Falling was a remarkably unpleasant experience.
Daniel Cross had always suspected as much, but the universe seemed determined to provide practical demonstrations.
He plunged through darkness with Mira clinging to his jacket, Arlen's distant scream echoing somewhere above him, and the eyeless creature tumbling alongside them like a particularly ugly sack of laundry.
The floor had collapsed beneath their feet.
Naturally, there had been no warning beyond the enormous crack splitting the ground open.
Apparently, ancient underground laboratories had never heard of emergency exits.
Daniel reached for something.
His fingers caught a protruding metal beam.
His shoulder nearly dislocated.
Pain exploded through his arm, and his grip began to slip.
"Wonderful!" he shouted into the darkness. "Absolutely wonderful!"
Mira was still holding him.
"Daniel!"
"I noticed!"
"Don't let go!"
"I'm trying to preserve the relationship!"
The metal beam tore free.
They fell again.
Daniel twisted in midair, wrapping both arms around Mira and positioning his body beneath hers.
It was an instinctive decision.
A stupid one, probably.
But if he had learned anything since arriving in this world, it was that stupid decisions tended to be the only decisions he had time to make.
He struck something hard.
His back slammed against a sloping surface, and he tumbled down it, scraping his elbows and knees against rough stone.
Then he hit the ground.
The impact knocked the breath from his lungs.
For several seconds, Daniel couldn't move.
He lay on his back, staring into darkness that seemed almost tangible.
Something warm and small rested against his chest.
Mira.
She was breathing.
Good.
That was one problem solved.
Unfortunately, he had a growing suspicion that several hundred new ones were waiting to introduce themselves.
"Mira?"
"I'm here."
"Excellent."
He coughed.
"On a scale of one to ten, how much do you hate underground transportation?"
She didn't answer.
"Mira?"
"I'm sorry."
Daniel stopped trying to sit up.
"What?"
"I'm sorry I made you come back."
He turned his head.
Even in the darkness, he could make out the faint outline of her face.
"You're going to have to be more specific. I've made a lot of questionable decisions today."
She lowered her head.
"He told you to come home."
Daniel's smile disappeared.
The voice still echoed inside his skull.
Come home, my son.
Not Daniel.
Not Subject Cross.
Not even the name that had haunted his fragmented memories.
Something else.
A name from before.
A name he couldn't remember.
"Who was he?" Daniel asked.
Mira remained silent.
He pushed himself into a sitting position, ignoring the pain that shot through his ribs.
"Mira."
She looked at him.
"Who called me his son?"
Her black eyes glistened in the darkness.
"The First."
Daniel waited.
Mira said nothing more.
He exhaled slowly.
"Right. Of course. Why would a terrifying ancient intelligence simply introduce itself like a normal person?"
He glanced around.
The chamber was enormous.
Dim blue light seeped through cracks in the walls, revealing a landscape of stone pillars, twisted roots, and structures that looked as though they had grown rather than been constructed.
Far above them, the broken opening through which they had fallen was barely visible.
They had descended much farther than Daniel had expected.
Much, much farther.
His system flickered into view.
[LOCATION IDENTIFIED.]
[UNDERGROUND SECTOR: UNREGISTERED.]
[DEPTH: 1,247 METERS BELOW SURFACE.]
[WARNING: GEOLOGICAL DATA INCONSISTENT.]
[FOREIGN BIOLOGICAL NETWORK DETECTED.]
[NETWORK ACTIVITY: EXTREME.]
Daniel stared at the display.
"One thousand two hundred meters?"
He looked up at the ceiling.
"How thick are these Walls, exactly?"
Mira slowly stood.
"You're not beneath the Walls anymore."
Daniel looked at her.
"Then where are we?"
She pointed toward the far end of the chamber.
He followed her gaze.
Something enormous lay in the darkness.
At first, Daniel mistook it for a mountain.
Then he noticed the ribs.
They rose from the ground in a vast curved formation, each one larger than a building. Pale strands stretched between them, disappearing into the ceiling and the surrounding stone.
A skull rested at the center.
It was unmistakably human.
And impossibly large.
Daniel's mouth went dry.
The skull's empty eye sockets faced the ceiling.
Its jaw was slightly open.
A network of pale roots emerged from its spine and spread throughout the chamber, connecting the enormous skeleton to the walls.
Daniel slowly looked at Mira.
"Please tell me that's a statue."
She shook her head.
"Whose skeleton is that?"
"The First's."
Daniel stared at the skull.
Then he stared at the ceiling.
Then he looked back at the skeleton.
