Children of Prometheus

Samira Ortiz’s alarm pulsed gently from the wall in its friendly pre-recorded monotone.

“Good morning, Samira Ortiz. It is 0700 on Graduation Day. Congratulations! Prometheus celebrates all our student’s of Cohort 91. Today's projected surface viability: 0.7%. Remember, excellence is engineered.”

She opened her eyes to the pale light of Prometheus's morning cycle and took a slow steady breath. Today was the day her name would be etched into the community's legacy. Her speech was already memorized, her uniform already pressed, and her posture, impeccable as always.

She slipped out of bed, palms brushing over her uniform jacket. Slate-grey with silver trim. The colour of authority.

She was halfway through tying her hair back when she noticed it - her transcript tattoo faded slightly at the edges. Still legible, still clear, but no longer the rich black it had always been. The lines looked washed out.

Sam tilted her head. Odd.

She turned her wrist in the mirror, tapping at the edges as if it might darken with pressure. Nothing changed. Although it didn’t worry her. Almost nothing could today.

Transcript degradation wasn’t unheard of. Graduation came with system resets - bio ink retuning's, even medical recalibration for those going into genetics-focused fields. She was sure someone would mention it in the diagnostics briefing later. Maybe they’d even give her a fresh one. Cleaner. Crisper. An honour.

The atrium had been polished to a gleam. Rows of chrome seats arced around the elevated dais beneath the glowing dome, programmed with soft blue sky and lazy clouds. Prometheus faculty and staff stood and mingled on the second level, white coats pristine, tablets in hand, looking down on the gathering assembly.

Samira stood behind the curtain, clutching her speech notes even though she didn’t need them. She’d practiced this address for the last six months and could recite it in her sleep.

A familiar voice broke through the murmur of the crowd.

“You look terrifyingly composed, as usual.”

She turned. Lucas Brenner stood nearby, sash crooked, grin perfect. A strand of blond hair fell across his forehead.

“One of us has to be,” Sam smirked as she reached over to fix Lucas’ hair.

He batted her away with a chuckle. “You’re going to crush it, Sam.”

“I know,” she said lightly, then added, “But thanks.”

“You wrote your own speech?” he said, pointing at her notes.

Sam nodded. “They gave me one, but I wanted to put my own spin on it.”

“Didn’t realise that was an option. I just took the one they gave me,” Lucas laughed before stepping closer. “You okay? You looked… I don’t know. A little pale, back there.”

She hesitated, then held out her wrist briefly. “I feel fine, my bio ink is acting a bit weird though. Probably nothing. Graduation system sweep or something.”

Lucas frowned, took her wrist gently, and examined it.

“Looks a little faded, mine is doing something similar,” he admitted. “You report it?”

“Not yet. They’ll probably recalibrate everything after today."

He nodded, then offered a wink. “Maybe they’re upgrading us straight to Principle.”

Sam laughed, and for a moment, the tension loosened. "They can't do that, they'd be lost without you in engineering."

“Attention Prometheus: Graduation starts in one minute. Students and Faculty, please be seated. Remember, excellence is engineered.” The PA system chimed from the atrium.

Samira drew in a breath, rolled back her shoulders, and took her place at the podium as the curtains opened. The applause was immediate - orderly, reverent.

She smiled.

“Fellow graduates, happy graduation day! When I was ten, I remember looking at my wrist - freshly marked with the transcript - and thinking: this is it. This is who I am. Someone might call that fate. But not here. Not in Prometheus. Here, we see it for what it is: a purpose. A gift. A truth that none outside these walls will ever be privileged enough to know. We weren’t raised to guess at our futures. We were built for them. Today, I see a room full of not just survivors - but successors. Leaders. Architects of progress. We didn’t just inherit humanity. We have refined it.”

Polite applause.

She tapped the lectern. Her genetic transcript lit up on the embedded display:

Samira Ortiz

Cohort 91

Leadership: High

Cognition: Excellent

Genetic Match Priority: A

Role Assignment: Sector Coordinator (Provisional)

There it was. Her life. Everything she’d worked for right there on the screen.

“And now,” Samira continued, “we take our places, not just as individuals, but as the next-”

The doors at the end of the atrium opened with a soft whoosh.

