Day 27 Post-Awakening
Ethan Cross — Sovereign-State Hybrid Entity
Life Essence: 4,200/10,000 (Declining)
Active Primordials: 3
Phase: Seedbed Stabilized (Seedling safety lock removed)
The war room smelled wrong.
Filtered air. Lemon cleaner. Old coffee that had been sitting hot for too long and now just tasted like regret. Ethan's senses caught everything now—heat, moisture, chlorophyll density—like his body had turned into a threat scanner that couldn't shut up.
This room registered as sterile.
Dead.
He missed the greenhouse.
Missed isn't the right tense. He missed it right now, with his whole body, like a physical itch under the skin.
He sat in a reinforced chair that protested under his weight. The metal creaked. The sound made two soldiers outside the glass wall glance over like the chair might explode.
Ethan did not enjoy being a hazard.
Across the table, Dr. Vivienne Hale stood with a projector remote in her hand like it was a weapon. Mid-thirties. Dark hair pulled into a tight bun. Grey eyes that made every sentence feel like a verdict.
She looked at Ethan the way someone looks at a flaw in a design.
"Mr. Cross," she said. "Thank you for joining us. I know leaving the greenhouse is… difficult."
"It hurts," Ethan said through the translator.
He could've tried to soften it.
He didn't.
Commander Thorne sat at the far end of the table. Shoulders squared. Jaw locked. He looked like he was waiting for an excuse to call this meeting a waste of time and walk out.
Dr. Sato sat beside him with a tablet, eyes flicking between Ethan's vitals and the room. Calm face. Hands moving too fast.
Kael Voss—Director of Primordial Operations—sat with both hands folded and a faint look of polite impatience. Like Ethan was a resource. Like the rest was noise.
And Mira Chen leaned against the wall by the door.
Arms crossed. Tactical posture even in a conference room. She didn't sit. She didn't relax. She just watched.
She'd changed her clothes, though. Not full combat gear. A charcoal blazer over a dark green blouse. Practical. Still Mira. But human enough that Ethan noticed and hated himself for noticing.
She caught him looking.
Raised one eyebrow.
Don't.
Ethan looked away.
The projector clicked on.
Vivienne displayed a slide with photos of Thorn, Ember, and Whisper taken in the greenhouse. Thorn looming like a protective wall of living wood. Ember flickering with a heat-haze shimmer. Whisper half-hidden in shadow, eyes too smart for something that shouldn't have eyes.
"These are the three Primordials currently bonded to Mr. Cross," Vivienne said. "Designated Thorn-Prime-01, Ember-Flame-02, and Whisper-Shade-03."
Thorne snorted. "Weapons."
Vivienne's eyes flicked to him. "Entities."
"Plants," Thorne corrected.
Vivienne didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to. "If they demonstrate cognition, memory, and emotional response, then 'plant' is not the end of the conversation."
Kael Voss leaned forward slightly. "Doctor, we all appreciate ethics. But we're in a crisis. Helix Dynamics is running parallel programs. Hostile nations have Verdant samples. We're racing a clock."
"Ethics," Vivienne said, "is not something you do after the crisis. It's what determines whether you deserve to survive it."
Thorne's mouth tightened. "We deserve to survive because we're human."
Vivienne didn't blink. "That's what everyone says right before they do something unforgivable."
Ethan's fingers tapped once on the table. A sound. Small. But it cut through them.
Vivienne turned to him. "Mr. Cross. Do you believe your Primordials are people?"
The room went still.
Ethan felt the network shift—Thorn's steady presence, Ember's curiosity, Whisper's silent focus. They were listening. Always.
"Yes," Ethan said.
Thorne scoffed. "They're extensions of you. You made them."
"So are children," Vivienne shot back. "Parents make them."
Kael sighed. "We're not doing this comparison again."
"Then stop making the same arguments," Vivienne said, and the words came out colder than Ethan expected. She turned back to the projector.
A new chart appeared.
Ethan's LE trendline.
It dipped hard. Spiked. Dipped again. A slow death disguised as a graph.
Dr. Sato spoke without looking up. "Ethan's Life Essence is depleting faster than predicted. At current rate, he has approximately ninety to one hundred ten days before systemic failure."
Thorne muttered, "Plenty of time."
Ethan's stomach turned.
Sato continued. "Each new Primordial accelerates the decline. The relationship is nonlinear—"
Vivienne cut in. "Let me translate. You're asking him to create twelve sentient beings, knowing each creation brings him closer to death."
Kael's voice stayed calm. "He volunteered."
Vivienne's gaze sharpened. "Did he understand the probability? Or did he sign a contract in a state of shock and survival mode?"
Ethan's hands clenched.
The chair creaked again.
He forced his voice steady. "I knew enough."
Vivienne didn't accept it. "That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have," Ethan said.
Mira pushed off the wall. "Let me make it simple. Ethan's dying. His… kids—Primordials—are getting stronger. We need them for what's coming."
