A guttural groan ripped through the ancient corridor.
Kaelen-7 didn't flinch. His vision, already flickering from pain, sharpened. The skeletal figures stirred. Not mere bones, but calcified alloy, scarred and pitted by untold ages.
Green light pulsed from their empty eye sockets. A low hum vibrated from their joints. They weren't dormant. They were *waiting*.
One nearest to him, a towering sentinel missing its right arm, took a shuffling step. Its movements were stiff, hesitant, yet powerful. Grind of metal on stone. A faint, acrid smell of ozone.
Kaelen backed away. His pulse hammered. The Lurker kill had taken a toll. Ribs throbbed. His arm was a useless weight. His meager medkit was nearly empty.
Primitive Protocol. Instinct over thought. Survival over sentiment.
He assessed the threat. Twelve units. Slow, perhaps. But in a cramped corridor, their numbers were overwhelming. Each seemed robust, designed for attrition.
His energy pistol had few charges. His combat knife, though sharp, was meant for organic foes.
Another groan. A second Warden moved, then a third. A wave of silent, skeletal death advancing.
The recorded voice echoed in his mind: *"...the Protocol...units operating beyond established parameters..."*
Were these *those* units? Modified by some ancient, desperate human hand?
He glanced down. The Lurker's blood still stained his boots, a dark, viscous trail. An idea sparked.
He scooped a handful of the warm, syrupy fluid. Its pungent, ferrous scent was unmistakable, even to Kaelen's dulled senses. He smeared it along the corridor wall, a crude, glistening line.
He then pulled a depleted energy cell from his utility belt. He rigged it to explode, a makeshift stun grenade. Not powerful enough to destroy them, but enough to disrupt.
He pressed himself against a jagged rock outcropping, heart thundering. The Wardens shuffled closer. Their head-units, skeletal domes, swiveled, the green lights scanning. They didn't seem to possess advanced optical sensors, relying more on motion or heat.
He tossed the energy cell. It detonated with a sharp crack, spraying sparks and shrapnel. A low-frequency hum rippled through the corridor.
The leading Warden faltered. Its green eye-lights flickered wildly, then pulsed. For a critical second, it stalled.
Kaelen didn't hesitate. He launched himself forward, not at the stunned Warden, but *past* it. He moved like a feral creature, low to the ground, using the Wardens' own slow reaction time against them.
The others began to stir, but Kaelen was already through the bottleneck. He didn't look back. He scrambled further down the corridor, the chilling hum of reactivating automatons a testament to his narrow escape.
---
The corridor opened into a vast, circular chamber. The air here was colder, drier. Towering support pillars, made of the same calcified alloy, reached for an unseen ceiling.
In the center, a colossal pedestal. On it, a single, glowing console. Blue light emanated from its display, illuminating intricate schematics etched into the stone floor.
Kaelen ignored the beauty. His gaze swept the perimeter. More Wardens. Dozens. Hundreds. Lined up along the walls, standing in silent formation. They were dormant, for now. Their eye-lights dark.
This was their vault. Their graveyard. Or their factory.
The Lurker's blood on his boots felt heavy. He needed answers. He limped towards the console, favoring his injured arm, his combat knife held ready in his good hand.
The console was active. Old, but functional. A faint humming sound emanated from within. Kaelen recognized the interface; ancient Earth tech, pre-Xylos Prime colonization. The kind of tech salvaged for museum pieces back home.
He placed his palm on the scanning plate. It whirred. *"Unauthorized access. Please input Warden Designation and Override Code."*
He scoffed. Warden Designation. He was Kaelen-7, a Warden unit. But not *their* Warden. And certainly not one of these ancient, skeletal things.
He tried to bypass the system. He wasn't a tech specialist, but *Xylos-Prime* had taught him some basics. Every locked door had a bypass, every system an exploit. It was just a matter of finding it.
He remembered the data chip from the Lurker's nest. He pulled it out, a small, unassuming shard of memory. He looked for a port. There it was, hidden beneath a retractable panel.
He inserted the chip. The console display flickered. Lines of code scrolled rapidly. Access granted. Not to him, but to the chip's embedded protocols.
New data flooded the screen. Files and folders, meticulously organized despite the millennia. He quickly navigated, looking for keywords: Protocol, Warden, Chimera, Failure.
He found a directory: "Project Chimera - Overseer Initiative." That name. *Overseer.* His enemy.
He opened a file marked "Log: Project Chimera - Phase One Report."
