CHAPTER 3 — THE STORM BEYOND

  Station Aethra Prime — Orbiting Echelon-9, Capital of the Galactic Union

  The chamber was built in silence.

  No voices. No arguments. Just minds tethered together by telepathic relay, thoughts moving faster than sound could carry.

  It was called The Crown Room—a war council unlike any other. Here, the leaders of every recognized human-aligned system gathered to face the unthinkable.

  A second Earth had emerged.

  Not a planet. Not a ship.

  A civilization.

  Identical to their own. And coming straight for them.

  “I want answers,” came a voice—mental, loud, and ragged.

  High Executor Veyl, commander of the Dominion Armada, floated above the others in an exo-gravity chamber. His right arm had been replaced years ago—black alloy with psionic conduits running through it like veins.

  “They appeared across seven sectors at once,” his voice boomed. “No jump trace. No distortion field. Just arrival.”

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  A woman seated at the lower tier opened her mind calmly.

  “Because they didn’t travel,” she said. “They unfolded.”

  “Dr. Nasiri?” Veyl’s tone tightened. “You’ve studied dimensional theory. Are you suggesting this is… what, a parallel version of us?”

  Nasiri’s eyes glowed faintly violet.

  “No. Worse.”

  She rose, spreading a starmap in the middle of the chamber. Systems blinked—some red, some still yellow.

  “This is a mirror lineage. Not from another world. Not from another time. These are the remnants of a discarded version of us. An engineered variant humanity forgot existed.”

  Gasps, mental spikes, and bursts of emotion rippled through the chamber.

  “The Echo Initiative,” whispered one of the Martian delegates. “That was just rumor. Genetic experiments in the early Exodus years. Failed superhuman prototypes. Lost in deep voids.”

  “They weren’t lost,” Nasiri said. “They were imprisoned.”

  She flicked a thought toward the map.

  “And now they’re waking up. One after another.”

  Silence.

  Then Veyl spoke, voice grim.

  “How many do you believe exist?”

  Dr. Nasiri didn’t look up.

  “Too many.”

  Meanwhile — Deep Orbit of Unmarked Moon Z7-A, Forbidden Zone

  A single ship floated above a dead moon.

  Small. Silent. Not military. Not civilian.

  Inside it, a boy with silver eyes was humming. Watching Earth on a cracked holoscreen.

  His name was Zero.

  He wasn’t born. He wasn’t made. He was remembered.

  And he smiled as the signal pulsed from the Valkyrion’s broadcast.

  “Finally,” he said, reaching for the strange device embedded in his chest. “We’re home.”

  Back on the Valkyrion, Lys was watching the DNA sequence again.

  Still hers. Still perfect.

  But this time... it began to change.

  One base pair at a time.

  Rewriting.

  And at the bottom, a name appeared. Not hers.

  PROJECT: LYS-0001-B — OBSOLETE

  Lys didn’t breathe.

  Not because she forgot—

  —but because for a second, her body stopped responding at all.