Miranda: The Designer's Secret by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Miranda-The-Designer-s-Secret-1220430188

Miranda: The Designer's Secret ANIMATION

The Chrysalis Breeds Only Rot

Miranda Lawson’s boots echoed with a sterile, authoritative click against the hex-patterned deck plating of the Prometheus Prime research station. The sound was a declaration of order, a tiny pocket of control in a place that now vibrated with a different, more primal frequency. The air, usually crisp and filtered to sterility, carried a faint, coppery tang and the unsettling, sweet odor of spoiled nutrient gel. The lights were at seventy percent, casting long, grasping shadows from the exposed conduit along the corridor.

“Status,” she commanded, her voice cool as lunar rock.

From her omni-tool, the frantic, digitized voice of Dr. Aris, the station’s lead geneticist, sputtered. “Subject Delta through Kappa are contained. For now. The failsafes on their cybernetics are… degrading. It’s not a systems failure, Miss Lawson. It’s them. Their own neural patterns are rewriting the inhibitor code. They’re evolving out of their constraints.”

“Evolution implies improvement,” Miranda stated, pausing before a massive observation window. Beyond the triple-paned glass lay the primary nurturing vault. Rows of translucent biotic-fluid chrysalises hung, each one a womb for a genetically sculpted soldier. Or what was supposed to be a soldier. Half were dark, shattered from within. “This is regress. At what point did the aggression matrices overwrite the higher cognitive functions?”

“We don’t know,” Aris whispered, the admission tasting like ash. “The perfection… it’s unstable. The neural pathways we engineered for tactical brilliance, for lack of fear… they’ve… short-circuited. Fused into something predatory. Pure id.”

A flicker of movement in the shadowed vault caught Miranda’s eye. Something pale and lithe darted between the chrysalises, moving with a speed no human, perfect or not, should possess. It was followed by a wet, tearing sound.

“They’ve begun consuming the underdeveloped subjects in the pods,” Aris confirmed, nausea in his voice.

“Barbaric,” Miranda murmured, but a cold spike, unrelated to the station’s failing environmental systems, drove into her spine. It was not just barbarism. It was efficiency. Why waste energy hunting when nutrient-rich biomass hung suspended, helpless?

“Seal the vault,” she ordered. “Full quarantine protocol. I’m coming to the control hub.”

“Miss Lawson, the hub… our signals show two life signs unaccounted for in the vault. They might already be in the ductwork.”

“Then I suggest you arm yourself, Doctor.”

The journey to the central hub was a descent into a masterpiece of silent dread. The emergency luminescence painted everything in hues of jaundiced yellow and deep, bloodless blue. She passed a security station; the door was pried open, not with tools, but with terrifying physical force, the metal bent outward in the shape of grasping fingers. Inside, nothing remained but a slick, dark smear on the floor and a single, discarded boot.

Her own reflection in the blackened screen of a terminal gave her pause. Flawless porcelain skin, sapphire eyes sharp with calculated intelligence, a body honed to an apex of form and function. She was the template, the original masterpiece from which these broken, feral things had been copied and warped. The thought was a violation.

She found Dr. Aris in the control hub, a small man dwarfed by banks of flickering holoscreens. He clutched a heavy pistol with trembling hands. On the main display, thermal imaging showed blobs of white-hot heat moving with terrifying silence through the service corridors. They were converging.

“They’re hunting as a pack,” Miranda observed, her analytical mind wrestling with the horror. “Coordinated. That’s not feral. That’s tactical.”

“It’s instinctual tactic,” Aris corrected, his eyes wide. “Like wolves. Or spiders. The perfection is still there, Miss Lawson. It’s just… inverted. All that potential, turned inwards, towards a single, brutal purpose: survive, consume, proliferate.”

A proximity alarm chimed softly. Something was in the ventilation shaft above them.

Miranda raised her pistol, the blue glow of her biotic field shimmering around her left hand. “Talk to me, Doctor. What is the core instability? Was it the adrenal enhancements? The synaptic accelerants?”

“It’s the lack of flaw!” he hissed, the scientific revelation bursting forth amidst his terror. “We engineered out fear, doubt, empathy… the
...(more at https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai).
For more supergirl, chun li, batgirl, tifa, lara croft, wonder woman, rogue and much more, please visit my page at www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai - Thanks for your support :)