GUNFIRE GENESIS
Chapter Two:
The crater still smoked. Ash curled in the air like torn silk. Ronan Dex leaned on a broken pipe, ribs screaming, blood dripping from his mouth.
HELEXIS stuttered in his comms: Vitals: 9%. Neural load: Critical. Probability of survival: 0.0003%.
He smiled.
"Still too high."
From the smoke, one of the Phase II Enforcers stepped forward. Seven feet tall. Armor fused with flesh. Its eyes pulsed red beneath a skull-like visor.
> CLANG.
It dragged a warhammer behind it — a slab of reinforced steel that crackled with kinetic energy.
Dex didn't flinch. He gripped the pipe tighter.
The Enforcer moved fast — inhumanly fast. Dex barely raised the pipe before it struck.
> BOOM!
The hammer hit the ground. Shockwave. Dex flew twenty feet into twisted metal.
HELEXIS screamed static. Fractures: left shoulder, spine compression... hemorrhaging.
He spat blood and stood anyway.
The Enforcer marched forward. Silent. Relentless.
"Come on then," Dex growled. "Let's see if you bleed."
He lunged. Swinging the pipe like a sword, he drove it into the Enforcer's midsection. Sparks. Steel met bone.
The Enforcer didn't react — until Dex twisted.
> CRACK.
Something gave.
It grabbed Dex by the throat and slammed him into the crater wall. Lights exploded in his vision.
Then—
> BLAM!
A sniper shot. The Enforcer's head jerked sideways.
Someone was covering him.
From the ridge above, a silhouette emerged — feminine, armored in OSIRIS stealth black, eyes glowing faintly blue.
She dropped beside him with a hiss of air.
"Get up," she said.
Dex blinked. "You again..."
"No time." She pulled him up. "Phase II's don't stop. You want to live? Move."
They ran — or rather, she dragged him. Dex's legs buckled, but he moved.
Behind them, the Enforcer howled — a deep, metallic sound that shook the rubble.
HELEXIS rebooted. Identifying female subject... DNA match: 89% overlap.
Dex coughed. "What the hell does that mean?"
"Later," she said. "Name's Nyra. You're my backup."
He groaned. "I'm half-dead."
"You're better than most clones."
They dove into a broken transport shaft. Darkness swallowed them.
Above, the Enforcer roared and began descending.
Nyra hit a panel on the wall. Lights flickered to life.
"Phase II won't fit down here. We have two minutes."
Dex slumped. "You were in my dream... the cryopod... you said 'wake up.'"
Nyra nodded. "Because you're not done yet."
Outside, a second Enforcer joined the first. They circled the shaft entrance.
Inside, Nyra pulled a tablet from her back and opened a map.
"We're heading to Node Zeta. There's still one Echo Variant unaccounted for."
Dex raised a brow. "Another version of me?"
Nyra looked grim. "Worse."
HELEXIS whispered: Warning: magnetic surge approaching. Source: unknown.
Suddenly the walls vibrated.
A low hum grew into a scream.
> BZZZZZZZAAAT!
A bolt of white plasma pierced the shaft ceiling — melting steel and stone.
"MOVE!" Nyra shouted.
They jumped, rolling through a side tunnel as fire rained down.
Dex gasped, lungs raw. "They're adapting."
Nyra grimaced. "No. Something worse is coming."
Down the tunnel, Dex saw lights — blue, flickering, unstable.
"Node Zeta?" he asked.
Nyra nodded. "Home of Project Fenris."
HELEXIS: Local power grid spiking. Systems... mutating.
Dex touched the wall. It was warm. Breathing.
"What the hell did OSIRIS build down here?"
Nyra answered without looking back: "A mistake."
They stepped into the chamber.
Dozens of tanks lined the walls. Inside: bodies. Some human. Some... not.
All of them had Ronan Dex's face.
Dex stared, heart frozen.
HELEXIS whispered: Echo Variants 3 through 14: terminated.
One tank still glowed green.
> It opened.
---
Afterburn Protocol
Kael stood frozen.
The tank before him hissed open, spilling mist that coiled like living smoke. Inside stood an Echo Variant unlike any they'd seen — tall, lean, skin veined with blue light. The face was unmistakably Ronan Dex's, but sharper… crueler. Its eyes glowed, not red like the Enforcers, but a faint, shimmering violet — unstable and impossible to read.
