“Probably.” She shrugged. “I’ve never been good at doing the safe thing.”
Alina nodded understandingly. “Rhyx was in a cavern in the mountains. I went looking for an unusual biochemical signal and I found him, along with an ecosystem that couldn’t possibly exist.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure what would have happened if I hadn’t found him. Perhaps the planet would have given birth to him as well.”
“The emergence chambers were designed to activate in response to specific conditions.” Adjar leaned forward, his attention sharpening. “Temperature changes. Atmospheric shifts. Geological patterns that indicated the possibility of sustainable survival.”
“You remember that?” Rhyx asked suspiciously.
“Only fragments. I would have been briefed on the preservation systems before entering stasis, but I’ve only regained a few of those memories.”
“I have no such memories.” Rhyx’s hands clenched on the table surface. “I remember training, preparing for battles that never came. And then… darkness. Waking up to a world I don’t recognize with a body that feels wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“This was not my original form.” Rhyx’s voice cracked slightly. “Much of it is human.”
Alina looked over at Adjar. “You appear to be closer to your original form. Is that correct?”
“I am not the same as I was,” he admitted. “But my memories are not clear enough to be sure of the differences. My mate found a significant amount of human DNA in my system.”
“As well as what appear to be the same type of nanites that were involved in the cyborg transformations,” she added. “R-339 mentioned a connection?”
“Yes. When Rhyx first emerged, I ran every scan I could on him. The results were… confusing. He’s clearly not human, but just as you found, there is human DNA in his cellular structure. And his bloodstream also contains the same type of nanites.”
“That’s not possible,” she said automatically. “Cyborg technology was developed on Earth, and it’s not even a hundred years old.”
“That’s what I thought. But the matches were too precise to be coincidental.” Alina pulled out a small tablet, swiping through data files. “Look at this—these are protein folding patterns from Rhyx’s blood samples. And these are from a standard cyborg neural interface. The underlying structure is identical.”
She studied the comparisons, her geologist’s brain trying to make sense of biochemical data she wasn’t trained to interpret. But even to her untrained eye, the similarities were striking.
“You’re suggesting that cyborg technology is based on ancient Martian genetics?”
“No. In fact I think it’s the opposite. I think that the arrival of cyborg technology was one of the triggers to start the awakening.” Alina set the tablet down. “I told you that I found Rhyx in a cavern with a thriving ecosystem. I didn’t tell you that several months prior to that, another ranger found a similar cavern. He was wounded at the time and his blood was… absorbed by the plants in the cavern.”
“You think that one cyborg’s blood set all this in motion?” she asked incredulously.
“Not entirely. There were already other developments such as hidden ecosystems and the appearance of lower life forms. But I think the cyborg blood may have been the final trigger.”
“Does that seem possible?” she asked Adjar.
He hesitated for a long moment, then finally nodded.
“I know there are specific triggers. It’s possible this was one of them, although I suspect it was based on the capability rather than the specific method.”
“Perhaps that’s why GenCon is searching for the two of you,” Alina said thoughtfully. “If they understand the connection between ancient Martian DNA and cyborg technology…"
"They'd want to control the source," Rhyx finished. "So they want to capture specimens and experiment on them. They will take what they need and destroy anything that might threaten their monopoly."
“We need to know what GenCon actually knows,” she said. “Are they reacting to the emergences as they happen, or did they predict them somehow? Did they cause them?”
“Cause them?” Alina looked startled. “How could they cause something like this?”
“The seismic anomalies. The localized temperature shifts.” Her mind was racing now, pulling together fragments of information. “What if they found a way to trigger an emergence? Perhaps at a specific site where they could control the recovery.”
“They couldn’t have triggered mine,” Adjar said. “The polar region is too remote. You said there were no GenCon facilities anywhere near your claim.”
“But the research station where Alina worked was very close to where I emerged,” Rhyx said slowly. “I don’t believe they triggered it, but I think they knew enough to search for it.”
“They had just started running deep-penetration scans.” Alina’s face had gone pale. “I thought it was because I had done something to arouse their suspicion.”
