Chapter 9: The Antibody Protocol

While the smoke cleared over the Equatorial Front, a different kind of excavation was happening beneath the capital of Aethelgard.

Ambrosio III walked through the Forbidden Library, a subterranean cathedral carved from a single, massive geode. The walls weren’t lined with books or drives, but with resonating crystals that hummed with a low, constant vibration.

“You don’t write history,” Ambrosio whispered, running his hand over a glowing violet shard. “You sing it.”

“The stone remembers the song,” Councilor Lyra said, walking beside him. She eyed the Terran clone with a mixture of scientific curiosity and wariness. He was a biological marvel to her—a being grown, not born, yet possessing a soul that felt strangely static compared to the rhythmic life-force of her people. “But there are songs here that are forbidden. The Songs of the Origin.”

“We need to hear them, Lyra,” Ambrosio said, stopping at a pedestal marked with a jagged, spiraling rune that seemed to vibrate against his retina. “Your Matriarch saw what our ‘chemistry’ did to the Hollow Ones. If you want to win this war, we need to understand the enemy. Not just how to kill them, but what they are. Is this the Gaia Hypothesis gone wrong? A planetary autoimmune disorder?”

Lyra hesitated, then placed her hand on the crystal. She hummed a low note, a key that unlocked the data stored within the atomic lattice.

The crystal flared. A holographic projection—not of light, but of sound converted to visual syntax by Ambrosio’s wrist-comp—filled the air. It showed the planet, Teegarden b, pulsing with a green rhythm. Then, it showed the civilization rising. And then, the black spots appearing.

[Accessing the crystal matrix,] the AI whispered in Ambrosio’s ear. [Downloading… holy mother of code. Junior, look at this.]

Ambrosio projected the data onto his own interface, overlaying it with biological schematics.

“Lyra,” Ambrosio said, his voice trembling. “This isn’t an invasion map. It’s a biological response chart. What is the ‘Planetary Immune System’?”

Lyra stiffened. “It is the legend of the Progenitors. They say the planet is alive. That if a civilization becomes… malignant… the planet wakes up to cleanse it.”

[The Hollow Ones,] the AI realized, its voice grim. [They aren’t invaders. They are antibodies.]

---

The Resilience of Cancer

Ambrosio sat heavily on the stone steps, his mind racing. He frantically cross-referenced the new data with the corrupted files from Earth’s own demise—the files they had brought on the Epilogue.

The graphs aligned perfectly.

“It wasn’t a virus,” Ambrosio whispered, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. “Earth wasn’t just sick. It was resetting.”

[Correct,] the AI confirmed, projecting a timeline of Earth’s history next to the Aethelgardian data. [Teegarden b is a healthy planet. It has biomass. So its immune response is physical: monsters to prune the herd. But Earth… Earth was drained. Dead. It had no biomass to create monsters. So its immune system manifested internally.]

“The epidemics,” Ambrosio murmured, his eyes scanning the timeline of human suffering. “The Great Plagues. We always thought they were random tragedies. Bad luck. But look at the timing.”

He pointed to the spikes in the data.

“The Black Death appeared when we first strained the carrying capacity of the medieval world. The Spanish Flu struck when we industrialized warfare on a global scale. The AE-Virus emerged when we started geo-engineering.”

“Planetary fevers,” Lyra noted, understanding the metaphor. “The world trying to burn out the infection.”

“Exactly,” Ambrosio stood up, pacing. “But we were resilient. That was our greatest strength and our fatal flaw. We fought back. We masked up. We vaccinated. We invented antibiotics. We refused to die. We were a malignant cancer that learned to survive the chemotherapy.”

[So the host changed tactics,] the AI concluded. [If it couldn’t kill the organism with fever, it would corrupt the instruction set. It induced an Error Catastrophe—Eigen’s Paradox. It pushed our mutation rate beyond the threshold of viability. The Gene Rot.]

“A cellular kill-switch,” Ambrosio finished. “And the Eve Corruption… that was the sterilization protocol. It targeted the X-chromosome because it is the carrier of our cognitive and immune blueprints. By destabilizing it, the planet ensured that even if we escaped, we would be a dead-end lineage. We weren’t cursed by God, Lyra. We were evicted by the Great Filter.”

