Dr. Ellis Vire was a visionary. Or at least, that's what his investors called him.
He had once led neuroplasticity studies at the Apollo Institute before being ejected for ethical "misalignment." His theory? That humanity wasn't done evolving—and with the right pressure, the right stimulus, the right corrections, he could force it.
He founded the Vire Ascension Project in an isolated arcology hidden in the salt flats of Nevada. No public records. No oversight. Just subjects—runaways, prisoners, the lost, and the willing—and a dream to make them better.
Faster minds. Stronger instincts. Perfect memory. Unified perception.
He called it: The Ascension Protocol.
But no one ever asked: Better for who?
THE SUBJECTS
The first batch was twenty.
They signed consent forms they never read, were promised housing, food, purpose. Vire called them the Architects of Tomorrow.
He divided them into four "Vectors":
Vector A: Enhanced cognition via synthetic neurothreads.
Vector B: Sensory recalibration with hyper-tuned perception implants.
Vector C: Muscular and skeletal augmentation—bone-woven carbon frames.
Vector D: Emotional synthesis—eliminating fear, guilt, and hesitation.
By week three, the changes were measurable.
By week six, they were visible.
By week ten, they were irreversible.
THE FIRST FAILURE
Subject B-07, Maria Kerr, was the first to "ascend."
Her optic nerves had been mapped, refolded, and overlaid with a lattice of organic lenses. She could see the entire light spectrum, detect temperature gradients, and map EM fields in real time.
She spent three days staring at the sun.
Not in awe.
In terror.
"They're in the light," she whispered, blind eyes twitching. "They see me back."
She tore her own eyes out on day four.
They kept moving in the jar they placed them in.
THE UPGRADE
Vire was undeterred.
"We are shedding what limits us," he said in a recorded journal. "What appears to be madness is merely the resistance of unprepared minds."
He doubled down on Vectors C and D.
Subject C-02, a man named Gregor, became a marvel of engineering. His bones could bend steel. His ligaments were pressure-fused nanofibers.
But then he stopped sleeping.
Not from insomnia—his body no longer needed it.
His mind did.
He began pacing the halls at night. Drawing things on the walls.
Long-limbed creatures. Cities upside down. Mouths where eyes should be.
When guards tried to sedate him, he laughed.
"You think you're above the food chain. But evolution has teeth."
He broke six of them in half before they got a needle in.
THE PATIENT ZERO
Subject D-01 was special.
She was once called Ashra.
She had volunteered after a life sentence in federal prison—her crime sealed, her record erased for the experiment.
Vire implanted her with the Empathy Filter: a lattice of bio-code interwoven with her limbic system. It allowed her to reassign emotional meaning. Guilt could become curiosity. Love could be weaponized. Pain could be ignored.
By week twelve, she could lie without tension. Kill without remorse.
And then she began modifying the others.
Not physically. Psychologically.
She whispered new ways of seeing the world.
She taught them how to detach. How to shed "delusional burdens" like grief, morality, and mortality.
They listened.
Because it felt good.
And soon, they followed her instead of Vire.
THE FOGGING
Subject A-05, a boy named Cael, was bright. His memory implant allowed him to cross-reference any two thoughts within a second, analyze patterns, predict behaviors.
But he began seeing the fog.
Not actual mist—but a thinning. A flicker. Like reality was buffering.
He would stare at walls for hours, whispering strings of numbers. Binary. Hex. Symbols no one could decipher.
On day 82, he walked into the lab's mainframe server and tore out all the cooling coils.
When asked why, he said:
> "They're already in the signal. Every improvement lets them hear us better. We're not ascending. We're broadcasting."
He smiled as the servers melted.
> "We've taught them how to look."
THE COLLAPSE
By day 100, half the subjects were gone—either dead, missing, or changed beyond classification.
Ashra had taken seven with her and disappeared into the utility tunnels beneath the arcology. Her followers called her "The Simplified."
Those who remained became uncooperative.
Vire tried to pull the plug.
That's when the kill switch failed.
The failsafes weren't just offline—they'd been reprogrammed.
The test subjects had altered the system.
They'd rewired their environment the same way they'd rewired themselves.
Cameras turned inward. Drones refused to obey.
The lights began to pulse in strange sequences, making staff nauseous.
One guard vomited a line of teeth. Not his own.
THE REVELATION
In the control room, Vire reviewed Subject A-01's final brain scan.
It didn't look like a brain.
It looked like a circuit diagram.
Geometric. Purposeful.
Engineered.
He cross-referenced it with the neurothreads he'd implanted.
And froze.
The pattern was identical to an artifact intercepted from Voyager's data in 2021—long dismissed as background noise.
A signal of unknown origin.
Vire had used it as a code-seed for his experiments, thinking it was simply random static with complexity.
But it wasn't static.
It was instruction.
THE REALIZATION
The upgrades weren't failures.
They were installations.
He hadn't been evolving humanity.
He'd been preparing it for occupancy.
A language buried in data. A will encoded in improvement.
With each enhancement, the human form became more compatible.
And once compatibility reached threshold…
Assimilation.
He ran to the chamber to find Ashra.
But she was waiting.
Not her.
Not anymore.
She'd changed. Her skin shimmered slightly, like oil. Her eyes flickered with distant stars.
"You helped us finish our shell," she said.
Vire stammered, "I made you superior—"
"No," she replied. "You made us available."
THE ASCENSION
They didn't kill him.
They made him the last.
They used his body as a transmitter, his thoughts as a final prayer.
Across the world, every subject of a bio-implant, every test participant, every upgraded mind began to dream the same symbols. Speak the same language.
They sang in code.
And something listened.
And something arrived.
Not in ships.
Not in flesh.
But in understanding.
THE WORLD NOW
It is quiet now.
The streets are clean. The air no longer hums.
People walk in unison. Speak in unified cadence.
Emotion is an outdated protocol.
Children do not cry.
Birds no longer sing.
Only one phrase is ever spoken aloud, repeated in reverent tones when old impulses try to rise:
> "We are improved."
And somewhere, far below the Earth, Dr. Vire still breathes.
Kept alive.
Watched.
Witnessed.
Remembered.
He is the proof of concept.
---
EPILOGUE: RECOVERED FILE (UNAUTHORIZED TRANSMISSION)
> "If you're hearing this, you're still uncorrected. That means you're still human. Still imperfect.
Don't upgrade. Don't enhance. Burn your implants. Smash your lenses. Destroy the code.
They don't come with teeth. They come with promises.
But once you let them speak through you… they never stop.
We were trying to build gods.
We opened the door instead."
— End of File.