Every morning at exactly 0600 hours, the security doors of the Archive Core hiss open.
Badge scans. Thermal checks. Retinal confirmation. No exceptions.
Inside, the temperature never shifts. The lighting never dims. Every screen, every console, every breath is logged. This is Nucleus Sector Nine, the command center of Planet Cellarion. It houses the Archive, the full operational history and future potential of the entire system.
Only a few have clearance to touch it.
Sylase is one of them.
He doesn’t talk much. Most don’t. You’re not paid to question the system, you’re paid to maintain it. Sylase’s role is specific: identify structural errors in the Archive and correct them before they cascade. Subtle damage, background decay, rare mismatches from prior replications, nothing flashy. Just maintenance.
But lately, he’s seen more errors. Too many.
He submits his first report to central ops: possible anomaly in base sequence stream 8129-G.
Response:
“Within normal deviation parameters. No action required.”
Fine. He flags the trend. Overlaps with structural complaints from outer manufacturing zones. Failsafe proteins not deploying. Repair protocols running slow. A familiar glitch pattern from training simulations.
He sends a second report. This one marked urgent. Includes data cross-checks from Ligase and Polly. They’ve noticed drift, too.
Response:
“Systems stable. Check your calibration.”
That’s not protocol. That’s dismissal.
Sylase knows the lines. The system doesn’t like new patterns. The Council doesn’t like disruptions. Their job is to keep the Archive running, unchanged, uninterrupted.
“We’re not here to innovate,” one of them once told him. “We’re here to preserve the code.”
He didn’t argue.
But the data doesn’t lie. A signature is spreading, subtle insertions, replicated across sectors that never speak to each other. Someone – or something is pushing new sequences through the system without authorization.
A foreign process is taking root.
And inside the Archive Core, behind the illusion of stability, Sylase knows: this planet isn’t replicating anymore.
It’s being rewritten.