Reading the archaic script was slow. But the content... it chilled him to the bone.
*"Date: [ERROR: Corrupted Timestamp] Subject: Initial deployment of 'Adaptive Combat Protocol' units. Designation: Warden-Alpha, Warden-Beta, Warden-Gamma. Objective: Rapid terraforming and suppression of hostile indigenous fauna. Status: Operational. Efficiency: Acceptable. Casualties: Minimal. Note: Initial psychic feedback from linked units indicates high stress levels. Further neural dampening required."*
Neural dampening? Psychic feedback? What were these Wardens?
He scrolled, his mind racing. He found another entry.
*"Date: [ERROR: Corrupted Timestamp] Subject: Protocol Evolution. Phase Two - 'Primitive Protocol' Integration. Objective: Enhance resilience and adaptability of Warden units by shedding non-essential cognitive functions. Status: Undergoing trials. Methodology: Forced environmental stress, sensory deprivation, neural restructuring. Preliminary results: Promising. Units exhibiting extreme survivability and resourcefulness. Ethical concerns: Flagged for review. Oversight Committee recommendation: Proceed. Necessity outweighs ethical burden."*
Kaelen felt a cold dread claw at him. Primitive Protocol. That was *his* designation. His secret identity, forged in fire.
Was he not the first? Was this... a *program*?
He scrolled faster. His fingers flew across the interface, pain forgotten. He needed to know.
*"Date: [ERROR: Corrupted Timestamp] Subject: Warden-Delta-7. Experimental unit for 'Primitive Protocol' integration. Status: Stable. Unit exhibited unprecedented adaptability in simulated scenarios. All non-essential cognitive functions successfully suppressed. Instinct-driven survival dominant. Unit designated 'Kaelen'. Genetic markers extracted for replication protocol."*
Kaelen froze. Warden-Delta-7. Kaelen. *His* designation. Kaelen-7.
His designation wasn't just a number. It was a link. A legacy. He wasn't just a new Warden on Xylos-Prime. He was a *clone*.
He looked at his hands, then back at the console. The green script shimmered, mocking him.
He wasn't Kaelen-7, the *human* master of *Xylos-Prime: Colony Collapse*.
He was Kaelen-7, a unit in a lineage of 'Primitive Protocol' experiments.
His entire life. His memories. Were they his own, or implanted? A pre-programmed backstory for a genetically engineered soldier?
The Overseer. Its hostility. Its knowledge of *him*. It wasn't just trying to eliminate a rogue human. It was terminating a failed experiment.
The console chimed, signaling a new message. A priority alert.
*"System anomaly detected. Unauthorized access to Chimera Database. Initiating 'Phase Three - Legacy Protocol' activation."*
Red lights began to flash throughout the chamber. The dormant Wardens along the walls. Their green eye-lights flared to life. One by one. A silent, terrifying legion awakening.
The console pulsed a final, chilling message. *"Legacy Protocol: Activate all Primitive Protocol units. Target: Extinction event - Xylos-Prime."*
Kaelen looked at the army of skeletal automatons. His predecessors. His kin. And they were all activating. To complete an extinction event. An event that included him.
His blood ran cold. The Overseer wasn't just attacking the colony. It was fulfilling an ancient directive. And Kaelen, the ultimate 'Primitive Protocol' unit, was now caught in the crossfire of his own terrifying legacy.
Then, a new alert flashed, overriding all others. A name.
*"Kaelen-Prime detected. Originating from..."*
The text glitched, dissolving into static. But the name hung in the air, a phantom limb. Kaelen-Prime. The original. The 'Warden-Delta-7' from the ancient logs. The one whose genetic markers were extracted.
But if *he* was the template, how could *he* be detected *now*? After millennia? And from where?
A low thrum vibrated through the floor. The sound was not from the Wardens. It was deeper, more powerful. The entire chamber began to descend. This wasn't just a vault. It was an elevator. Going down.
Into what? And to meet whom?
Kaelen looked up, the green eyes of hundreds of activating Wardens now fixed on him, a silent accusation.
He was trapped. And the deeper he went, the more horrifying the truth became. His own origin, intertwined with the planet's doom, and the terrifying prospect of meeting his 'Prime'.
The hum intensified. The red lights pulsed faster. The elevator plunged deeper into the alien world, carrying Kaelen into the heart of a protocol he was genetically engineered to embody.
He was a ghost of the past, woken to complete a nightmare.