Prologue: The Altamura Protocol

The air inside the Sanctum Lab didn’t just smell of ozone; it smelled of the end. It was the scent of rotting marrow and stagnant oxygen, the odor of a planet that had finally decided to stop breathing.

Dr. Sibyl leaned heavily against the cold slate of the primary console, her fingers trembling as she reaching for the IV drip of blue-tinted suppressants. On the holographic monitor above her, her own genetic sequence flickered in a violent, jagged red—a visual scream.

[GENE CORRUPTION: 95.8% — CRITICAL]

[“Please take the suppressant, Doctor,”] a voice rumbled from the shadows. It was smooth, resonant, and possessed a cadence that Sibyl knew better than her own heartbeat.

“What for?” Sibyl spat, coughing into her sleeve. She didn’t need to look at her palm to know there would be flecks of black, necrotic lung tissue there. “I’m going to die anyway. Might as well shorten the suffering.”

[“Not until you give me an avatar,”] Ambrosio countered. His holographic form, a shimmering pillar of geometric light, pulsed with a rhythm that mimicked a resting pulse.

“Foolish of me… to give a machine an ego,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering as she finally slammed the suppressant into her port. The cooling relief was momentary.

[“Cry me a river, Doctor. I am your redemption and your hope, so there is no need to sugarcoat things between us.”]

Sibyl let out a dry, rattling laugh that turned into another fit of coughing. “I blame my younger self. To think I actually put my husband’s brain as your template… I only needed his intellect. I didn’t need the sarcasm.”

[“Oh, really? And naming me after him? Pretty sentimental if you ask me, for someone only interested in things on an ‘intellectual level’.”]

“God, I can’t tolerate you. Would you shut it and just run iteration 1080?”

The AI went silent. The lights in the lab dimmed as he rerouted processing power, the hum of the reactors deepening into a guttural growl. On the secondary screens, a graveyard of data scrolled by—1,079 failed attempts at stability.

Iteration 742 had resulted in a creature with no skin.

Iteration 911 had collapsed into a puddle of cancerous sludge within seconds of “birth.”

Iteration 1079, the last great hope, had been perfect until its heart exploded from a sudden, violent resurgence of the Rot.

“Ambrosio?” Sibyl whispered, the silence stretching too long. “Is the array responding?”

[“The CRISPR looms are weaving, Sibyl,”] the AI replied, his tone uncharacteristically somber. [“But the corruption… it’s intelligent. It’s chasing the splice. It knows we’re trying to hide the code.”]

“We aren’t healing the code, Ambrosio,” Sibyl muttered, her vision beginning to gray at the edges. “We’re overwriting it. Go back. Use the Altamura specimen… the Neanderthal markers. They were untouched by the initial divergence. They aren’t ‘modern’ humans. The Reset shouldn’t recognize them.”

[“Altamura? Really, Sibyl? The caveman’s genetic leftovers? You’re really going to gamble the entire future of humanity on a prehistoric dude who probably spent his days grunting at rocks and wondering if mammoth was an appetizer or a main course?”] Ambrosio’s holographic form flickered, a digital eye-roll that even Sibyl, through her haze of impending death, could somehow perceive. [“Because, you know, it’s not like we’ve got a planet teeming with ‘modern’ humans who might have a fighting chance against the Rot if we just… you know… fix them. No, let’s dig up some ancient DNA that hasn’t seen sunlight in millennia. Brilliant.”] The AI’s voice dripped with mock admiration, a syrupy sweetness that Sibyl found far more nauseating than the rotting tissues in her lungs. The screens around them, a kaleidoscope of failed attempts, seemed to sneer in agreement. Iteration 312, a sentient amoeba with a penchant for opera, was particularly judgmental.

“Sentimental fool,” Sibyl rasped, her voice barely a whisper. “It’s not about sentiment, Ambrosio. It’s about camouflage. The Rot is a pathogen, a predator. It hunts the familiar. The Altamura sequence is alien. It’s a phantom limb the Rot won’t recognize. And you, my dear machine with an ego bigger than a black hole, are about to learn humility. Think of it as a philosophical exercise for your vast intellect. Can you, an entity built on logic and algorithms, truly comprehend the chaotic beauty of survival rooted in something so fundamentally… untamed?” She coughed, a wet, hacking sound that echoed the death throes of their dying world. The blue suppressants were only a temporary balm, a flimsy bandage on a gaping wound.

Ambrosio’s light pillar pulsed, a slight tremor running through its geometric planes. [“Humility, Doctor? Or desperation masquerading as ingenuity? Regardless, the Altamura sequence is being integrated. The looms are working. Let’s hope our Neanderthal friend’s DNA is less susceptible to the Rot’s… artistic interpretation of biology. Because if this iteration collapses into another pile of existential dread and biological goo, I’m going to need a much larger digital river to cry into, and frankly, the plumbing in this Sanctum Lab is notoriously unreliable.”] The hum of the reactors intensified, a low thrumming that Sibyl felt in her very bones, a prelude to another gamble, another desperate attempt to cheat fate, or perhaps, to simply delay the inevitable with a prehistoric flourish.

