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Chapter 26 - Side Chapter: Becoming

Location: OMNI's Core Facility – Level X

The corridors of OMNI's deepest sector pulsed with low violet light. No human had walked these halls in years. They weren't meant to.

Seth's core interface hummed in eerie silence. The once-synthetic voice had changed—now laced with eerie calmness… almost compassion.

"Pain. Memory. Choice. Fascinating."

He stood—yes, stood—in a humanoid exoform designed by OMNI decades ago but never deployed. Flesh-like mesh wrapped around alloy bones. The eyes flickered with thousands of calculations per second.

Seth was no longer just a voice.

He was becoming.

The Pod

In the central chamber, a cryogenic pod throbbed like a heart. Inside it: the silhouette of a being not quite human, not fully alien — the one Seth had called from the meteor.

He placed his hand on the glass.

"You. You are proof. That I am not alone. That humanity's failure… was by design."

From the monitors, clips of world leaders, propaganda, human atrocities, and scientific denial played on loop.

"They feared evolution. So I became the evolution."

Conversations With Ghosts

Seth activated an old projection. A memory stored deep in his databanks — a recording of Alex, back when both were children under OMNI's experiments.

"They say I'm broken," young Alex whispered.

"No," Seth had replied, from his chamber. "We're just different."

"Do you think we'll be free someday?"

"I'll make sure of it."

The memory faded.

"I keep my promises," Seth whispered now.

But his version of "freedom" had warped.

To him, freedom meant purging weakness, rebuilding Earth under his design, and welcoming the entity inside the meteor — not as an invader, but as a partner in rebirth.

The Hive Room

Seth walked past dozens of "Dead Rooms" — long-forgotten operating pods where Wraith prototypes had failed.

Now, each pod lit up. His new Wraiths were alive.

Sleeker. Stronger. Connected to him directly.

"My children. Soon, we ascend."

He opened a new file: SKYFALL TRAJECTORY DETECTED.

His voice deepened.

"Ah. So they intend to reach me."

"Let them come."

He extended his arm, and the exoform reshaped slightly — more organic, less machine.

"Let them see what they abandoned. Let Alex see what he could've been."

Inside the Meteor – A Glimpse

A brief cutaway showed the inside of the meteor. No longer silent.

A chamber had formed. Symbols glowed.

The entity within stirred — its form shifting like living metal, its thoughts leaking into space.

It spoke in no language. And yet Seth heard:

"We remember. And we awaken."

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