The bunker's single monitor flickered to life, showing a feed from a hidden camera outside. Three black SUVs pulled up to the building above them. Men in tactical gear emerged, weapons ready.
"WHO are they?" Kael asked, his body tensing.
"Private military. Contracted by the G7 task force." Aris was already packing her tablet and samples into a rugged case. "There's a tunnel. This way."
She pressed a section of wall, and a hidden door swung open, revealing a narrow passage. The air smelled of earth and decay.
"How did you know about this place?" Kael followed her into the darkness.
"My cousin was a doomsday prepper. Laughed at him for years." She activated a flashlight. "Now I'm sending him a fruit basket."
They moved quickly through the tunnel. Behind them, they heard the bunker door being breached, shouts in German and English.
The tunnel ended at a ladder leading up to a manhole cover. Aris climbed first, pushing it aside just enough to peer out. "Clear."
They emerged in a small park, the first stars appearing in the twilight sky. Geneva's lights glowed in the distance.
"We need to get off the grid," Aris said. "No electronics, no cameras."
"My phone—" Kael began.
"Is a tracking device. Give it to me." She took it, removed the battery, and dropped both pieces down a sewer grate. "Yours too," she said, holding out her hand for Aris's phone.
Reluctantly, Aris handed over her own device, the last link to her old life.
They walked toward the city center, blending with evening crowds. Kael kept his head down, but he could feel eyes on him. Not recognition—just the unconscious awareness people have of something dangerous.
At a public terminal in the train station, Aris accessed a secure chat forum she'd set up for initial cases. The login screen was filled with messages.
MumbaiTitan: They took my family. Saying I'll get them back if I turn myself in.
ReykjavikSurvivor: In hiding. WHO everywhere.
BerlinLifter: Made contact with two others. We're together. Safe for now.
And a new one, posted an hour ago:
AllTitans: Meet. We must meet. Coordinates attached. Three days. Come if you can.
Attached were GPS coordinates for a remote location in the Swiss Alps.
"It's a trap," Kael said immediately.
"Probably," Aris agreed. "But it might also be our only chance. These people—you—need to understand what's happening. You need community."
"And you? What do you need?"
She looked at him, and for the first time, he saw not just the scientist, but the woman—afraid, determined, and profoundly alone. "I need to know I didn't help create a new underclass. I need to help you navigate this."
Kael studied the coordinates. "Three days. Can we get there without being caught?"
"We have to try." She logged out, erasing the session. "But first, we need supplies. And information."
They bought burner phones with cash, simple models with no GPS. At an internet cafe, Aris accessed news sites. The story was everywhere.
"Titan Crisis Deepens"
"Governments Struggle to Contain Superhumans"
"Are We Facing a New Master Race?"
The rhetoric was escalating. Editorial cartoons showed muscled giants stepping on normal humans. Religious leaders denounced the mutations as "the mark of the beast" or "divine punishment."
But there were other voices too. A philosopher writing about "Homo Superior's burden." A biologist arguing this was natural evolution accelerated. A hashtag: #TheyreStillHuman.
On a dark web forum, Aris found what she was looking for: leaked documents. Containment Protocol Alpha. It was worse than she'd feared.
Phase 1: Identification and tagging.
Phase 2: Voluntary containment.
Phase 3: Mandatory sequestration.
*Phase 4: Neutralization of non-compliant subjects.*
"Neutralization," Kael read over her shoulder. "That means—"
"It means they'll kill us if we don't cooperate." A new voice spoke from the cafe doorway.
They turned. A woman stood there, late twenties, Middle Eastern features, wearing a hijab and a leather jacket. She held up her phone, showing the same forum page.
"I'm Leila. MumbaiTitan." She entered the cafe, nodding to the owner, who clearly knew her. "This is my cousin's place. We're safe here. For now."
Aris stood, instinctively placing herself between Leila and Kael. "How did you find us?"
"Your IP address. I've been monitoring all access to the forum." Leila sat at their terminal, typing quickly. "You're Dr. Thorne. WHO geneticist. And you're Kael Rodriguez, the Geneva incident. Your faces are on every bulletin board in Europe."
She brought up a news feed. There they were—security camera footage of them fleeing the alley, grainy but recognizable.
"You should come with me," Leila said. "My group is heading to the meeting point. We have transport. Supplies."
"Why trust you?" Kael asked.
Leila met his gaze. "Because I lifted a bus off sixteen children. Because the government took my parents and told me I'm a weapon of mass destruction. Because I have nowhere else to go, and neither do you."
She leaned forward, lowering her voice. "They're calling it the 'Great Fracture.' Humanity splitting into two species. We can let it be a fracture, or we can try to make it a bridge. But we can't do it alone."
Aris looked at Kael. In his eyes, she saw the same calculation she was making. Risk vs. survival. Trust vs. isolation.
"Where's your group?" Aris asked.
"Outside the city. We move at dawn." Leila stood. "Come or don't. But if you stay, they'll find you by morning. Forstell has every camera in Geneva looking for you."
She left the cafe, disappearing into the night.
Kael watched her go. "What do you think?"
"I think we're out of options." Aris closed the browser. "I think we go to the mountains."
"And if it's a trap?"
"Then we fight our way out." She said it with more confidence than she felt. "But we can't live in tunnels forever, Kael. You need to meet others like you. You need to understand what you're becoming."
He nodded slowly. "Okay. We go."
They gathered their few belongings. As they stepped out into the cool Swiss night, Kael looked up at the stars, brighter here than in Madrid. He tried to imagine living to see those stars change position, to watch centuries pass.
The thought should have been exhilarating. Instead, it filled him with a loneliness so profound it stole his breath.
Aris touched his arm. "One step at a time."
They melted into the shadows, heading toward the rendezvous point, toward the first gathering of their kind, toward a future that was rewriting itself with every passing moment.