"That's not a human being."
"No."
"That's not even a Titan."
"No."
"Then what exactly am I looking at?"
Mira's voice became very quiet.
"What he was before the world forgot him."
Daniel had a headache.
A truly magnificent headache.
The kind that made him want to lie down in a field somewhere and let a Titan eat him just to end the conversation.
Instead, he forced himself to stand.
His knees nearly buckled.
The temporary adaptation had ended, leaving his muscles trembling and his nervous system feeling like someone had scraped it against a cheese grater.
[STATUS REPORT.]
[NEURAL STABILITY: 29%.]
[BIOLOGICAL STABILITY: 38%.]
[ENERGY RESERVES: CRITICALLY LOW.]
[ACTIVE ADAPTATIONS: NONE.]
[WARNING: ADDITIONAL EVOLUTIONARY MODIFICATIONS ARE NOT RECOMMENDED.]
Daniel rubbed his face.
"Wonderful. I'm running on fumes, my nervous system is filing for divorce, and we've discovered a prehistoric skeleton the size of a cathedral."
He glanced at Mira.
"Anything else you'd like to add?"
She pointed toward the ground.
Daniel looked down.
A trail of black fluid stretched across the stone.
The eyeless creature had landed nearby.
Its body was twisted at an unnatural angle, one arm bent backward and its ribs protruding through torn skin.
Yet it was moving.
Its fingers twitched.
Its head slowly turned toward Daniel.
The vertical mouth opened.
"Home."
Daniel took a step backward.
"That thing really needs to develop a broader vocabulary."
The creature planted one hand against the ground.
Its broken limbs began to straighten.
Bones shifted beneath its skin.
The black fluid spread across its chest, covering the wounds like a living membrane.
Daniel watched in disbelief.
"You're regenerating?"
The creature's mouth stretched into a smile.
"Remember."
Daniel felt the pressure behind his eyes return.
The creature crawled toward him.
"Remember what you did."
Mira grabbed Daniel's hand.
"Don't listen."
The creature's voice changed.
This time, it sounded like Elias Voss.
"You were the only one who survived."
Daniel froze.
The creature tilted its head.
"Thirty-seven failures. Thirty-seven bodies. Thirty-seven attempts to build a better human being."
Its voice changed again.
A woman's voice.
"You promised me."
Then a child's.
"You left me."
Daniel's stomach twisted.
The creature was pulling fragments from his memories.
Or perhaps it was inventing them.
He had no way to know.
And that uncertainty was almost worse than the pain.
The system flashed.
[FOREIGN MEMORY INJECTION DETECTED.]
[COGNITIVE FIREWALL: ACTIVE.]
[WARNING: NEURAL STABILITY REMAINS CRITICAL.]
Daniel clenched his fists.
"Get out of my head."
The creature stopped crawling.
Its mouth closed.
For the first time, it seemed to be studying him.
Then it spoke in a voice Daniel had never heard before.
"You're still pretending to be human."
Daniel's expression hardened.
"Funny. I was about to say the same thing to you."
The creature lunged.
Daniel barely had time to react.
He threw himself sideways as its claws struck the stone where he'd been standing.
The impact shattered the ground.
Daniel rolled, grabbed a broken length of metal from the rubble, and swung it at the creature's head.
The metal struck with a hollow clang.
The creature barely noticed.
It seized Daniel by the throat.
His feet left the ground.
Pressure crushed his windpipe.
Daniel clawed at its wrist, but its grip was impossibly strong.
The creature leaned closer.
Its eyeless face filled his vision.
"Do you know why you survived?"
Daniel tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
The creature tightened its grip.
"Because he needed a body."
Mira screamed.
"LET HIM GO!"
The entire chamber shook.
The pale roots spreading across the walls pulsed with blue light.
The creature abruptly released Daniel and staggered backward.
It clutched its head.
For the first time, its mouth opened in something resembling genuine pain.
"No."
The roots pulsed again.
"No! NO!"
The creature collapsed to its knees.
Mira stood with one hand extended toward it.
Her black eyes shone like polished stone.
"You're not supposed to be here."
The creature looked up at her.
Its mouth trembled.
"Little key."
Mira's expression changed.
Fear.
Not the fear of a child confronting a monster.
The fear of someone recognizing an old enemy.
The creature began to laugh.
"You think you can keep him away?"
Mira said nothing.
"He remembers now. The door is opening. The First will have his body."
It turned toward Daniel.
"And when that happens, you'll wish you had let him die."
The pale roots tightened around its limbs.
The creature screamed as they dragged it across the ground.
