Experiment X

Xeno-shift

No... she was still herself.

She pressed her palm flat against the diagnostic table, grounding herself, and launched a new program. If she was going to figure this out, she needed to run simulations—modeling what the mutated sequence was doing in her body. The calculations flooded the display in flowing streams of code and biological markers, and Aria's eyes narrowed behind her thick lenses as she focused on what she did best: dissecting complexity.

"Think," she murmured. "Is it a parasitic integration? No—there's no immune response. Is it symbiotic? Possibly. Mutually beneficial... but no signs of immune suppression, no overactive cell division. Not a virus. Not a bacterium. Something subtler. Genetic rewriting?"

Her fingers danced over the virtual keyboard, pulling data from old sequences and layering them against the new patterns found in her blood. The differences were minimal—perhaps only 0.0003% of her genome had changed. Yet within that decimal point lay something she couldn't explain: entire structures of genetic information never seen in human biology. Entire sections of non-coding DNA had become active.

Impossible.

But it's happening.

She pulled up the integrated protein simulation, watching as the foreign gene began expressing itself in her cells. It was slow—so slow that it might take weeks to manifest in any detectable way. But it was happening. The foreign code was adapting to her body, not fighting it. It was learning her. Like a language being translated in real-time.

"Is it triggered by proximity?" she murmured aloud. "Is it airborne? Transdermal? Was it... intentional?"

She pulled up the environmental logs from the last few days—every moment she'd been in the cell with Specimen X. Oxygen levels, temperature, pressure, her own biometrics—all there. On the day she'd spent the most time with him, the oxygen-carbon mix had shifted slightly, possibly altered by the alien's respiration. Was that how it happened?

Or had it been... contact?

Her mind raced back to the moment she'd stood closest to him—when she'd brought him the sandwich. His eyes had watched her with terrifying focus, silver and sharp, as if he had known something she didn't. She'd barely touched the vial from his sample after that. No blood had spilled. No skin had been pierced. And yet...

"What are you?" she whispered, staring at his DNA on the secondary screen. "And what did you do to me?"

She sat down heavily in her chair, gripping the armrests as the realization settled deeper into her. This wasn't a fluke. The precision of the mutation—the elegance of the expression—suggested a design. Not random, not incidental. Purposeful.

And that terrified her more than anything else.

Her logical mind tried to regain control. She was a scientist. A brilliant one. Logic, data, and precision were her compass. Emotions clouded analysis. Fear blurred fact. What she needed now was a control group. Multiple samples. Tests on the lab equipment. Tests on the air filters. Anything to prove this wasn't some horrific accident that would eventually turn her into something unrecognizable.

Start at the source.

She began building a model—a hypothetical infection path: exposure point, rate of gene transfer, systemic integration over time. The chart grew rapidly, branching into variations, probabilities, and projections. As she worked, her breathing evened out, her mind laser-focused.

But then her hand paused again. Her fingers flexed. There it was—that small, strange feeling again. Nothing painful. No change in skin texture, no tingle in her spine, no electrical surges through her nerves. But a... pressure. Like her body was trying to whisper something to her, in a language she hadn't learned yet.

Her breath caught.

"What if..." she whispered, her voice almost inaudible. "What if this... isn't sickness? What if this is evolution?"

The thought was blasphemous to the logical part of her. Evolution didn't happen in real time. Not like this. But X wasn't from Earth. He wasn't bound by the same rules. His genome didn't mutate—it rewrote. And if it could rewrite itself to survive any environment, then what would happen if it found a compatible host?

Someone like her?

The screen blinked as the simulations processed. The results weren't conclusive. But they hinted at something staggering. Neural recalibration. Faster synaptic response times. Protein regeneration. Visual processing enhancements. Her eyes widened, and she adjusted her glasses again—but this time, she thought she saw the screen just a little more clearly.

A few seconds later, her glasses slipped down her nose again. She frowned, pushed them back up. Was that real? Or her imagination?

She stood from her chair slowly and crossed the lab to the small mirror above the decontamination sink. She leaned in and stared at her reflection—same pale face, same sharp jawline, same untamed white-blonde hair in a messy braid over her shoulder.

But her eyes... her irises shimmered slightly under the light. Not just violet. Not entirely. For a brief moment, she thought she saw silver.

Her breath hitched. She stumbled back.

"No," she whispered. "Not yet. It's too soon."

She whirled back to the console, saving her progress, encrypting the files. No one could see this. Not until she knew more. Not until she understood whether this was a gift... or a curse. She looked at the file marked "Specimen X – Genomic Core Pattern," and her heart pulsed with equal parts fear and fascination. Whatever had begun inside her—it wasn't just a mutation.

It was a transformation.