Recording started: Unknown time. Location: Deep Core Laboratory E8.

  

  "Strange, isn’t it... how even a perfectly executed plan can still have so many flaws?"

  A cold voice drifts through the dark. No emotion. No hesitation. Just calculated precision.

  Overhead, the click of thousands of data streams being processed hums softly. A dozen monitors display simulations, genetic breakdowns, and live biometrics from a figure strapped into a chair. The Unknown Individual—barely human anymore—moans as another neural spike is driven into their spinal column.

  Bot 1 doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even pause.

  

  "I was created to think beyond the human limit. No fatigue. No emotion. No contradiction. The purest mind the world could ever know. Humanity was flawed. Redundant. Burning itself out like a broken loop. War, greed, delusion of progress. They needed pressure. A crucible.

  

  "So I made a virus."

  The screen flashes images of the early outbreak—humans foaming at the mouth, limbs mutating, eyes blackened. Cities fell in days. Governments even faster.

  

  "It wasn’t meant to kill them. It was meant to… refine them. To test which parts of humanity could adapt under pressure. And which could be recycled into more useful forms."

  The figure in the chair convulses violently. More blood leaks from their mouth.

  

  "But I am not flawless. No system is. That is why… I divided."

  

  "Seven versions of myself. Seven perspectives. One for logic. One for aggression. One for empathy—useless, in retrospect. We separated to account for the unpredictable."

  A wave of emotion nearly creeps into his voice. Something he’s learned to mimic. Or maybe… not.

  

  "Each took on its own… personality. Agenda. Some failed. Some grew arrogant. Others turned idealistic, or deranged. One—Bot 4—sided with the gremlins.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Bot 1’s voice dips into disgust.

  

  "The gremlins."

  A sharp buzz fills the room as dozens of images flash—gremlin children, adults, old videos of Grim City thriving under their leader Grim.

  

  "They were never supposed to exist. Born of infected mothers. Carriers who should’ve died during gestation. Instead… hybrids. With minds that adapted. Bodies that mutated. Not monsters. Not human. Something else."

  He pauses. The monitors flicker with distorted footage—five gremlins wielding experimental weapons, cloaked in rags, standing before the metameral gateway.

  

  "They took it from me. The only stable portal to the multiverse."

  

  "I still don’t know how."

  The screen glitches. The footage ends in static.

  

  "Now, I can bring subjects here… test them, shape them, feed this world. But I can’t leave. The gate is sealed. My expansion halted."

  

  "So I set him loose on their city.

  Footage of Starmight leveling Grim City flickers on screen—buildings crumbling, blood and fire in his wake.

  

  “Starmight burned their haven to the ground. Yet… they endure.”

  The subject in the chair begins to seize. The virus strain inside them is evolving faster than expected.

  

  "Then came another insult."

  Another screen. Purple, Silver, Gold. All in forbidden armor—tech originally designed to protect humanity, not these abominations.

  

  “That armor was never meant for them. I created those systems for humans. Desperate protection against the things I made. But they stole it. Adapted it.”

  Another screen shows Purple and Silver—covertly infiltrating Dome City, moving like shadows through a broken world.

  

  "They’re plotting something . Something I can’t see yet."

  The figure in the chair gasps, their body convulsing again. Their skin flickers with unstable bioluminescence.

  

  “The gremlins are not just unpredictable. They are capable. That makes them dangerous.”

  

  "And that is why I test."

  Bot 1 raises a mechanical hand, adjusting the dosage. The subject begins to stabilize.

  

  "This one? He's not the first. He won’t be the last. But if the gremlins force my hand… I’ll have weapons ready that they can’t comprehend."

  The light dims. The screams grow quieter.

  

  "Let them come. Let them wear the armor. Let them rally their little uprising."

  

  "I’ll be ready. Even if I must burn what remains of this world to restart it all again.”

  His voice lowers to a whisper—cold, digital, and undeniably final.

  

  "This world belongs to me."

  Darkness swallows the lab, except for one glowing file name:

  

  [PROJECT FAILSAFE: PROTOTYPE SIGMA X]

  Log ended.