Lyra looked at the hologram of the dead Earth. “And now you are here. And our planet has woken up to find a new infection.”

“You destroyed your mother,” Lyra said, stepping back, her hand hovering near the crystal as if to shut it down. Her eyes narrowed, the amethyst glow dimming with distrust. “And now you claim to save ours? You sound less like a cure and more like a parasite looking for a new host. You want to infect us with your ‘resilience,’ but your resilience is just stubbornness in the face of natural order.”

“We aren’t a cure,” Ambrosio admitted, his voice low, stepping closer but keeping his hands visible. “We’re a vaccine.”

“A vaccine is a controlled sickness,” Lyra countered, her fingers brushing the interface, ready to purge the data. “You ask us to sever our bond with the world. To become deaf to the Song. To become… like you. Static. Unconnected.”

“The Song is a kill signal, Lyra,” Ambrosio said, pointing to the red spikes on the projection. “It’s not a lullaby; it’s a command code for apoptosis. Cellular suicide. The planet isn’t your mother right now; it’s a cold, biological system trying to balance an equation. And you are the variable it wants to zero out.”

Lyra looked at the projection of Earth—grey, ruined, silent. “Better to die in harmony than live as an aberration. To be an orphan in the universe.”

“Is it?” Ambrosio challenged. “Look at us. We are orphans. We are broken. We are rotting. But we are here. We survived the Great Filter because we refused to accept the verdict. We broke the rules.”

He reached out, placing his hand over hers on the crystal console. He didn’t pull it away; he just held it there.

“The planet wants to recycle you,” Ambrosio whispered. “It wants to turn your memories into stone songs for the next species to find in a million years. I am offering you a choice: Do you want to be a beautiful memory etched in this crystal, or do you want to be a living species that writes its own future?”

Lyra looked at his hand—flesh and blood, warm, alien—covering her own violet skin. She looked at the data, the undeniable mathematical proof of their extinction. The “harmony” she cherished was a suicide pact.

“A vaccine,” she repeated, the word tasting like ash. “A dead version of the virus that teaches the body how to fight.”

“Exactly,” Ambrosio nodded. “If you want your people to live, Lyra, you have to stop being the planet’s children. You have to grow up. And growing up means leaving home.”

Ambrosio stood, offering a hand to Lyra. “I need to return to the ship to prepare the synthesis. You need to go to your Council. They won’t listen to a machine, but they might listen to the Keeper of Archives.”

Lyra took his hand, her grip firm. “Go. I will prepare the way.”

---

The Unnatural Choice

Aboard the Epilogue

The mood in the lab was frantic. Dr. Sibyl’s vital signs were dropping on the long-range monitor. The stasis pod was struggling to maintain her pattern.

“We have the key,” Ambrosio III told Dan via the comms link. Dan was still on the surface, piloting the Centurion-X. “The natives resist the Hollow Ones because they are ‘in tune’ with the planet’s frequency. They are part of the healthy ecosystem. But that’s why they’re losing. The antibodies are designed to reabsorb them.”

“So we can’t be cured?” Dan asked, his voice distorted by the suit’s comms.

“Not by fighting it,” Ambrosio III said. “We have to trick the system. We need to combine the ‘Clean’ genetic baseline of a native with the ‘Resistant’ markers of my Altamura DNA. The Neanderthal genome is old—older than the reset protocol. It’s ‘Genetic Static.’ It refuses the signal.”

“In simple terms, Ambrosio,” Dan interrupted.

“It is a shadow,” Lyra’s voice cut through the static, surprising them. She was listening from the command tent. “A note the planet cannot hear. If it cannot hear us, it cannot command us to die.”

“We can’t use the casualties,” Dan said, his voice tight over the link. “You said they were contaminated.”

“Correct,” Ambrosio nodded. “The Hollow Ones rewrite the genetic code upon death. It’s useless sludge.”

“Then grab a volunteer,” Dan argued. “A soldier. Take a biopsy. We don’t need the whole person, just the cells, right?”

