“The Source is leaking. It’s no longer confined to the labs. The air filters are clogged with spores that rewrite the lungs of anyone who breathes them. Last night, I saw a guard whose skin had turned to translucent glass. He wasn't dying; he was becoming something else. Something efficient.”

Elias scrolled faster. The logs detailed the "Ascension Era," where the rich paid for gills to live in sunken coastal cities or reinforced carapaces to survive the increasingly frequent firestorms. But the Source had a mind of its own. The genetic lattice was too adaptive. It began to "rhyme" on its own—creating life forms that the scientists hadn't authorized. The Mutation

The terminal flickered with a rhythmic, sickly green pulse. On the screen, a single file was highlighted: chimerasource.txt .