The sun hadn't yet risen over the ruins of Shanghai when Ethan Cross—no, the Verdant Sovereign—stood at the edge of the rooftop, watching the city below with eyes that no longer saw the world as humans did.
Three days had passed since the transfer. Three days since Ethan Cross, the man, had died and something new had taken his place.
Lira stood behind him, silent. She'd been silent a lot lately.
"The scout team is moving through Sector 7," Ethan said without turning. His voice was calm, measured, empty of the urgency that once would have colored it. "Four units. Standard Helix recon gear. They're mapping our territory."
"Should we avoid them?" Lira asked. Her voice was careful, like she was testing him.
"No." Ethan stepped off the roof.
He didn't fall. Vines erupted from the building's facade, catching him, lowering him to the street below in a smooth, organic descent that would have thrilled the old Ethan. Now it was just... efficient.
Lira followed, her own vines weaving her down beside him. When she landed, she reached for his arm, then stopped herself.
"Sovereign," she said softly. "These scouts—they may have information. Prisoners could be valuable."
Ethan looked at her. Really looked at her. He could see her heartbeat in the pulse of her throat, count the microscopic tremors in her fingers. Fear? Anxiety?
He couldn't tell anymore. Didn't really care.
"We don't need prisoners," he said. "We need to send a message."
The Helix scouts never saw them coming.
Ethan moved through the abandoned streets like a ghost, his footsteps silent, his presence masked by the city's overgrown vegetation. Lira had taught him that trick weeks ago—how to blend with the Network, become invisible to human senses.
Back then, he'd been amazed by it. Now it was just another tool.
The first scout died quickly. Ethan's vines shot from the ground, wrapped around the soldier's throat, and crushed his windpipe before he could scream. The body slumped, and Ethan absorbed it without a second thought. Organic matter converted to LE. Efficient.
The second scout heard something—a rustle, a crack—and spun around, rifle raised. Ethan was already behind him. A single vine pierced through the back of the soldier's helmet, through his skull, and out through his visor. Dead before he hit the ground.
Two down. Two to go.
The third scout started running. Smart. He'd seen enough to know he was being hunted. He triggered his emergency beacon, screaming into his comm unit about "hostile entity" and "requesting immediate extraction."
Ethan let him run for almost thirty seconds. Let him think he might escape.
Then the ground beneath the scout exploded with roots. They wrapped around his legs, his waist, his arms, yanking him down so hard his shoulder dislocated with a wet pop. He screamed.
Ethan walked up to him slowly, almost curious. The scout was young—maybe mid-twenties. Terror painted across his face.
"Please," the scout gasped. "Please, I'm just—I'm just doing my job, I didn't—"
"I know," Ethan said.
He killed him anyway.
The fourth scout was different.
Ethan found him hiding in the collapsed shell of an apartment building, wedged behind a fallen concrete slab. He wasn't moving, wasn't breathing hard—trained to minimize his heat signature.
But Ethan didn't hunt with heat anymore. He hunted with the Network. Every plant in the city whispered to him, and the plants told him exactly where the scout was hiding.
He pulled the slab away with a thought, vines lifting it like it weighed nothing.
The scout scrambled backward, rifle forgotten, hands raised.
And Ethan stopped.
Because the scout was a kid.
Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Barely old enough to shave. His Helix uniform was too big on him, sleeves rolled up, helmet rattling loose on his head.
"Don't shoot," the kid stammered. "I surrender, okay? I surrender!"
Ethan stared at him. His mind catalogued everything with perfect clarity: elevated heart rate, dilated pupils, stress hormone saturation. Classic fear response.
The old Ethan would have felt something. Pity. Hesitation. Maybe even let him go.
The Sovereign felt nothing.
"You're compromised," Ethan said flatly. "You've seen me. You've reported my location. You're a threat."
"I won't tell anyone!" The kid was crying now. "I swear, I'll desert, I'll run, I'll—"
Ethan raised his hand.
Vines erupted from the ground.
"Wait—WAIT—"
They pierced through the kid's chest. Three of them. Quick. Clean.
The light went out of his eyes.
Ethan absorbed the body and walked away.
Lira was waiting for him when he returned to the safe house. She stood in the doorway, backlit by the green glow of the Primordial garden, and she didn't move when he approached.
"It's done," Ethan said.
"I know." Her voice was quiet. "I felt it through the Network."
