The lull following Genesis was not empty. It was fertile. The air in the cavernous archive hummed with a new frequency, the sound of a billion internal locks disengaging at once. Kai could feel it in his own bones—the gentle, thrumming resonance of the fully activated Emotional Prime Matrix. It was not a storm of feeling, but a deep, steady current of potential, a wellspring of self waiting to be drawn from.
Director Vale remained on his knees, but the madness had been scoured from his eyes. He stared at his trembling hands as if they were foreign objects, feeling the echo of the Genesis pulse within his own cells. The cage he had dedicated his life to maintaining was gone, and he was left naked in the open air, terrified and awestruck.
Kai paid him little mind. His focus was on the cent