It fought desperately, clawing at the stone and tearing chunks from the floor.
But the roots continued pulling.
Toward the enormous skull.
Toward the darkness between its ribs.
Daniel watched in horrified silence.
The creature reached out one final time.
"Daniel!"
Its fingers scraped across the stone.
"YOU WERE THE FIRST!"
The roots swallowed it.
A moment later, it vanished into the darkness beneath the skeleton.
The chamber fell silent.
Daniel stood motionless.
His throat burned.
His hands trembled.
He could still hear the creature's final words.
You were the first.
He turned toward Mira.
"What did it mean?"
She lowered her hand.
"I don't know."
Daniel stared at her.
"That was a remarkably quick answer."
"I don't know everything."
"Then perhaps you could start telling me the things you do know."
Mira looked toward the skeleton.
"The First created the network."
Daniel followed her gaze.
"Created it how?"
"His body was different from ours. It could change. It could grow. It could become anything he needed."
Daniel thought of his own system.
The evolutionary framework.
The adaptations.
The way his body could acquire biological traits by consuming compatible organisms.
He looked back at Mira.
"You're saying the Devourer System was based on him?"
"Not exactly."
She hesitated.
"The people who found him didn't understand what he was. They thought his body was the source of the power. They tried to copy it."
"With experiments."
"Yes."
"People died."
"Yes."
"And eventually they found me."
Mira looked down.
"They found you before they found him."
Daniel went completely still.
"What?"
"They found you in the chamber where the network began."
A cold sensation spread through his body.
"That doesn't make any sense."
"I know."
"No, I mean it literally doesn't make sense. I've been told I was dying when Elias found me. I've been told I was the only viable subject in their experiments. I've been told they created the system."
He pointed toward the skeleton.
"And now you're telling me I was here before all of that?"
Mira nodded.
Daniel laughed once.
It was a dry, unpleasant sound.
"Excellent. My entire existence is a paperwork error."
Mira stepped closer.
"You weren't supposed to wake up."
Daniel looked at her.
"Neither was the First, apparently. Yet here we all are."
The ground trembled.
A deep vibration traveled through the chamber.
The enormous skull shifted.
Not much.
Just enough for Daniel to notice.
A thin line of blue light appeared within one of its empty eye sockets.
Then the other.
Daniel slowly stepped backward.
"Mira."
"I know."
"Please tell me that's normal."
"It's not."
"Wonderful."
The system activated.
[MAJOR EVENT DETECTED.]
[THE FIRST: PARTIAL REACTIVATION.]
[HOST COMPATIBILITY: 3.7%.]
[NETWORK SYNCHRONIZATION: 67%.]
[EVOLUTIONARY FRAMEWORK: ORIGINAL SOURCE PROXIMITY CONFIRMED.]
[NEW QUEST GENERATED.]
QUEST: THE FIRST MEMORY
OBJECTIVE:
Recover the memory fragment stored within the original network.
SECONDARY OBJECTIVE:
Determine the relationship between Subject Cross and the First.
REWARD:
Unknown.
FAILURE PENALTY:
Unknown.
Daniel stared at the notification.
"That last part is reassuring."
He dismissed it.
Then he noticed another message.
A message that hadn't been there before.
[HIDDEN CONDITION SATISFIED.]
[SEALED MEMORY FRAGMENT: PARTIALLY ACCESSIBLE.]
[WARNING: MEMORY CONTENT MAY CAUSE PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS.]
Daniel's smile disappeared.
He hesitated.
For once, the system's warning seemed reasonable.
He didn't want to know what had happened to him.
Not really.
The truth had a habit of becoming more horrifying with every new piece of information.
But ignorance was clearly not protecting him.
He selected the memory fragment.
The world went white.
***
He was standing in a laboratory.
Not the facility beneath Trost.
A different one.
Cleaner.
Brighter.
The walls were white, and the air smelled of disinfectant.
He looked down at his hands.
They were smaller.
Younger.
A thin hospital bracelet circled his wrist.
A number had been written across it.
C-01.
He heard footsteps.
A woman entered the room.
She wore a white coat and carried a clipboard. Her hair was tied behind her head, and tiredness had settled into the corners of her eyes.
She looked at Daniel with an expression that was almost painfully gentle.
"How are you feeling today?"
Daniel tried to answer.
The words came from his mouth without his permission.
"I'm hungry."
The woman smiled sadly.
"I know."
She sat beside the bed.
"Do you remember your name?"
Daniel opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
The woman closed her eyes.
"That's all right."
She touched his forehead.