She looked up at him, and for the first time since the transfer, Ethan saw something in her expression that he couldn't quite parse. Not anger. Not disappointment.
Grief.
"The last one," Lira said slowly. "He was a child."
"He was a soldier."
"He was seventeen years old."
"Old enough to carry a rifle. Old enough to report our position." Ethan moved past her into the garden. "He was a threat. I eliminated him."
Lira followed him. "You didn't even hesitate."
"Why would I?"
"Because—" She stopped. Took a breath. "Because the Ethan I knew would have."
Ethan turned to face her. "The Ethan you knew is dead. You killed him three days ago when you put me in that machine."
The words came out flat, factual, without accusation. But Lira flinched like he'd struck her.
"I saved you," she whispered.
"You saved my body," Ethan corrected. "The rest of me—the part that would have cared about that kid, the part that would have tried to find another way—that's gone. You knew that would happen. You did it anyway."
Lira's hands clenched into fists. "I did it because I loved you."
"Loved. Past tense."
"Don't." Her voice cracked. "Don't do that. Don't analyze my grammar like I'm one of your threats to eliminate."
Ethan studied her. The moisture gathering in her eyes. The tremor in her jaw. He knew what those signs meant, intellectually. She was in pain. Emotional distress.
He should comfort her.
He didn't want to.
"Lira," he said carefully. "I value you. You're essential to the Network's function. Your tactical insights are unmatched. But if you're expecting me to feel guilty about killing that scout—"
"I'm expecting you to feel SOMETHING!" She shouted it, and the garden around them shuddered, vines writhing in response to her distress. "Anything! Guilt, anger, satisfaction, I don't care—just prove to me there's still something human left in you!"
Ethan considered this. Ran a diagnostic on his emotional state.
Found nothing.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't."
Lira stared at him for a long moment. Then she turned and walked away, her vines trailing behind her like a bridal train made of thorns.
Ethan watched her go.
Felt nothing.
And for the first time since the transfer, a tiny fragment of something—maybe concern, maybe curiosity—flickered in the back of his mind.
Was this wrong?
The thought vanished before he could examine it.
That night, Ethan sat alone in the garden, surrounded by the soft glow of bioluminescent flowers. Thorn was still recovering from his injuries. Ember was out scouting. Lira had locked herself in her chamber and refused to respond to his messages through the Network.
He should check on her. That's what the old Ethan would have done.
Instead, he pulled up a holographic display—one of the few pieces of human technology he still used—and reviewed footage from the scout elimination.
He watched himself kill the teenager. Watched the vines punch through the kid's chest. Watched the light die in those terrified eyes.
He ran the footage back. Watched it again.
Again.
Searching for... what? Regret? Horror?
Nothing.
Just data.
The kid had been a threat. He'd eliminated the threat. Efficient. Logical.
So why did Lira look at him like he'd become a monster?
The answer came to him with perfect, terrible clarity:
Because he had.
And he didn't care.
The next morning, a message arrived.
It came through an old Resistance encryption channel—one that only a handful of people knew about. Ethan almost deleted it, assuming it was a trap, but something made him open it.
The message was text-only. Two sentences.
"I know what they did to you. I know how to undo it."
It was signed: A.T.
Aria.
Ethan stared at the message for a long time. His mind ran probability analyses, threat assessments, tactical considerations. Every logical pathway screamed TRAP.
But underneath all that cold calculation, something else stirred. Something that felt almost like...
Hope?
No. Not hope.
Curiosity.
He composed a reply.
"Where?"
The answer came back in seconds.
"Old metro station. Sector 12. Midnight. Come alone."
Ethan forwarded the message to Lira with a single word attached:
"Trap?"
Her response was immediate:
"Definitely. Don't go."
Ethan looked at the message again. Thought about Aria. About the way she'd looked at him after the transfer, like she was watching someone she loved die in front of her.
The old Ethan would have agonized over this decision. Weighed loyalty against curiosity, safety against sentiment.
The Sovereign made his choice in 1.3 seconds.
He would go.
Not because he missed Aria. Not because he felt guilty.
But because if there was even a 0.01% chance she was telling the truth—that she knew how to undo what Lira had done—he needed that information.
For the Network's sake.
For efficiency.
At midnight, Ethan Cross walked into the darkness of Sector 12's abandoned metro station, vines coiling around his arms like living weapons, ready for whatever Aria had planned.
Behind him, unnoticed, Lira followed in the shadows.
She'd sworn to protect him.
Even from himself.