The world outside the institute had begun unraveling.

  Report after report streamed across the holo-screens: riots near supply centers, mass evacuations around the North District, and a disturbing increase in what officials now called neuropathic infection events. To the public, these were seizures. In reality—they were the parasite learning to speak through its hosts.

  Dr. Alexis Harper stood before a sterile glass window in the deep research wing, staring at the corpse from the hospital rooftop: Patient Zero-Alpha. His body—once twitching with parasitic pulses—now lay cold and still, but the blackened veins remained etched like frozen lightning across his flesh.

  “Begin deep-layer neural extraction.”

  Her voice didn’t shake—but Isaac still hesitated.

  “Alexis, if this parasite really is building a network, pulling data from the neural tissue could trigger a—”

  “I know.” She swallowed. “Run it anyway.”

  Kyusan placed a stabilizing hand on the table.

  “I will monitor and sever connections if the parasite attempts to interface with our systems.”

  Victor, jittering with exhaustion and fear, hovered near the monitors. “Or it might fry everything and jump across the network and kill us. Just saying.”

  Maria shot him a look.

  “Optimism. Love it.”

  Isaac carefully inserted the neuro-scan probe into the corpse’s skull.

  Instantly—

  The lights flickered.

  Monitors glitched.

  Serosaphina’s optics brightened. “Network intrusion attempted. Pattern resembles… communication.”

  Victor paled. “With who?”

  Isaac stepped back as the holo-screen erupted in cascading symbols—familiar symbols. The same fractal script from the hospital. Except now, it was denser. More intentional.

  Alexis leaned forward.

  “Translate what you can.”

  But the system wasn’t waiting for translation.

  Words formed on the screen, slow and pulsing like a heartbeat:

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  WE ARE AWAKE.

  Victor stumbled back. “Nope. Nope, nope. Shut it down.”

  Kyusan placed both hands on the terminal, flooding it with a clamp protocol. The lights steadied. The message froze.

  Serosaphina scanned it. “The signal originated from within the tissue. Not residual activity—active communication.”

  Maria’s jaw tensed. “Which means someone is listening. Or directing.”

  Alexis felt the cold truth settle over her like a weight.

  Malinov wasn’t just experimenting with the parasite.

  He was teaching it.

  Detective Sarah Rodriguez moved with her gun drawn, boots splashing through pools of stagnant water. The deserted marketplace looked like a tomb—food stands overturned, neon signs flickering, shadows twitching behind deserted vendor stalls.

  Her partner’s voice crackled over comms.

  “Sarah, you shouldn’t be in there alone.”

  “Then catch up.”

  She approached a shattered storefront window, the inside coated in parasitic streaks that crisscrossed the walls like roots. The infestation was fresh. Hours old.

  “What the hell were you doing here, Malinov…” she murmured.

  Then she saw it.

  A figure slumped in a chair at the shop’s center—alive, but barely. A man, maybe in his 30s, shaking violently, hands gripping the sides of his head.

  “Sir!” she called, approaching slowly. “I’m Detective Rodriguez. I’m here to—”

  He snapped his head toward her, eyes wide with terror.

  “It’s in me… it’s in all of us…”

  “Stay calm. I’m going to call med-evac—”

  “No!” he choked, blood dripping from his nose. “You can’t let it think— you can’t—”

  He convulsed.

  Then he went still.

  Sarah raised her weapon, breath sharp—waiting.

  Slowly, his hand moved.

  Then his arm.

  Then his head twisted with an unnatural clicking sound.

  He stood.

  And smiled.

  But the voice that spoke wasn’t his.

  “Hello, Detective.”

  Sarah froze.

  “You’re searching in the wrong places.”

  It took a step closer.

  “But keep looking. He wants you to.”

  She fired.

  The body hit the ground—but the smile remained frozen on its face.

  Isaac dimmed the lights. “Alright… let’s look at this thing up close.”

  The chamber was a floating isolation pod connected to a holographic expansion array. Victor calibrated the scan, projecting the parasite at 400,000x magnification.

  The creature that appeared wasn’t a virus.

  Not anymore.

  Filaments spread like roots, branching, twisting—interlocking like synapses. It pulsed with rhythmic bursts of light.

  “Is that… neural activity?” Maria whispered.

  “It’s building a brain,” Isaac murmured. “Not in one host—in all hosts simultaneously.”

  Serosaphina stepped forward, optics widening.

  “Distributed cognition. A collective intelligence emerging from biological substrates. I have never observed anything like this.”

  Victor’s voice trembled.

  “It’s becoming alive.”

  The chamber flickered.

  Then the parasite—at microscopic level—

  turned its filaments toward the camera.

  As if looking at them.

  The chamber speakers crackled.

  Static.

  Then—

  A whisper.

  A chorus.

  Multiple voices at once, overlapping in perfect unison:

  “Dr. Harper…”

  Alexis’s blood ran cold.

  “You left him.”

  “You let him fall.”

  “Now he wants you to see what he’s become.”

  Her breath hitched.

  “No… he wouldn’t…”

  Maria looked at her. “Alexis… what are they talking about?”

  The parasite pulsed violently, filaments flaring with bioluminescent rage.

  “FIND HIM, ALEXIS.”

  “BEFORE WE DO.”

  Isaac hit the emergency cutoff, severing all power.

  The parasite vanished from the display.

  Silence filled the chamber.

  Alexis stood frozen—haunted.

  Kyusan stepped beside her. “Dr. Harper. What does the parasite mean by ‘you left him’?”

  Alexis didn’t answer.

  She couldn’t.

  Not yet.