If Karura Haven was a sanctuary full of laughter, sunlight, and the promise of healing, then HelixCorp was its mirror opposite.
Light breeds shadows, and our shadow had been watching us for a very long time.
It began with a hum. Not from the trees—not from the glowing vines or the spirits or the distant waterfalls. This was a mechanical hum, unnatural and sharp.
Elias heard it first. He froze mid-sentence while explaining the "vibrational personality" of a metal stabilizer. "Uh-oh," he whispered. I frowned. "What do you mean 'uh-oh'?"
"That is not Eden-tech," he said, eyes narrowing. "That's… man-made."
A dot appeared in the sky, high above the cliffs. Then another. Then three more. Lyra gasped. Orion shielded his eyes. Zara cursed softly under her breath. "Drones." They hovered silently above the settlement like vultures circling a dying animal.
Mara appeared beside us as if summoned by the disturbance. Her face was calm, but her voice carried a dark undercurrent. "They've found us."
"Who?" Lyra asked.
"Those who believe Eden is a resource," Mara said, "not a rebirth."
HelixCorp.
After the Rebirth Event, governments scrambled—some to restore order, others to pretend they still had any. They failed. Supply lines collapsed. Communications fell silent. Leaders vanished or fled. Borders became meaningless.
Where nations dissolved, corporations filled the void. HelixCorp rose fastest. They controlled the largest private military force on the planet, enormous research labs, and the remnants of several pharmaceutical giants. They bought up abandoned government databases, seized biological archives, and commandeered satellites when the world's militaries fell silent.
Within weeks, HelixCorp declared itself the "Custodian of Human Advancement." A polite way of saying: They owned what was left of progress. And they wanted more. Rumors reached us through wanderers and refugees:
HelixCorp had seized entire hospitals to study spontaneously healed patients. They captured "gifted" children, calling them "biological anomalies." They attempted to tame Eden-creatures with brutal experiments. They offered food and medicine to settlements, in exchange for "voluntary genetic testing." None who volunteered was ever seen again.
The drones circling above Karura Haven were scouts, collectors wouldn't be far behind.
Later, I would hear her name whispered like a curse among survivors. Dr. Vestra Halix. Chief Genetic Architect. Mother of the Neo-Evolution Project. HelixCorp's crown jewel.
Even before the Rebirth, she had been infamous in the scientific community, brilliant, cold, ruthless, and willing to cross lines most people refuse to approach. People said she never slept. Some said she never blinked. Others claimed she had replaced parts of her own body with engineered tissue.
Her obsession was evolution. Not slow, natural evolution. Controlled evolution. Curated evolution. Designed evolution. When Eden awakened, she saw opportunity. The gifted children, the ones whose powers manifested overnight, eere her missing puzzle pieces. She wanted them. All of them.
Back then, we didn't yet know she was watching us. But her drones recorded everything: Lyra practicing flame control, Orion's psychic resonance with Amu, the spirit-wolf sitting at his feet, Elias speaking to machinery like it was alive, the children lifting stones with their minds. A settlement that healed sickness without medicine. A village where spirits lived beside humans
Karura Haven was a treasure trove. A miracle. A threat to the corporation's monopoly over "advancement." And above all… We were proof that evolution was no longer in human hands. That terrified Vestra. She wanted control back.
Of all the memories and second-hand accounts I gathered later, none haunted me like the descriptions of Vestra's lab.
Patients suspended in gel-like fluid. Children behind glass walls, monitored by silent machines. Eden-creatures dissected while still breathing. Screens showing neural activity mapping Eden-energy patterns. A hall of preserved organs that glowed faintly with ambient power. And at the center of it all, Dr. Vestra Halix, flawless and terrifying. She studied Karura Haven in silence through holographic projections.
"Gifted children numbers increasing," a technician reported.
"The psychic cluster from Sector Seven shows exponential growth."
Vestra narrowed her eyes. "And the fire-gifted girl?"
"Unstable but powerful."
"The boy?"
"Psychic resonance is unprecedented. He may be a bridge between dimensions."
Vestra's fingers tapped slowly against her desk.
"The father?"
The technician gulped. "We are still analyzing him. His readings are… strange."
"Strange," Vestra echoed with a faint smile. "I like strange."
Her smile vanished. "Dispatch the collectors."
Back in the village, Mara gathered the elders, rangers, and key members of the settlement. Zara stood beside her, one hand on her rifle. I stood among the crowd, Lyra and Orion pressed into my sides.
Mara spoke with calm gravity. "Karura Haven has been blessed with peace," she said. "But peace does not go unnoticed. The drones you saw belong to an entity that believes Eden should be conquered."
"Who?" a villager asked.
Mara's voice grew cold. "HelixCorp."
Gasps rippled through the crowd. "They will come for our children," she continued. "They will come for those who heal, those who shift the land, those who speak to spirits. They seek to claim Eden as their lab and humanity as their experiment."
Elias whispered, "They're going to try to steal us."
Zara nodded grimly. "They won't succeed."
But Mara raised a hand. "We must prepare."
"Prepare for what?" I asked, already fearing the answer.
Mara turned her gaze toward the sky, where the last of the drones hovered like a distant star.
"Prepare," she said softly, "for the day when the shadows step into the light."
That night, Karura Haven was quieter than ever. Even the spirits drifted closer to the ground, their lights dimmer, as if sensing the danger above. Lyra fell asleep with her head in my lap, a faint ember glow pulsing beneath her skin. Orion curled beside her, murmuring in his dreams.
As I looked out at the cliffs, at the treetops, at the murmuring forest that had sheltered us, I realized something, peace is not the absence of danger. Peace is the eye of the storm, and HelixCorp was the storm approaching our horizon. We didn't yet know how far they would go. We didn't yet understand the hunger in Vestra Halix's heart. But soon… We would. Because the shadow watching the light, was already to moving.