"Your name is Daniel."
He looked at her.
"Daniel Cross?"
The woman's face changed.
For a moment, she looked frightened.
Then she forced a smile.
"Yes."
A door opened behind her.
A man entered.
He wore a dark military uniform beneath a laboratory coat.
His face was younger than Elias Voss's, but there was no mistaking him.
The same pale eyes.
The same cold, analytical expression.
Elias.
Except this Elias had no wrinkles, no gray hair, and none of the hesitation Daniel had seen in the present.
He looked at Daniel as though he were examining a tool.
"Is he ready?"
The woman stood.
"He's still recovering."
"We're out of time."
"He's a child."
"He's a viable host."
The woman stepped between Elias and the bed.
"He's a person."
Elias's expression didn't change.
"Not anymore."
Daniel felt something tighten in his chest.
The woman turned toward him.
"Daniel, listen to me."
She reached into her coat and pulled out a small wooden horse.
She placed it in his hands.
"Whatever happens, you must remember who you are."
Daniel stared at the toy.
A strange warmth spread through him.
He knew this horse.
He had held it before.
He had held it in another life.
The woman crouched in front of him.
"Can you promise me something?"
Daniel nodded.
"Promise me you'll protect Mira."
The door opened again.
A little girl stepped into the room.
Mira.
She was younger, her eyes brown, her face streaked with tears.
She ran toward Daniel and grabbed his hand.
"Don't let them take me away."
Daniel looked at her.
Then at the woman.
Then at Elias.
Something inside him began to panic.
The memory flickered.
Alarms sounded.
Red lights filled the room.
Elias shouted an order.
Several armed soldiers rushed inside.
The woman grabbed Daniel and Mira.
"Run!"
She pushed them toward a narrow door at the back of the room.
Daniel stumbled through it, clutching the wooden horse.
Mira ran beside him.
Behind them, the woman screamed.
Then a terrible sound filled the corridor.
Something enormous struck the other side of the wall.
The entire building shook.
Daniel looked back.
Through the open doorway, he saw Elias standing beside a machine.
The machine was connected to a massive structure of pale roots.
The same roots that surrounded the skeleton beneath the Walls.
Elias turned toward him.
For the first time, the man looked afraid.
"Subject Cross!"
Daniel kept running.
"Stop!"
He didn't.
Elias's voice echoed through the corridor.
"If you reach the network, it will find you!"
The walls began to crack.
Mira screamed.
Daniel grabbed her hand.
They ran toward a metal door at the end of the corridor.
It was almost within reach.
Then the floor opened.
Pale roots burst through the concrete and wrapped around Mira's legs.
She fell.
Daniel turned and grabbed her arms.
"Hold on!"
The roots tightened.
Mira screamed.
Daniel pulled with everything he had.
Her fingers slipped through his.
"No!"
She fell into the darkness.
Daniel reached after her.
His fingertips brushed hers.
Then she was gone.
He stared into the hole.
He couldn't move.
He couldn't breathe.
Then Elias appeared behind him.
The older man was covered in blood.
His face was twisted with desperation.
"Daniel, listen to me!"
Daniel turned.
The corridor was filling with black fluid.
The roots were spreading.
The entire facility was collapsing.
Elias seized Daniel's shoulders.
"You have to forget!"
Daniel shook his head.
"Mira—"
"YOU HAVE TO FORGET!"
Elias slammed his hand against a control panel.
A burst of white light engulfed the corridor.
Daniel felt something tear through his mind.
His memories began disappearing.
His name.
The woman.
The wooden horse.
Mira.
Everything.
As the light consumed him, Elias leaned close.
"I'm sorry."
The words were barely audible.
Then the world vanished.
***
Daniel fell to his knees.
He vomited onto the stone floor.
His hands shook violently.
His chest felt as though something had been ripped out of it.
For several seconds, he could do nothing but breathe.
Mira knelt beside him.
"Daniel?"
He looked at her.
His eyes burned.
"You were there."
She nodded.
"You knew me."
"Yes."
"You were the girl in the memory."
"Yes."
Daniel swallowed.
"The woman. Who was she?"
Mira's face crumpled.
"I don't know her name."
"Was she my mother?"
Mira didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
Daniel looked away.
The distinction between his former life and this world had begun to blur.
He had assumed he was a dead man who had somehow been dropped into another universe.
He had treated his previous existence as a closed chapter.
A finished story.
But the memory suggested something much worse.
What if he hadn't died?
What if his memories of dying had been fabricated?
What if he had been brought here deliberately?
He looked toward the enormous skeleton.