“We tried simulations on isolated tissue,” Ambrosio sighed, pulling up a failed projection. “It doesn’t work. The Aethelgardian biology is symbiotic, Dan. It relies on the planet’s background radiation—the ‘Song’—to regulate cellular function. But right now, that Song is a kill signal.”

“Then why are they still standing?” Dan asked. “Why hasn’t the planet just switched them off?”

“Because they are fighting it,” Ambrosio replied. “Every time they use their Ethereal Fire, they are wrestling energy from a source that wants them dead. It’s why they are exhausted. It’s why the Hollow Ones target the magic users first. The planet is trying to starve them out, and when that fails, it sends the wolves.”

“So we can’t use a sample because…”

“Because without the host’s will to force the cells to function, the tissue obeys the planet and dies. Or, if we introduce the Altamura serum—which acts as ‘Genetic Static’ to block the signal—the sample dies of withdrawal. It needs a living system to survive the transition from ‘Symbiosis’ to ‘Independence’. We need a host strong enough to survive the Silence.”

[We need a living bio-reactor,] the AI interjected. [A host with a consciousness strong enough to consciously reject the planet’s command to die while the rewrite happens. We need a female donor willing to undergo the synthesis. It will be… painful. It requires a complete blood transfusion and bone marrow restructuring. She has to become ‘unnatural’ to survive the reset.]

The comms channel fell silent.

In the command tent on the surface, the holographic table flickered, casting long shadows over the faces of the Council. They were all there—some in person, others projected from the crumbling frontlines.

“Madness,” Councilor Voros spat, her projection distorted by the interference of battle. “We do not offer our blood to machines. If a sacrifice is needed, take a prisoner from the obsidian mines. A condemned soul has nothing to lose.”

“It is not a sacrifice, Councilor,” Ambrosio’s voice cut in over the link. “It is a siege. The moment we begin the rewrite, the planet will scream at the donor to die. A weak mind—a prisoner, a conscript—will snap. They will listen to the command and their heart will simply stop. We need someone with the spiritual density of a Champion. Someone who can look god in the eye and say ‘No’.”

“Then send Champion Vesper,” Elder Cato urged, his hands trembling. “She is of the Silent Veil. Her mind is a fortress. She is female.”

“Vesper is holding the Northern Ridge,” Matriarch Valerius said, her voice cutting through the debate. She pointed to the map, where the northern sector was blinking critical red. “If we pull her from the line for this procedure, the flank collapses, and the Hollows take the city before the synthesis is even half done.”

“There are High Priestesses,” Councilor Lyra suggested desperately. “Acolytes of the Spire?”

“Too attuned,” Ambrosio rejected. “They love the Song too much. They are trained to harmonize, not to resist. We need someone who understands the power but is willing to break it.”

Valerius looked at her hands. She felt the Spire Arts flowing through her—the connection to the planet that defined her existence. It was warm. It was safe. And it was killing them.

“It cannot be a soldier, for we need them on the wall,” Valerius reasoned, her amethyst eyes hardening. “It cannot be a follower, for they will not fight the voice of their god. It must be a leader.”

“Matriarch, no,” Cato whispered, realizing where her logic led. “To sever the connection… it is spiritual suicide. You will be deaf to the Spire. You will be… like them. An abomination.”

Lyra stepped forward, her eyes darting between the holographic data and her leader. “The logic holds, Matriarch,” she admitted, her voice shaking. “The Archives, the patterns… the facts align. We are fighting a planetary immune response. But consider the cost.”

She gripped Valerius’s arm. “If this fails, you die, and we are leaderless in the dark. If it succeeds… you will be severed. The people revere the connection. A Matriarch without the Song? They will not see a savior; they will see a heretic. You will save them only to be rejected by them. You will lose your power, and likely your throne.”

“Better an abomination than a memory,” Valerius said, gently removing Lyra’s hand. She looked at Voros, then Cato. “The Council debates while the city burns. I am done debating.”

She stepped up to the comms unit, overriding the Council’s protests.

“I will do it.”

