New Babylon didn't sleep.It drank silence and spat back neon.
A sovereign city-state built by criminal empires and rogue billionaires, New Babylon floated off the coast of the old world like a glowing infection. No national flag. No laws. Only credit and control.
Kael landed with Thalia, Seiryu, and two of his private war operatives. Trix stayed behind at Iron Nest, managing surveillance and airlift contingencies in case things got violent.
They would.
On the way in, Kael reviewed the dossier again.
Mara Qynn: 71 years old. Bioengineer turned ghost coder. Former lead of Project Godhand before defecting and faking her death. Rumor said she embedded her consciousness inside an AI host named V.I.S.A.N.T., which now ran the undercity of New Babylon's data grid.
To find Mara, they had to find the ghost.
And ghosts in New Babylon cost blood.
They started with a broker.
His name was Culver. Genetically modified bones, five hearts, and a spinal port that buzzed every time someone lied to him. He worked in the backroom of a casino called The Ivory Tank—no doors, just walls that moved.
Kael handed him a platinum memory chip. Inside: a stolen algorithm that predicted underground crypto-market collapses 48 hours in advance.
Culver didn't blink.
"You want to find Visant," he said slowly. "You don't find Visant. You get invited."
"Then make us interesting," Kael replied.
Culver made a call.
Six hours later, a drone the size of a hawk flew into their hotel suite, dropped a black card with a neon eye on it, and vanished.
Coordinates blinked.
Sector E-9, Subgrid Level Four. Midnight.
Seiryu looked worried. "That's inside the Ghost Spine. No surveillance. No rescue once we enter."
Thalia loaded her pistols. "Perfect."
The entrance was beneath an abandoned cathedral turned tech-temple, now filled with lowlife monks worshipping stolen AI.
Inside the subgrid, the light changed.
Reality got fuzzy.
Colors bled sideways. Walls throbbed like breathing lungs.
They were in Visant's Domain now.
The floors became touch-reactive. Their steps triggered old memories: war footage, surgical diagrams, DNA trees forming in air.
Then the voice spoke.
Cool. Feminine. Electric.
"Kael Wexley. Finally."
The chamber brightened.
There she was.
Mara Qynn.
But not in flesh.
She stood in the center of a memory projection, her image flickering between a woman in her 70s and her 30s—like time itself couldn't decide what version she deserved.
Kael approached slowly.
"You're alive."
"In a sense," she said. "I broke my body to escape the war your father created. But I left my mind behind—to warn the one who would eventually come looking."
"You built the Godhand Protocol."
"I rewrote it. Your father tried to make soldiers. I tried to make humanity better. He twisted my research."
Kael's fists tightened. "He twisted me."
Mara raised a finger.
"Lucan is not the enemy you think he is."
Kael froze.
"What?"
"Lucan isn't just your brother. He is a key. A sequence activator. A conscious catalyst. The real enemy is buried deeper."
She pulled up a file from the vault Kael hadn't seen before.
Project: PRIMORDIA.
Kael stared at the contents. His blood ran cold.
It was older than Project Godhand. Older than Syndicate. It dated back over 80 years.
A cabal of eugenic technocrats—scientists, billionaires, warlords—who seeded their DNA across generations to breed the perfect vessel for a digital consciousness they believed would transcend death.
"Lucan is that vessel," Mara said. "But so are you."
Kael's mind reeled.
"You're saying this war started before we were born?"
"No," Mara replied. "It started before your grandparents were born."
Suddenly, the chamber lights dimmed.
Visant flickered.
Mara's expression changed.
"They found me," she whispered. "You have to run. He—he sent a Reaper."
Kael drew his sidearm. "Who's he?"
But the lights went black.
Thalia's scream ripped the dark.
Then came the sound: metal scraping on bone.
A figure dropped from the ceiling.
Seven feet tall.
Head like a bird skull, body like a wireframe nightmare.
It was armored in red nanite scales.
A Reaper.
It moved without warning.
Kael ducked the first strike—metal claws shearing through the wall. Thalia countered with a flash-charge, Seiryu slammed a magnetic mine to the Reaper's back. It shrugged it off.
Kael shouted, "Back! Lead it into the corridor!"
They dragged the fight into a tight neural passage—Seiryu triggered an overload gate, electrifying the walls.
The Reaper convulsed—then vanished.
Teleportation? Or something worse?
Kael turned to the flickering Mara.
"What was that?!"
Her voice was faint.
"One of the... Twelve. The Twelve Reapers. Lucan didn't build them. Primordia did."
Kael's heart pounded. "Where are the rest?"
Her eyes locked on his.
"They're already awake."
Kael grabbed the final memory shard Mara dropped as her signal collapsed.
As they escaped the undergrid and the whole sublevel exploded behind them, Kael didn't look back.
He had seen enough ghosts for one night.
Later, on the rooftop of their safehouse, Kael replayed the shard.
It showed an image of Lucan.
But his face was... different.
Older.
His eyes were black voids.
The file's name: ArchLucan: Generation Omega.
Kael whispered, "He's evolving."
Thalia stood beside him. "What now?"
Kael tightened his gloves.
"We find the Reapers. We burn the seedbed of Primordia. And then we end Lucan before he becomes the god they built him to be."