Ross and I arrived at my mother's Berlin mansion just past twilight. The air was unusually still, as if the estate itself was holding its breath. Her towering home—once a place of warmth and curiosity—now felt…watchful. Every creak in the wooden floor, every flicker of the antique chandelier whispered of things better left untouched.
We entered the library.
A room she guarded like a dragon over gold.
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined with journals, manuals, and ancient pharmacology texts—each a testament to her brilliance. But it wasn't the books that drew me. It was the cabinet in the far corner—the one that required her biometric key, now bypassed thanks to my years of observing her routines.
Inside, buried beneath papers yellowed by time, I found her doctoral thesis.
"Medicine: Is It a Cure... or Can It Evolve?"
The title alone unsettled me. I flipped through its pages—dense research on gene editing, neural rewiring, psychopharmacology. My mother was questioning the very essence of healing. She wasn't content with curing disease—she wanted to reshape humanity.
And then it happened.
As I turned a page, something slid out and landed beside me with a soft thwap.
A blueprint, brittle and faded.
At first glance, it was the layout of the factory. But not the one I knew. This version had layers below the known infrastructure. A three-tiered substructure with unfamiliar rooms labeled Stasis Hall, Neural Isolation Chamber, and Anima Lab: L-3.
Ross leaned in. "This… wasn't on the regular maps. What the hell is this place?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't. Because at the center of the blueprint, outlined in thick red ink, was a room marked:
"EVO Core - Project: Reaching the Beyondness"
We both felt it—that moment when curiosity turns to dread.
The next morning, I declared an unplanned "maintenance holiday" and cleared the factory.
The halls, usually humming with machinery and chatter, now echoed with our footsteps. Cold. Hollow. Wrong.
We walked toward the rear wing—the exact location marked in red on the blueprint. I held my breath and swiped my mother's access card across the control panel.
A soft click.
And then the ground shook.
A deep mechanical whir filled the corridor. The floor beneath our feet began to shift—tiles separating like puzzle pieces, steel panels folding away, revealing a staircase spiraling downward, lit by a faint, pulsating red glow.
Ross staggered back.
"I don't like this, man. This isn't science—it's something else."
But I had to know. I had to see.
We descended.
The air grew colder, denser, tinged with antiseptic and rust. We emerged into a corridor lined with surgical lights and walls of glass. Monitors blinked in standby mode, displaying biometric data. Oxygen levels. Heart rates. Brainwave activity.
And then we saw them.
Glass pods.
Rows of them. Suspended within were human bodies—clothed in hospital gowns, motionless, eyes shut… but faces twisted in silent anguish. Some had ports drilled into their temples, others had IV lines feeding a clear, shimmering fluid that glowed faintly in the dark.
It wasn't coma.
It wasn't sleep.
It was containment.
Ross was already backing away, shaking his head. "Are they alive?"
I stepped forward and checked the display beside one of the chambers.
Subject #23-B
Age: 28
Condition: Phase II Neural Expansion
Status: Pulse Active, Cognition… Unknown
Notes: "Delayed rejection. Serum 9B shows partial integration with limbic override protocols."
What… was this?
I turned to the next pod. Another subject—this time, marked with brainwave scans overlaying their emotional cortex.
Fear. Panic. Suppression.
They were awake, somewhere deep inside their own minds—but trapped.
And then my eyes found the far wall.
A massive control console with a single monitor displaying a logo I had never seen before:
PROJECT: REACHING THE BEYONDNESS
"Where Medicine Ends, We Begin."
I scanned the surrounding terminals, pulling up files. Fragmented logs, encrypted experiments. One note read:
"Subject exhibited post-death cognitive spikes—neural activity persisted for 48 seconds after cardiac arrest. Using serum 9B, we maintained a partial link. Not dead. Not alive. Something… between."
Another simply said:
"Pain is the threshold. To go beyond, one must endure the shattering of form."
And there—sitting behind the monitor—I found a notebook. Handwritten. Recognizable. My mother's handwriting.
In it, a final chilling entry:
"I no longer seek to heal. I seek to transcend. Evolution is not physical—it is the unlocking of consciousness itself. These are not victims… they are pioneers."I felt Ross tug my arm. He had seen enough. I nodded, though I barely registered it.
Because beyond those words, beyond the pods, beyond the clinical horror—was one last door. Locked. Reinforced. Marked with a warning.
"EVO CORE ACCESS RESTRICTED: GENOME IMPRINT REQUIRED."
I stared at the scanner. Then at my hand.
And I knew…
My mother had designed this entire thing—for me.