EPISODE 6: THE TRANSFORMATION ## CHAPTER 1: THE FIRST Marcus chose Elena first. "You've already touched the green light. Once. You understand what's coming isn't destruction—it's completion." Elena backed against the wall of the main lab, her colleagues unconscious around her. Marcus had moved through them like a force of nature, pressure points and calculated strikes that left them breathing but helpless. Only Elena remained standing. Perhaps because he saw something of himself in her. "I didn't ask for what happened to me," she said. "It was an accident." "The best things often are. But now you have a chance to embrace it fully. To become what you started becoming." "I don't want to become anything. I want to be me." "You'll still be you. Just more. Think about it, Elena. You're twenty-eight years old. Brilliant, ambitious, limited. The blue lights helped you understand mathematics that humanity won't discover for millennia. How did that feel?" "It felt..." She searched for words. "Clear. Like seeing for the first time." "The green lights are the same, but deeper. Technologies that will transform our species. Understandings that will end disease, aging, death itself. Aren't those worth reaching for?" "Not if we lose ourselves in the reaching." "You won't lose yourself. You'll find yourself. The self you were always meant to be." He...