The voice came through the comms channel, steady and resolute. Matriarch Valerius stood in the command tent on the surface, looking at the hologram of the Earth ship. She had been listening.

“Matriarch,” Dan said, his mech stepping closer to the tent. “This process… it will strip you of your connection to the Spirit Arts. You will be cut off from the planet’s song. You will be like us. Deaf to the world.”

“The planet’s song is a funeral dirge,” Valerius said, her voice hard. She looked at her hands, where the clean, white fire flickered weakly, biting at her skin like a trapped animal. “The power resists us now. It burns the wielder. We are drawing from a poisoned well.”

“My people are dying,” she continued. “The Hollow Ones hunt us because we hold the fire. They adapt to our magic because it comes from the same source. But they cannot adapt to you. To your ‘Chemistry’. To your resilience.”

She looked up at the massive steel face of Dan’s war machine.

“To save my people,” Valerius said, “I must become a monster. Bring me up.”

---

The Synthesis Begins

The shuttle ride to orbit was silent. Valerius sat strapped into the jump seat, watching her world shrink through the viewport. Beside her, Councilor Lyra clutched a data crystal, her eyes wide as she took in the cold, metallic interior of the star-ship.

When they arrived on the Epilogue, Valerius didn’t marvel at the technology. She walked straight to the lab. Lyra followed, stepping cautiously into the room where science had replaced nature.

“Lie down,” Ambrosio III said gently, gesturing to the synthesis table.

Valerius lay back. The medical restraints clicked into place.

Lyra stepped forward, watching Ambrosio prepare a vial of blue liquid. “Is this… you?” she asked, looking at the clone’s perfect physique and then at the serum. “Are you making her into you?”

“No,” Ambrosio shook his head, handing Lyra a datapad. “This is the log of my birth. I was born in this vat, a celestial orphan. Grown from the last viable scrap of ancient code. I am a patch—a male clone stabilized by the Altamura Y-chromosome. It acts as a legacy anchor, holding my genome together against the rot.”

“And the females?” Lyra asked, scrolling through the cascading error logs of the Terran attempts.

“Dead ends,” Ambrosio admitted, his voice heavy. “The Eve Corruption. Our X-chromosomes are shattered. We can’t revive our own women because the blueprint is too damaged. That is why we need Valerius. She has the clean baseline we lost centuries ago.”

He held up the vial. “This isn’t just my DNA. It is a modified strain. It doesn’t rewrite her into a Terran. It grafts the ‘Resistant’ markers onto her existing cells. It teaches her biology how to ignore the planet’s command.”

“Does this make her… your kin?” Lyra asked, looking between them with sudden concern. “In our laws, sharing blood creates a bond of siblings. It would complicate the succession.”

“It’s not a reproductive mixing,” Ambrosio corrected gently. “It’s a graft. Like patching a stone wall with a different kind of mortar. She won’t be my sister, Lyra. She will be a chimera—two songs singing in one body. But she remains the Matriarch.”

“A shield,” Lyra whispered, accepting the distinction. “Not a transformation, but an inoculation.”

“It will feel like a war,” Ambrosio warned, turning to the Matriarch. “It contains the genetic memory of a species that survived the ice. It is stubborn. It is brutal. It will fight your own cells for dominance.”

“Begin,” Valerius whispered.

The needle pierced her skin.

The reaction was instantaneous. Valerius arched her back, a scream tearing from her throat that wasn’t human—it was the sound of a soul being torn from its roots.

And miles below, on the surface, the ground cracked.

[Seismic alert!] the AI screamed, the bridge lights turning red. [Massive subterranean movement detected globally. The planet senses the anomaly. It senses the synthesis.]

On the screens, the thermal maps of the cities turned white. The Hollow Ones weren’t just attacking the frontlines anymore. They were erupting from the streets, from the plazas, from the very foundations of Aethelgard.

“It’s an immune response,” Ambrosio yelled over the alarms. “The planet is going into anaphylactic shock!”

“Keep the synthesis running!” Dan roared from the surface, his rotary cannon spinning up as the ground beneath his mech shattered. “We’ll hold the line! Just wake her up!”