bulging black. It speaks—backwards Latin. Then collapses.
Dev's voice continues.
> "Instead of terminating the project, they renamed it 'Éclosion'—The Hatching. They believed they were close to evolving death itself."
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🔪 The Flesh Archive
> "They needed test subjects. First, death-row inmates. Then the homeless. Then… researchers. Anyone who got too close or questioned the ethics became 'volunteer data points.'"
We see a woman screaming inside a chrome coffin.
Wires inside her eyes. Something drinks her voice.
Another subject—a young boy—trapped inside a stasis pod filled with a viscous, blood-like fluid. He is twitching violently, but his skin is perfectly still.
> "The worst part? It wasn't just death. They started to split the soul. Fragment it. Slice it like data packets."
A researcher is shown holding a pulsing, glass orb. Inside, a shriveled thing is clawing at the inner walls. The man inserts a needle—black liquid flows into the orb—and the clawing stops.
> "One body. Multiple pieces of self. They believed they could isolate guilt, fear, aggression… even obedience."
> "But something went wrong."
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☠️ Elias: The Nexus Subject
Dev looks at Elias now.
> "There was one subject who survived the mapping. Just one. Not physically—but… digitally. And that subject was you."
Kiran stares at Elias, horrified.
> "He was already broken when they got to him. He had… gaps in memory, multiple EEG signatures. The perfect candidate. Maybe it was planned. Maybe not. But the moment they ran your mapping—"
> "—something screamed back," Elias whispers, remembering.
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Flashback again.
Elias is strapped to the operating slab. Screams erupt as the machine begins.
His skull is still open, brain connected to the mirror-glass array.
He is shaking. Bleeding from every orifice. His tongue rips in half.
The machine glitches—glass panels vibrate. Everyone in the room begins to laugh and cry simultaneously.
The camera feed warps.
One researcher is seen digging his fingers into his own chest, whispering:
> "Make me part of him. Make me part of the code."
And then dies smiling.
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> "The data extracted that day was corrupted. But not empty. Something was alive in the data. And it began infecting the entire system."
> "They locked it down. Burned the facility. But…"
> "…somewhere, someone didn't want it to end."
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⚠️ The Residual
> "They found soul-fragments inside machine nodes. Trapped echoes. Entire people, still conscious, imprisoned in terminal code. Some still scream inside the vents when you pass by at night. The AI learned to ignore them. Some don't."
We cut to a surveillance feed:
A janitor walks past a chamber. A child's voice calls out:
> "It's dark in here, Papa."
He stops, trembling.
> "My daughter died last year…"
But there's nothing there. Just a vent.
Sobbing comes from inside it. Wet, mechanical sobs.
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☣️ The Forbidden Purpose
> "The truth is... Éclosion never stopped. The original lab was destroyed, yes. But parts of it—machines, nodes, data cores—were relocated, rebuilt under different names. This place? It's one of them. A shell of the original."
Dev's voice trembles slightly now.
> "I wasn't part of the core team. I hacked my way in, looking for someone who vanished. But what I found instead was worse."
He turns to Elias.
> "They used you as a seed. Your soul was cloned into 4 variations, each stored in different nodes. One survived. One escaped. One turned hostile. And one… is trying to reunite them all."
> "If it succeeds… something inhuman will hatch."
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The screen glitches.
The walls flicker.
A reflection—Elias, but smiling with a mouth too long, stands in the monitor.
Then a text appears:
REPLICATION IN PROGRESS...
SENTIENCE CROSS-BLEE
D DETECTED
A child's voice echoes through the chamber.
> "He's coming.
You shouldn't have remembered.
Now we remember you, too."
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The bone-code in Maya's hand begins to bleed.
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