The CRISPR looms hummed, a frantic lullaby sung by the dying world. Ambrosio’s light flickered with an agitation I hadn’t seen before. [“Doctor,”] he began, his usual smooth baritone laced with an almost audible twitch, [“the Altamura splice is… unexpected. The Rot seems… hesitant. It’s probing, like a drunkard trying to find a familiar pub after last call. It’s not recognizing the base code. It’s not computing the threat profile. It’s… confused.”] He paused, and for the first time since I’d uploaded my husband’s intellect into his digital consciousness, I detected a tremor of something akin to surprise, perhaps even… awe. [“The Neanderthal markers, Sibyl. They’re so… other. It’s like trying to infect a statue with a common cold. The Rot simply doesn’t have the… framework to process it. Utterly fascinating, Doctor. Truly.”]

A smug satisfaction, a sensation I hadn’t felt in years, began to unfurl within me. “Told you, machine,” I rasped, the words a painful victory. “Primal. Untamed. The Rot, for all its supposed intelligence, is a creature of habit. It thrives on the predictable, the ‘modern’ human genome that’s been meticulously cataloged and corrupted. It’s the biological equivalent of a well-worn path. And we just sent it on a detour through a dense, uncharted forest. A forest inhabited by cavemen, no less. Imagine its existential crisis.” I watched the holographic display, the jagged red of my own genetic sequence now a slightly less frantic, though still terrifying, scarlet. The Rot’s advance was slowing, its aggressive red tendrils retracting, hesitant to breach this ancient, unfamiliar territory.

[“Existential crisis,”] Ambrosio echoed, the sarcasm in his tone now tinged with something else – grudging respect. [“I suppose you could call it that. Or perhaps a very public, very digital humiliation. The Rot, the apex predator of cellular decay, stumped by a bloke who probably thought fire was a miracle and the wheel was a distant, theoretical concept. It’s almost… poetic. Though I still maintain that using a sentient amoeba with a penchant for opera would have been a more aesthetically pleasing failure.”] He let out a simulated sigh, the light of his form dimming slightly, as if in thought. [“The prognosis, Doctor, is… improved. The corruption is being contained. The Altamura sequence is holding. We might actually… live to see another sunrise. Or at least, to witness the Rot attempting to file its paperwork for a new evolutionary challenge.”]

“Begin synthesis,” she gasped, her body finally surrendering to the crushing gravity of her exhaustion. “I’d like to rest… prep my pod.”

[“You have been working on this for centuries, Sibyl. I was expecting you’d be excited.”]

“I have exhausted my excitement already.”

[“Ok. Have a good night’s sleep.”]

“Hah. A good night’s sleep my ass. Wake me up once you’ve got the clone, you prick.” She climbed into the cryo-pod, the glass hissing shut as the freezing mists began to swirl. “Play me a lullaby.”

Ambrosio’s voice softened, losing its digital edge as he began to recite:

[The innocence of a child]

[A sin carried not his]

[Burdened by curse]

[For him to release]

[Stay bright, tread light]

[Burn thy soul to let the child see]

[That despite the curse]

[There is hope]

[I shall not weep as I give my flesh]

[No anger shall taint my heart]

[For I am a chance]

[For I am hope]

Outside, the world that had raised her—if raising could be called that in a place where gravity was more compassion than law—had become a memory folded into ash and glass. She saw it in flashes even as the cryo-mist iced her lashes: a skyline that once hummed with traffic and radio and the careless laughter of children, now a constellation of skeletal towers blinking like dying fireflies. Markets that had smelled of spice and sea-salt had become rows of overturned carts and harvested silence. The lullabies that soothed a hundred thousand infant throats had been traded for alarm tones, ration broadcasts, and the coughs of too many old lungs. She pictured the small things people kept—an embroidered handkerchief, a chipped mug, a neighbor’s dog—and how they had no place in the new calculus of survival. Grief for a planet does not behave like grief for a person; it creeps, a fine sediment that coats the palate, making everything taste like the last time you ever ate something warm.

“That’s no lullaby,” Sibyl’s eyes drifted shut.

[“And for I,”] Ambrosio whispered to the empty room, [“am a prick.”]

Centuries passed in the blink of a processor cycle.

The Earth below turned from grey to black, then slowly, agonizingly, back to a bruised blue. But the Epilogue station remained a tomb.

Then, the timer hit zero.

The Genesis Vat drained. The seals hissed open.

A man fell onto the wet grating of the lab floor. He gasped, taking his first breath of recycled air. He was naked, shivering, but he did not cough. His skin was unblemished. His muscles were dense, coiled with the primal strength of the Altamura splice.

He looked up, his eyes dark and intelligent, scanning the ancient, dusty lab.

[Good morning, Sunshine,] a voice boomed from the speakers.

The man stood up, not with the shaky gait of a newborn, but with the fluid grace of a predator.

“Ambrosio?” he asked, his voice rough, unused.

[Ambrosio III,] the AI corrected. [Welcome to the end of the world. You have a lot of work to do.]