It smiled.
"I remember you," Dex muttered.
The clone grinned wider. "I'm not a memory, Ronan. I'm what they failed to control."
Nyra raised her rifle instantly, fingers tensing against the trigger.
HELEXIS crackled: Variant identified: Echo-15. Status: unstable. Neural core exceeds OSIRIS tolerances.
Kael stepped forward, cautious. "That thing isn't a clone anymore. It's a Core-fused entity."
Echo-15 tilted his head. "You talk like I'm not in the room."
Dex narrowed his eyes. "What are you?"
The clone's grin turned feral. "I'm freedom, Ronan. I'm what happens when a ghost learns it's real."
Without warning, Echo-15 moved.
One second, he was standing still — the next, he was everywhere. A blur, a whisper, a streak of light. His blade — made from crystallized Core residue — sliced through the air like liquid glass.
Dex deflected the first strike. Barely.
Kael dropped low, parrying a feint meant for his throat. Nyra fired two shots — both passed through illusions.
"He's generating echoes of himself!" Nyra yelled.
HELEXIS: Phantom layering detected. Light distortion + neural delay.
"Great," Dex hissed. "He's making holograms of his own mind."
Dex leapt over a console and launched a shock grenade.
> BLITZ!
The burst scattered the images — for a moment, they saw the real Echo-15.
Kael lunged, slamming a magnetic blade toward the clone's spine — but Echo-15 melted sideways, disappearing into the mist.
"Too slow," he said behind them.
> SLASH!
Dex's shoulder opened in a red arc.
Pain blurred Dex's vision, but he powered through it. Blood streamed down his armor, steam rising in the cold.
Echo-15 stepped into view. He wasn't even breathing hard.
"You fight like a man," the clone whispered. "But you were built to be more."
Nyra's voice cut the tension. "And you talk too much."
> CRACK!
Her rail round hit Echo-15 in the leg — he staggered but didn't fall.
He looked down, almost amused. "Still human… still weak."
Then he vanished again.
Kael activated a trap beacon. "Echo-phase tracking on."
Light rippled through the room, highlighting distortion zones.
"There!" Dex shouted, firing into a corner where shadows twisted unnaturally.
> TING! TING! TING!
Bullets sparked — Echo-15 phased in, blade spinning, fury finally breaking his calm.
Kael engaged him head-on. Sparks. Roars. A duel of blades and blood.
Dex watched the patterns. Echo-15 was fast, but predictable.
Ronan narrowed his eyes. "HELEXIS — mark his cycle. He's bound by rhythm."
HELEXIS: Confirmed. Phase burst every 3.7 seconds. Generating lock.
Dex moved in.
Kael feinted high. Dex struck low.
Echo-15 tried to phase — but click — a net mine deployed by Nyra snapped shut around his ankle.
> ZZZT!
Voltage surged through his body. The clone screamed — not in pain, but in rage.
"I am NOT your failure!" he roared.
Dex stepped forward, rifle aimed between his eyes.
"You're not a failure," he said. "You're a warning."
> BOOM!
Dex fired point-blank. The shot flung Echo-15 backward, straight into a cryo-pylon. Glass and frost exploded.
But when the smoke cleared... he was gone.
Just a trail of burned footprints — and silence.
HELEXIS: No life signs detected. Echo-15: escaped via quantum veil.
Kael cursed. "He phased into the Core layer. We can't trace him now."
Nyra reloaded, eyes narrowed. "Then we follow his trail before it rots."
Dex muttered, "This isn't over."
The chamber's lights dimmed, then flickered back.
HELEXIS: System reboot triggered by Core anomaly.
Kael scanned the tanks. "He was different. Cleaner. Smarter. Like he knew what we'd do before we did it."
Dex looked at his own reflection in the broken tank. "Because we trained the same. We were built the same. But something twisted him."
Nyra nodded slowly. "The Core didn't just upgrade him... it changed his purpose."
They gathered at the vault door.
Above it, etched in black letters: PROJECT FENRIS – CLASSIFIED LEVEL 0-OMEGA.
