Climbing a hundred-meter-tall spinal cord is not an exercise taught in medical school. The Leviathan's cerebrospinal fluid—or whatever fed this tower—burned my lungs with every breath. My right hand, human, was flayed and bleeding; my left, made of Black Crystal, dug into the giant bone with the coldness of a machine, immune to pain.

  When I finally reached the upper valve—a muscular sphincter separating the pit from the floor above—I didn't waste time with pleasantries. My Mithril scalpel tore through the pale flesh, and a bath of warm, ozone-smelling amniotic fluid spilled over me.

  I pulled my body through the cut and fell to my knees on the floor of the Genetic Control Room.

  I stood up slowly, the bloody water dripping from my lab coat. My left eye blinked, the digital interface trying to process the bizarre architecture of the place.

  The room was the brain of the city of Genesis. There were no keyboards or glass screens. The walls were translucent membranes projecting biometric graphs through electrical nerve impulses. Thick arteries pumped pure mana from the floor to the vaulted ceiling.

  And, standing by the immense organic window, looking out at the fires my team was causing outside, was my father. Hélio Veras.

  He didn't seem panicked. He had his hands behind his back, his white suit still immaculate.

  "Your friends are very noisy, Arthur," he said, without turning around. "They are ruining thirteen years of careful hybridization in the greenhouses. A waste of biomass."

  "Think of it as routine pruning," I replied, my voice echoing, cold and metallic in the wide space. "I just cleaned your sewer downstairs. Your rough drafts send their regards."

  Hélio turned around. The paternal smile had vanished, replaced by an analytical irritation.

  "The flawed clones were necessary. Evolution demands sacrifices. You, of all people, should understand that. How many monsters have you dissected to get here? How many people did you let die to save that scrap-metal island of yours in Rio de Janeiro?"

  "I kill to survive, not to play make-believe with the ecosystem." I pointed the scalpel at him, the crystal arm humming with lethal energy. "It's over. The Piper is dead, and you are the next system failure to be removed."

  Hélio sighed, walking slowly to the center of the room.

  There was a structure there I hadn't noticed immediately. A gigantic cocoon, different from the tubes downstairs. This one wasn't made of cheap membrane; it was woven from roots of pure Black Crystal, intertwined with vibrant red arteries. It pulsed like a colossal heart, feeding the entire city.

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  "Do you think you are the masterpiece, Arthur?" Hélio caressed the surface of the cocoon. "Batch 42. The first mobile success. The perfect hybrid between human and Devourer."

  "But a system needs an anchor. A central server, if you prefer the terminology of that fool Silas Vilela. Someone had to process the ground's energy and feed the Gardeners, the flora, the wall of flesh."

  The Parasite inside me contracted violently.

  It wasn't anger. It was submission. An instinctive response to an alpha predator or a matrix.

  [PROXIMITY ALERT. THE MATRIX. THE SOURCE. DETECTED.]

  "What is in there?" I asked, feeling a lump form in my throat. My clinical posture began to falter.

  "Patient Zero of the Genesis Project." Hélio smiled, his eyes shining with a devout fanaticism. "You know the old saying, don't you? Behind every great man... there is always a solid foundation."

  He pressed his palm against the cocoon.

  The crystal roots retreated. The membrane tore smoothly down the middle, releasing a mist of freezing vapor and white spores.

  The figure inside was suspended by hundreds of tubes entering directly into her spinal cord and lungs.

  It wasn't a monster. It was a woman.

  Her human body was perfectly preserved from the waist up, skin pale and translucent. From the waist down, she merged with the tower's biological core, roots and cables binding her in a static, perpetual torment. Her eyes were open, but milky and empty.

  My scalpel fell from my right hand, hitting the floor with a hollow thud.

  I felt the air leave my lungs.

  It was Helena Veras. My mother.

  The woman I saw "die" of a mysterious disease when I was twelve. The same disease that motivated Hélio to begin his obsessive research.

  "You... you didn't let her die..." my voice came out as a ragged whisper.

  "Die? Death is a design flaw!" Hélio exclaimed, enamored by his own atrocity. "Her cancer was killing her. I offered her the cure. I inserted the first Parasite into her. The Alpha Devourer. She didn't reject it, but her body was too weak to support mobility. So, I turned her into the foundation of the new world."

  "She doesn't feel pain, Arthur. She feels EVERYTHING. She is every tree, every Gardener, every millimeter of Eden. She is a Goddess."

  I looked at my mother's inert face. A single tear, thick and full of blue blood, ran down her pale cheek.

  She was in there. Imprisoned for decades inside her own body, being used as a biological battery for a psychopath.

  The shock faded.

  The shock gave way to something much darker. A terrifying clarity. The Babel Code, still latent in my synapses, mixed with the chaotic fury of the Parasite.

  "You turned my mother into a power generator." I looked up. My left eye, the cybernetic eye, went completely pitch black. "You turned my family into a disease."

  Hélio sighed, unbuttoning his white suit.

  "You are small, Arthur. Too human. If you cannot see the beauty of evolution, then your genetic material will be recycled. I will make Batch 43."

  His white suit tore down the back.

  Grotesque bat wings or tentacles didn't sprout. Hélio Veras's symbiosis was the perfection the Parasite had always sought.

  His skin hardened into a shell of biological porcelain, encrusted with veins of liquid gold. Four blades of immaculate bone emerged from his forearms, and his eyes became flames of pure mana.

  He wasn't a swamp monster; he was a being of polished, elegant destruction. The Apex.

  "Come, my son," Hélio's voice reverberated in the room, charged with energy. "Show me what you learned from the garbage out there."

  I didn't answer. My Black Crystal arm howled with a shrill frequency.

  I walked forward. Not for the survival of humanity. Not for my team outside.

  But for the euthanasia of my own mother.

  The final confrontation against the Creator had begun.