And what if the thing beneath the Walls had been waiting for him all along?
His system flickered.
[MEMORY FRAGMENT RECOVERED.]
[DESIGNATION: PROJECT ORIGIN.]
[MEMORY INTEGRITY: 12%.]
[ADDITIONAL DATA CORRUPTED.]
[WARNING: COGNITIVE FIREWALL COMPROMISED.]
Daniel closed the notification.
He needed answers.
Not theories.
Not cryptic warnings.
Answers.
He turned toward Mira.
"Why did Elias erase my memories?"
She stared at the ground.
"Because you were becoming like the First."
Daniel felt cold.
"Explain."
"The network was changing you. You could hear it. You could feel it. You started seeing things other people couldn't see."
"What things?"
"The past."
She hesitated.
"And the future."
Daniel stared at her.
"You're telling me I had visions?"
"You could see things before they happened."
"How far into the future?"
"I don't know."
"Could I control it?"
"No."
"Could I stop it?"
Mira looked at him.
"Sometimes."
The answer was worse than no.
Daniel sat back against a stone pillar.
He tried to organize the information.
He had apparently been connected to the original network before Elias's experiments.
He had known Mira.
He had promised to protect her.
He had failed.
Elias had erased his memories to prevent the First from finding him—or perhaps to hide his own involvement.
And now the First was waking up.
Daniel rubbed his face.
"All right."
Mira blinked.
"All right?"
"Yes."
"But—"
"I've discovered that my memories were stolen, my identity is questionable, and an ancient intelligence may consider me its son."
He held up a finger.
"One problem at a time."
Mira stared at him.
Then, unexpectedly, she laughed.
It was a small sound.
Fragile.
Almost unfamiliar.
Daniel looked at her.
"What's funny?"
"You used to say that."
"Say what?"
"One problem at a time."
He looked away.
For a moment, he could almost remember saying it before.
A different room.
A different life.
A promise made to a frightened girl.
He swallowed.
"Well, apparently I was a genius."
Mira smiled faintly.
Then her expression changed.
She looked past him.
Daniel followed her gaze.
The enormous skeleton had begun to move.
Not the entire body.
Its fingers.
One enormous hand rested against the stone floor, its bones covered in pale roots. Slowly, one finger curled.
Then another.
The blue light inside the skull intensified.
A sound emerged from its open jaw.
Not a roar.
Not a scream.
A voice.
"Daniel."
The chamber trembled.
Daniel stood.
Mira backed away.
The voice continued.
"You remember."
Daniel's heart pounded.
The skull's jaw moved.
"You have returned to me."
Daniel forced himself to speak.
"What are you?"
The blue light flared.
The voice that answered was deep enough to vibrate through the stone.
"I am what remains."
Daniel clenched his fists.
"That's not an answer."
"It is the only answer your mind can bear."
Daniel took a step forward.
"Did you bring me here?"
The skeleton fell silent.
"Did you make me?"
The pale roots pulsed.
"Did you kill me?"
For a moment, the entire chamber seemed to hold its breath.
Then the First answered.
"No."
Daniel exhaled.
Relief flickered through him.
It lasted less than a second.
The voice continued.
"You died long before you entered this world."
Daniel froze.
The First's blue eyes burned brighter.
"But you were not the one who died first."
The floor shook.
Far above them, beyond thousands of meters of stone and earth, the Titans surrounding Trost abruptly stopped moving.
Every single one turned toward the same point.
The place where Daniel stood.
Then, as if responding to a command from the depths of the earth, they began walking.
Not toward the walls.
Not toward the soldiers.
Not toward the fleeing civilians.
Toward Daniel.
The system flooded his vision with warnings.
[GLOBAL NETWORK SYNCHRONIZATION: 74%.]
[HOST IDENTIFICATION: CONFIRMED.]
[ORIGINAL MEMORY ACCESS: EXPANDING.]
[WARNING: EXTERNAL BIOLOGICAL UNITS CONVERGING.]
[WARNING: HOST LOCATION EXPOSED.]
Daniel looked at the enormous skeleton.
"What does that mean?"
The First's jaw opened wider.
"It means, Daniel Cross, that you are not my son."
The blue light inside its skull dimmed.
"You are the body I lost."
For the first time since arriving in this world, Daniel had absolutely nothing sarcastic to say.
Then the ground beneath him began to glow.
And somewhere far above, the Colossal Titan turned its enormous head toward the underground chamber.
Its mouth opened.
But instead of steam, a voice emerged.
Daniel's own voice.
"FOUND YOU."