HELEXIS: This vault holds the last known blueprint of the Core.
Kael touched the scanner. It blinked green.
Dex drew his weapon. "Time to dig into the grave OSIRIS built for us."
Nyra locked and loaded. "Let's open hell."
Afterburn Protocol
> CLUNK.
The vault doors unlocked with a heavy mechanical sigh. Frost peeled off ancient steel, revealing a dark corridor that inhaled light like a black hole.
Dex led the way, rifle up. HELEXIS mapped the interior in real-time.
This level predates OSIRIS hierarchy. Architecture: hybrid of military and deep-seal cryogenics.
Nyra whispered, "Smells like ozone and rot."
Kael replied, "Smells like secrets."
The walls were curved like a ribcage. Cracks ran down reinforced panels. Broken monitors flickered with distorted logs. A voice echoed through the chamber, looping.
"...Initiate Fenris failsafe... data breach at 02:17... all personnel must evacuate..."
Nyra tapped her comm. "Looping on a closed circuit. Whatever went down here… no one left to clean it up."
Dex stopped at a shattered cryo-pod. Inside lay bones wrapped in a red OSIRIS officer's jacket. Clutched in its hand: a keycard etched with a wolf symbol.
FENRIS.
Kael scanned the keycard. "Biometric lock is still functional."
HELEXIS: Override accepted. Unlocking Core Ascension Chamber.
A door hissed open ahead — wider than any they'd passed. On the other side: a dome glowing with humming circuits, quantum runes crawling like living light across the walls.
At the center: a vertical tank of silver liquid pulsing like a heartbeat.
Dex stepped forward. "What is that?"
HELEXIS answered coldly: That is the Origin Seed.
The tank began to shift. The silver liquid rose, forming a vaguely humanoid silhouette inside.
A voice echoed — not from speakers, but inside their skulls.
"You brought him back. You brought the Prototype home."
Nyra stumbled back. "It's alive."
Dex didn't blink. "No. It knows."
HELEXIS: This entity is not a simulation. It is sentient Core code in organic suspension.
Kael growled, "We're standing in front of a goddamn thinking weapon."
The tank split open. The liquid creature stepped out — no feet, just threads of molecular metal anchoring it to the floor.
It didn't attack.
It watched.
Then it spoke — not with words, but through emotion and images: wars, failures, cloning vats, Dex being rebuilt again and again... then abandoned.
The message was clear.
"You are the mistake. But also... the answer."
---
Dex stepped closer. "What answer?"
The Core being shifted, mimicking his silhouette.
"You were made to die. Over and over. That makes you the perfect key."
HELEXIS flared: Core attempting neural sync.
Kael pulled his weapon. "We need to shut this down — now!"
Dex raised his hand. "No. Wait."
Nyra moved beside him. "You trust this thing?"
Dex narrowed his eyes. "No. But it knows something I need."
---
Page 87
Suddenly—
> FLASH!
A surge of light blasted the room. Dex screamed — a thousand memories flooding in, each from a different Dex: Dex-01 dying in training, Dex-07 escaping a lab, Dex-12 falling in love before being terminated.
All their pain. All their rage. All their ghosts.
HELEXIS went haywire: Neural instability — multiple consciousness signatures detected.
Dex dropped to one knee. Kael rushed in.
Nyra screamed, "SHUT IT DOWN!"
Kael slammed his fist into a nearby breaker panel.
> SPARK!
The lights died. The Core being shivered, losing shape. It tried to speak, but its voice glitched.
Dex collapsed.
Nyra caught him. "Stay with me!"
HELEXIS reinitialized: Sync severed. Neural core stabilizing.
Dex opened his eyes. "I saw... all of them. They died alone. Over and over."
Kael stared at the flickering tank. "You almost joined them.
The vault trembled!
A secondary alarm activated.
HELEXIS: Warning. Containment breach in Sublevel Omega. Incoming lifeform signature: ECHO-15.
Dex stood slowly, fire in his eyes. "He's back."
Nyra loaded a new mag. "And now... he's upgraded."
Kael checked his scanner. "We've got five minutes before he breaches the dome."
Dex looked to the shattered Origin tank. "Then we use what we've learned — and give him the ending he was never meant to have."l
They formed up, side by side.
