Experiment X

Xeno-shift

Her mind rebelled against the thought. Could he have released something into the air? Was it biological proximity? Or... worse, had it happened the moment she'd looked into his eyes and felt that impossible connection she still couldn't explain?

She opened a new window on the display and uploaded his latest genetic sample—one she'd secretly taken the last time she visited his cell. She ran a side-by-side comparison. As the sequence scrolled upward, her heart began to race again.

There was overlap.

Clear, genetic mirroring—though in her case, the sequences were subdued, passive. Like seeds waiting for activation.

Adaptation, she thought. That's what his DNA does. It shifts, evolves, infects.

Only this wasn't an infection. Not in the traditional sense. It was more like... assimilation.

A sick sort of realization crept through her. His genome wasn't just reactive—it was predatory. It sought out compatible hosts and bonded with them, rewriting its environment to suit itself. And now it was rewriting her.

Her vision blurred for a moment, and she instinctively adjusted her glasses, trying to reorient herself. Was it stress? Panic? Or were her eyes already reacting? She pushed the thought down and forced her attention back to the screen. She needed to log this, document everything.

And yet... she hesitated.

If she reported this discovery, she'd be quarantined—possibly removed from the project entirely. Worse, X could be terminated. If they discovered he'd contaminated a scientist, they'd see him not as a specimen, but as a threat.

But she didn't feel sick. She didn't feel invaded. If anything, she felt alive, more aware of herself than she had in years. Her thoughts moved faster. Her vision—though still blurry without her glasses—seemed to flicker with moments of crispness. Was it psychosomatic? Or was the integration already beginning to enhance her?

She leaned back in her chair, her pulse still erratic. The logic of science told her to record it, to analyze it, to find a control. But the part of her that had stared into X's silver eyes told her something else entirely:

This was meant to happen.

He wanted her to change.

Her fingers hovered over the console, torn between logging the discovery and hiding it. Between following protocol and following instinct. Between being a scientist... and becoming something more.

Then the thought hit her like a thunderclap. What if this is why he let himself be captured? Not to be studied. Not to escape. But to find her. Her blood ran cold. The silence of the lab pressed in around her. Everything she thought she knew—about herself, about her research, about X—fractured into a thousand questions she didn't yet have the courage to ask. But she would. She had to.

Because now, the experiment wasn't just in the cell.

It was inside her.

The lab was too quiet. Aria's fingers hovered over the edge of the console, the last results still glowing on the holographic display in front of her, but her mind had already gone a thousand lightyears ahead.

She straightened her spine, took a deep breath, and began to pace—small, tight circles at first, her bare feet whispering across the smooth lab floor. The biometric scanner had confirmed what she already feared: the foreign sequences weren't static. They were active. Shifting. Merging.

But how?

She pressed her fingers to her temples, breathing slowly through her nose. She didn't feel different. Not in any meaningful, measurable way. Her heart rate was elevated, but that was from stress, not physiological change. Her skin temperature remained stable. Her hands trembled slightly, but she chalked that up to adrenaline and over-caffeination. No visible mutations. No distortion of voice or thought. Her eyes were still poor, her need for glasses just as sharp as before.