Two Prometheus security personnel entered. Not students. Not ceremonial. Actual security, in pristine white tactical gear, blue armbands and polarised visors. The kind no one ever saw outside of drills.

They moved with purpose. Direct. Toward her.

A murmur rippled across the lower atrium.

Samira hesitated, voice catching in her throat. “As I was saying-”

“Samira Ortiz,” one of the guards said over her microphone feed. “You are to come with us. Immediately.”

Whispers swelled. Students exchanged glances. The faculty however, were silent.

Lucas rose from his seat in the front row.

“I’m in the middle of the Graduation keynotes, surely this can wait?” Samira said, keeping her tone even.

“By order of the Prometheus Administration, you are to accompany us now.”

Samira looked at the second floor balcony for help, although most of the faculty had turned away.

Her fingers tightened around the edge of the lectern.

“With all due respect, I believe there has been a misunderstanding. I’m designated Sector Coordinator. If this is about the transcript, I’m happy to-”

“This is not a discussion.”

The officer stepped onto the stage.

Samira glanced at Lucas. His mouth was open, like he wanted to say something but didn’t know what. She saw it in his face - he didn’t understand this anymore than she did.

The crowd had gone quiet.

Samira forced herself to smile. “Please excuse the interruption,” she said, projecting her voice to the audience. “I’ll be back shortly. Excellence is Engineered.”

She turned and followed the officers offstage.

Behind her, the applause didn’t return.

—

The silence continued to follow her down the corridor.

But Samira kept her chin up.

“This is highly irregular,” she said, voice calm. “Can someone explain what this is about?”

Neither guard answered. Their visors stayed mirrored and unreadable, as impersonal as their silence. The only sound was the rhythmic click of her formal shoes on polished tile.

“I’m supposed to meet with the Faculty Board after the keynote,” she tried again. “If you’re taking me for diagnostics, I’ll need confirmation.”

No response.

The hallway turned. Gone were the colourful banners of Prometheus history, the murals of smiling children playing and planting hydroponic gardens, the motivational mantras scrolling across display panels. These halls were steel. Bare. Unmarked. Samira realised she’d never been in this wing before. It wasn’t part of the student maps.

“This area is off-limits to Cohort residents,” she said aloud, as much to herself as to them. “This is administration restricted.”

Still nothing.

Her chest tightened - not from fear exactly, but similar unease. The tattoo on her wrist pulsed faintly. It didn’t hurt, but it itched anxiously beneath the skin.

They stopped in front of a heavy steel door marked only by a stencilled black word: OBSERVATION.

The lead guard input a long sequence on the wall panel. The door hissed open, revealing a sterile white room with a single chair bolted to the floor. A steel desk was fixed along the far wall, empty but gleaming. No consoles. No screens.

“Inside,” said the guard at last.

Samira hesitated. “Am I under disciplinary review?”

The guard simply repeated himself.

She stepped in. The door sealed shut behind her with a pressurized hiss.

The quiet inside was worse.

She stood in the middle of the room, refusing the chair, her arms folded behind her back like she was still giving her speech.

Seconds ticked by. Then minutes.

The walls didn’t hum like the rest of Prometheus. No faint vibration from water recyclers. No heating ducts. The temperature here was static.

Eventually, the far wall hissed open. A panel she hadn’t noticed slid aside to reveal a secondary door. Through it walked a woman Samira had only seen a handful of times from a distance. Director Halden.

Halden was tall, composed, with iron-grey hair pulled into a taut bun. Her white coat bore no identification badge. Her gloves were surgical black.

“Samira,” she said with no smile. “Please, sit.”

Samira did, though her muscles resisted the idea.

“There appears to be an issue with your transcript,” Halden said, sliding a data tablet onto the desk between them. It didn’t face Samira.

“I noticed some fading,” Samira replied. “I assumed it was an ink degradation issue related to the recalibration protocols during graduation-”

“It’s not the ink.”

A beat of silence.

“Then what is it?”

Halden turned the tablet toward her. The screen showed a biometric chart - color-coded fields, transcript ID markers, and a set of red warning flags blinking across her neural compliance score.

