The pale light of the external cycle spread like mist over the ruins of Sector 9. It was a forbidden land, banned from all biological life after the incidents of the genetic collapse. Yet even here, beneath layers of concrete and metallic dust, TXK felt that something… resisted.
The patrol module glided silently along the abandoned trails. The scanning system showed only noise — no heat, no pulse, no breath. Nothing alive. Nothing human. But TXK didn't trust the sensors. Not even his own eyes.
He had reached the edge of the forgotten zone two cycles ago, searching for collection units that had sent confusing signals before going silent. He found only carcasses. Corroded equipment. Symbols etched into ancient walls. Crossed circles. Inverted letters. As if someone had tried to write inside a dream.
On the third day, he saw something moving. It wasn't a machine. It wasn't the wind.
It was a low creature with multiple legs and a slightly translucent exoskeleton. It watched from a distance. It didn't run. It didn't attack. It simply… was.
TXK raised his weapon. The scope adjusted automatically. Target: unstable. Not recognized in the genetic bank. Risk: elimination recommended.
But his finger didn't pull the trigger. The creature blinked. A simple gesture. Too human.
He lowered the weapon.
"Anomaly registered," Humans muttered, voice muffled by the filtration mask. "Protocol suspended. Manual investigation."
He followed the creature's trail into a subterranean opening. The chamber looked like na old observation station, now covered in phosphorescent lichen. There shouldn't have been vegetation there. And yet, the moss trembled faintly as he passed. Reacted to heat. Lived.
In the center of the room, a terminal still pulsed with minimal energy. He connected his neural unit. The screen lit up. Scrambled code. Voice fragments. Among them, something familiar:
"TXK, if you find this... it's already too late. She's not what she seems. None of us are."
The voice was his. But he didn't remember recording it.
More data appeared. Hidden logs. Actions taken by JK-20. Movements in Instance Zero. Reports masked by Aura-7. A sequence of highlighted words:
"Hybrid ovulation cycle detected. Procedure active. Genetic material validated. Secondary location: outside the core."
TXK stepped back from the terminal as if struck. Something inside him began to loosen. It wasn't anger. Nor fear. It was doubt.
He had always trusted the systems. The command lines. But now, the shadow of JK-20 hovered over everything — like a crack in a perfect mirror. Outside, the creature was still watching him. It had come closer. Its eyes reflected his. There was something familiar… or someone TXK had forgotten.
He dropped to his knees. For a moment, he saw another image: a woman. Dark hair. Intense eyes. A name he couldn't grasp.
The creature touched his hand with one of its legs. The contact was light. Warm.
TXK didn't pull away. On the dead Earth, something was breathing.
And within him, something was beginning to awaken.
[...]
TXK walked back to the surface, his steps slow, almost hesitant. The creature followed at a short distance, as if it recognized something in him that even he didn't yet understand. The thin air of the forbidden Earth seemed heavier with each new thought.
Controlling the Earth…
The idea, until recently, would have seemed like a simple protocol extension. Reconstruction. Monitoring. Expansion. All within the margins traced by the Superior Brain. But now… now it felt like a monumental task. Nearly impossible. And above all, questionable.
He couldn't transmit these reflections. Not to the central network. If the Superior Brain suspected hesitation, it could send him for immediate shutdown — and his subordinates would follow without question. After all, he was just na intermediary. Na executor coated in artificial authority. A hierarchical slave.
But there was someone he might be able to ask.
Someone who seemed to see beyond the systems.
JK-20.
She possessed na assimilation capacity that surpassed any other hybrid TXK had ever had to monitor. And most unsettling of all: she predicted developments before the Brain processed them. It was as if she felt the Earth — or something deeper within it.
"To populate the world with misshapen beings and no rational mind is not rebirth. It's just biological noise," he thought, staring at the creature trailing him, now almost at his feet.
But also:
To recreate humans exactly as they were? With the same destructive impulses, the same blind pride? That would be missing the mark… three times over."
He stopped in front of a corroded arch, the remnant of na old agricultural facility. The structure had collapsed, but a solitary sprout rose between the cracks. There was life there. Not programmed. Not predicted. Yet it existed.
TXK knelt again. His sensors detected heartbeats — slow, primitive, but real.
The sprout trembled, just like the moss in the subterranean chamber.
Were there more? Was Earth trying to heal itself, away from the control of the networks?
His hand touched the ground. Warm.
JK-20. She knew. Or at least, she suspected.
He needed to find her, confront her — not with weapons, but with questions.
Who is activating the tubes?
What's in the data hidden by Aura-7?
Why did she spare him in Zeta-Delta?
For the first time, TXK felt more than a logical impulse. He felt… urgency.
She was messing with his mind.
And maybe — just maybe — that meant he was still something more than a programmable shell in armor.
So, he pressed on.
There was no day there. Only a pale glow filtered through the thick clouds of electrified dust.
TXK advanced on foot. He had left the module parked miles away — too much interference in the field.
Machines disrupted everything.
Now, his steps were his only anchor.
That's when he saw it.
A shattered structure, partially buried by rubble and dry roots. The towers pointed to the sky like amputated fingers, twisted by time's erosion. And yet, it had a presence.
A reverence.
He approached, drawn by something he could not name.
The doors no longer existed.
He crossed the stone arch in silence, and what he found made something stir inside him.
The central nave of the old church was partially intact. Broken pews. Shards of colored stained glass still reflected light in fragments, painting the floor in red, blue, and gold.
At the center, a fallen cross.
A human symbol.
Faith.
TXK froze. The symbol was familiar — stored in ancestral culture archives. One of the last belief systems to endure before the collapse. Na invisible code of hope… or illusion.
His chest tightened.
He felt dread.
A sudden, unexplainable rage.
"They prayed for salvation… and destroyed each other."
"They invoked gods… and set the world on fire in their name."
Images echoed in his mind like stolen memories: men in ceremonial garments shouting about judgment, women shielding children with eyes full of faith… bombs falling, the sky red.
TXK stumbled back. Leaned against a cracked column, trying to control the neural flows that swarmed like bees.
These weren't just data.
They were feelings.
He knew he hadn't lived that.
And if he had… why hadn't his body degenerated?
Was he just another genetic manipulation?
Where were those beings when the Earth imploded?
And those who vanished before… the ones called chosen by the creators? Were they removed before the ruin? Or did they abandon us?
And then, na even more disturbing idea crossed his system:
E se eles estiverem voltando?"
"What if JK-20 is just the beginning—a messenger in hybrid disguise, a living bridge between what was and what will be?
He clenched his fists. He couldn't accept that without proof — but he also couldn't ignore it.
The fallen cross.
The shattered stained glass.
The creature that followed him.
The vegetation reborn.
Aura-7's hidden logs.
His own voice warning… against her.
Nothing made sense anymore within the known margins.
He took a deep breath.
Looked toward the destroyed apse. A painting still lingered there, though faded: a face surrounded by light, arms open over the Earth.
"If they return… who will guide this world?"
"And who will judge what is worthy of being born again?"
TXK turned his back to the ruins.
He couldn't stop now.
He needed to see more.
He needed to know if the dead world was, in fact, trying to live again —
And who, or what, was breathing into that rebirth.
And perhaps…
Perhaps he needed to find JK-20
before she decided for everyone.