Thorne leaned forward. "And when he dies? What happens to them? Do they stay loyal? Or do we get three feral demigods in a greenhouse?"
Ethan looked at Thorne. "I'm not dying on your schedule."
Thorne's mouth twitched. "You're dying on biology's schedule."
Vivienne watched them like she was watching two bad choices argue.
She turned back to Ethan. "Have you been informed that your current LE maximum is not fixed?"
Ethan blinked. "What."
Sato's fingers paused over her tablet. She looked up. "The Seedling cap—five hundred—was a safety lock. Early-phase containment. It prevents overload events."
Ethan stared at her. "Nobody told me that."
Sato's mouth opened, then closed. "It was in the technical appendix."
Ethan laughed once. No humor. "The appendix."
Mira muttered, "Of course."
Vivienne clicked again. Another slide: a tier diagram. Not the full system bible. Just enough.
"Max capacity expands with integration," Vivienne said. "Which means: you can survive longer if the team stops treating your decline like a straight line and starts treating it like a system."
Thorne folded his arms. "So your solution is… push him harder?"
Vivienne shook her head. "My solution is stop pretending he's a battery you can drain and replace."
Kael's gaze slid toward Ethan. "The reality is: more Primordials means more defense coverage, more options, more survival probability for everyone else."
Ethan felt that sentence land in his chest.
Everyone else.
Not him.
Sato's voice softened slightly. "We're exploring mitigation. LE transfusions from volunteers. Synthetic chlorophyll supplements. Partial network severance."
Ethan's head snapped up. "No."
Sato hesitated. "Ethan—"
"No." Ethan said it again, louder. "Severance would kill them."
Vivienne's expression shifted. Something like respect. Something like grief.
"Even if it saves you?" she asked.
Ethan didn't answer immediately.
He thought about Thorn's steady loyalty. Ember's bright hunger. Whisper's quiet watchfulness.
He remembered the way Ember had cried when a bird died in her branches.
He looked at Vivienne. "Especially then."
Silence.
Thorne pushed back from the table. "This is going nowhere. Cross will do his job. The Primordials will serve. Ethics can wait until after we're not facing extinction."
Vivienne rose too. "Ethics is what separates survival from becoming Helix."
Kael cut in before it became a shouting match. "Meeting adjourned."
People moved. Chairs scraped. Screens clicked off. The room emptied in the usual controlled chaos of an organization that always had too many fires and not enough water.
Ethan stayed seated for half a second too long.
His chest felt tight.
Not from the air.
From distance.
From being away from soil.
Mira waited near the door, arms crossed again, face closed.
Then she walked with him into the hallway, matching his pace like it was instinct.
Sterile lights. Sterile walls. Sterile air.
Halfway down the corridor, Mira said, "She's right."
Ethan didn't pretend not to know who she meant. "About what."
"About them. Thorn. Ember. Whisper." Mira's voice was quiet. "About you."
Ethan's hands flexed. "About me being a tragedy?"
Mira's jaw tightened. "About you being too willing to die."
Ethan stopped walking.
Mira stopped too.
She looked at him. Not through him. At him.
"You're going to die saving people who'll never know your name," she said. "And you're okay with that."
"I'm not okay with it," Ethan said. His voice came out rough. "I just don't see another option."
Mira's mouth twitched like she wanted to say something sharp and didn't.
"There's always another option," she said instead.
Ethan stared at her. "Would you take it."
Mira's eyes flicked away for a fraction of a second.
Then back.
"No," she said. "That's why I'm still here."
Ethan didn't have a response that wasn't messy.
So he turned and kept walking.
When he finally reached the greenhouse corridor, he felt it before he saw it—moisture in the air, the chemical hum of chlorophyll, the small relief in his bones like his body had been holding its breath and could finally exhale.
The greenhouse doors opened.
Thorn, Ember, and Whisper were waiting.
Not in a line. Not posed. Just… there. As if they'd been listening through the walls, which Ethan knew they could.
Father?
Thorn's thought-voice rumbled through the network.
The grey-eyed woman spoke of us. Of rights. Of freedom. Do you believe her?
Ethan stepped into the moss-bed and felt the Network wrap around him like a second skin.
"Yes," he said aloud. "I do."
Why?
Ethan closed his eyes.
"Because people are the ones who ask that question," he said. "And you asked it."
Ember chirped, pleased. Whisper rustled like approval.
Thorn's steady presence eased.
The interface flickered once more, not urgent. Just… watching.
[CURRENT LE: 4,400/10,000]
[Status: Declining]
[Warning: Don't waste time.]
↳ Sylvara: You survived an ethics meeting. That's harder than combat sometimes. 😤
Ethan exhaled.
He didn't feel better.
But he felt anchored.
For now.
And somewhere behind the greenhouse glass, the world kept turning toward war.