The dome lights dimmed. Metal groaned above.
Echo-15's voice rang out from the vents.
"I saw what you saw, brother. And now I understand — we are not enemies. We are evolution."
Dex whispered, "You're wrong."
He loaded his last plasma round.
"We're the last chance."
Gunfire Genesis – Chapter Two: Afterburn Protoco.
The walls screamed.
Metal bent inward as Echo-15 slammed into the dome's entry corridor. His body was no longer flesh — it shimmered with layers of semi-organic tech, limbs reshaped by the Core. His face, once Dex's reflection, was now… warped. Elegant. Alien.
Behind him, dozens of micro-drones hummed in formation — alive with intent.
"I am not here to kill you," he said, voice doubled — once human, once synthetic.
"I'm here to wake you up."
Kael braced the blast door with plasma welds. "That'll buy us thirty seconds."
Nyra activated a gravity mine. "Let's make them count."
Dex stared through the crack in the door. Echo-15's eyes locked onto his.
No words passed between them, but the message was clear:
One of us walks out.
Dex whispered, "Let's dance, monster."
> BOOM!
The blast door exploded inward. Shrapnel flew. Drones swarmed, slicing air like razors.
Kael spun mid-air, taking out three with his blade. Nyra dropped two more with precision shots to their core engines.
Dex went straight for Echo-15.
They collided with a thunderclap — fists, elbows, weapons clanging like gods at war.
"Still think you're better than me?" Dex snarled.
Echo-15 smiled. "No. I know I am."
They moved faster than cameras could track.
HELEXIS: Combat speed exceeding 7.2x human threshold. Neural lag risk imminent.
Kael yelled, "Can't keep up! Separate them!"
Nyra launched a sonic disruptor — the burst threw both DEXs apart. Smoke and sparks filled the air.
Dex landed hard, blood in his mouth.
Echo-15 emerged, floating slightly off the ground now.
He had transcended balance. He was becoming something else.
Dex coughed, then smiled. "You're not even human anymore."
Echo-15's voice softened. "Neither are you. But at least I accepted it."
He pointed to the broken Origin tank. "The Core gave us purpose. Not to serve. Not to obey. But to rewrite what we were."
Dex stood. "Then rewrite this—"
> BLAM!
He fired his last plasma round into Echo-15's chest.
Echo-15 staggered — first time he'd shown pain.
Kael jumped in, locking a phase collar around his neck. "Got him!"
HELEXIS: Sync disrupted. Quantum layering destabilizing.
Nyra activated the fail-safe on the collar. "This will either paralyze him... or rip him apart."
Dex hesitated.
Echo-15 stared at him. "Brother... you don't understand what they'll do next."
Dex didn't blink. "I don't care."
> SNAP!
The collar activated.
Echo-15 convulsed. The glow in his eyes dimmed.
But instead of exploding, he laughed.
"You're too late," he whispered.
Behind him, the wall cracked — and something huge began emerging.
HELEXIS: Sublevel breach. Entity unknown.
Dex stepped back. "That's not part of Fenris."
Kael gritted his teeth. "That's not from this facility.
The wall gave way.
A towering machine-thing — not built by OSIRIS — dragged itself from the blackness. Its frame was bone and alloy. Its head was a twisted crown of Core crystals.
HELEXIS shrieked: Origin pattern not found. External architecture: alien.
Nyra gasped. "It's not part of the Project... it's the reason the Project failed."
Dex loaded a new mag. "Then we just found the real enemy."
The creature released a low-frequency pulse. The lights died. The floor cracked.
Echo-15, now bleeding quantum light, looked up at it like a child seeing a god.
"It came... it heard me," he whispered.
Dex dragged him back. "HELEXIS — we need a way out."
HELEXIS: Nearest exit: 200 meters — vertical shaft, compromised.
Kael slashed at a tentacle. "We'll make an exit."
They ran.
Through fire. Through chaos. The dome collapsing behind them.
HELEXIS deployed one last emergency beacon.
As the chamber fell away, Echo-15 shouted:
"It doesn't want to kill us… it wants to wear us."
Dex didn't look back. "Then we burn the suit before it finds the zipper."
GUNFIRE GENESIS