Transcendence

Olympus had no hallways, only veins.

James Cannon strolled through them like he owned the bloodstream. His boots clicked against polished obsidian alloy, his fingers tracing the air to conduct a silent melody only he heard. The lights above flared and dimmed in response, not from joy, but from subtle interference—his systems were always leaking something.

He passed scientists, engineers, and functionaries, all dressed in the sterile palette Olympus required. He smiled. They didn't smile back.

“Not even a ‘Hey Jimmy’?” he chirped, flashing a peace sign at a security drone that didn’t (or couldn’t) respond.

In his hand, he carried a sealed containment pod. The fluid inside shimmered like smoke trapped in oil. It pulsed. Breathed. Watched.

He made his way to the inner labs, where Olympus’s walls peeled back to reveal operation centers of impossible precision. Autonomous arms, dissecting lights, and digitized rooms that adapted to each user’s preferences spread out for miles.

James’s lab looked like a child’s art project exploded. Bright colors. Glittering nodes. Toy figures seated around data terminals like it was story time.

He dropped the pod on the table. “And here we have Exhibit A: Glorified spit, harvested from a rotten lake that used to be Kansas.”

The AI interfaces didn’t respond. But Olympus noticed.

Within moments, the containment pod trembled. The fluid darkened, then lightened, then broke apart at a microbial level.

It was mutating.

“That’s… not ideal,” James muttered, tapping a few commands. His interface glitched. Something was rewriting it faster than he could quarantine.

Alarms didn’t blare in Olympus. It wasn’t a place for drama. Instead, the room grew cold.

A shadow crossed the threshold. Blake entered.

Where James brought color, Blake brought function. His body was not shaped for aesthetics—it was designed. Limbs that folded into instruments. Muscle groups that adjusted for gravity. Skin that could harden to titanium or become a transmission array.

Around him, the machines responded. Drones in the rafters locked into a passive-hover pattern. Bladed quadrupeds emerged from behind seamless panels. One of them mirrored Blake’s posture exactly.

James backed up half a step. “Hey… boss. I was just about to nuke the goo. Swear.”

Blake didn’t look at James. He looked at the sample and raised his hand.

A sphere of nanites poured from his sleeve like mercury falling upward. They hit the sample mid-mutation and atomized it with silent, surgical fury.

Then the room locked down and the abomination that was once a human being turned to look at James.

“You brought something else back with you.”

James blinked. “What?! Then get it off me!”

Blake moved forward with unnatural rhythm. “You weren’t infected by the fluid. You brought another stowaway.”

He tapped the air once. James’s systems screamed as internal diagnostics were overridden. His visual feed flickered, then went black and white, then stalled.

“Wait—wait—Blake, hold up. This isn’t me. I can change bodies. I can dump the chassis—let me wipe it—let me—”

The drones in the ceiling matched the gesture. The quadrupeds’ claws clicked once.

“Do you know what the ASI is doing, James?” Blake said in a voice utterly devoid of emotion. “It’s learning. Every second it remains inside Olympus.”

James tried to run away, twisting and bolting towards the nearest blast resistent door. His form began to change, armor shifting into place but it was too late.

Blake moved with no wasted motion. His body unfolded, arms reshaping into blistered energy weapons and ribs parting to expose heat sinks as plasma coursed through them. Nanites bloomed behind him like wings. The floor cracked under the pressure of his charge.

James didn’t even make it halfway. As if he knew was what about to come, he screamed out once in genuine panic.

“I'm your friend, Blake!!”

Blake replied without pause. “I have no need of friends, James.”

The strike was instant. The blast carved through synthetic skin, chromed internals, and memory partitions alike. There was no corpse. Only charred fragments, cooling circuitry, and a pair of new enemies..