“This is a long-term deviation, Samira. We’ve seen indicators for years. You’ve maintained the outer appearance of cohesion, but your scores are trending in the wrong direction. Behavioural drift. Latent scepticism.”

“That’s absurd.” Her tone was still even, but sharper now. “All my evaluations were exemplary. I’ve never once failed a metric.”

“You’ve never openly failed one,” Halden corrected. “That’s different.”

Samira blinked. “So… what happens now?”

“We’re placing you under temporary and immediate review,” Halden said. “You’ll be held here while a reassessment is conducted. If the deviation is confirmed as neurological instability, you may be… reassigned.”

“Reassigned to what?”

Halden didn’t answer. Samira stood. “With all due respect, Director. Prometheus is my life. My record is flawless. I deserve to know what I’m being accused of.”

“You’re not being accused of anything,” Halden said smoothly, as if that were supposed to help. “You’re being studied.”

Samira’s mouth opened, but before she could speak, the screen flashed again. A new file opened - an archived log from almost two decades ago. It was her. A baby, swaddled in white, eyes closed.

“Samira Ortiz,” Halden said, almost like she was reading from a eulogy. “Cohort 91. High genetic viability. Behavioural projections: unstable under unsupervised leadership stress. Secondary genome markers flagged at twelve years old. Emotional independence score elevated. Long-term concern for ideological deviation. Recommendation: monitored placement in high-visibility role. Controlled leadership.”

Samira’s chest tightened.

“You assigned me to give that speech,” she whispered.

“We assign you to give our speech,” Halden said.

Samira’s fists curled at her sides. “That's not leadership. That’s theatre.”

Halden didn’t blink. “That’s Prometheus.”

The silence returned. It was heavier this time, filled with the weight of something Samira had never truly questioned until now: how little choice she’d been allowed to make.

“What happens to people who fail reassessment?” she asked, voice low.

Halden picked up the tablet and turned it off. “They are… repurposed.”

Samira didn’t sit back down.

“I want to see the rest of my file.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“I need to see it!”

“You were engineered to comply,” Halden said softly, almost like pity. “Not whatever you think this is…” She gestured loosely at Samira. “It’s already decided.”

The door behind Samira hissed open again. Two more guards entered. No visors this time. Their expressions were blank.

“Escort her to Holding Three, next to the other one,” Halden instructed. “Schedule neural screening in the next cycle for both.”

Other one?

Samira said nothing as they took her her arms.

But in the deepest part of her mind, it felt like a switch had flipped.

—

The corridor to Holding Three was colder than the others.

Samira walked without resistance between the two guards, their grip on her arms light but unyielding. Every instinct in her body screamed to fight, to flee—but she didn’t. Not yet.

This wasn’t a test. There was no recovery from this. She had been deemed defective. Worse, predictably defective. They had seen it coming and let her believe she was chosen.

She clenched her jaw.

Built for compliance, Halden had said. Engineered to obey.

But something in Samira had always burned too brightly to be caged. She had followed the rules not out of faith, but because she knew how to perform belief. That performance had kept her alive—until today.

They reached a heavy blast door. One guard punched in another long access code.

The door clicked, unsealed, and opened with a soft hydraulic hiss.

Inside, Holding Three was even more stark than Observation—just a padded bench, a recessed ceiling light, and a wall-mounted camera that tracked her as she entered. The guards didn’t follow her in.

The door sealed behind her.

She was alone.

Samira paced slowly around the room. No corners. No fixtures. Nothing sharp. This was a room built for broken people. People about to be “reassigned.”

She sat.

Minutes then hours passed. Maybe more.

At some point, the light flickered.

Then it dimmed.

Only slightly. Barely perceptible. But it was enough.

Samira stood and approached the wall. A faint hum vibrated behind the panel—power lines. Somewhere, something had disrupted Prometheus' perfectly engineered rhythm.

She pressed her hand to the seam.

Then, beside her, a soft click.

She turned.

A panel beneath the bench had unlatched.

She knelt and pulled it open.

Inside: wiring. A narrow conduit tunnel. Not designed for passage—but wide enough, just barely, for someone determined.

The thought that this might have been another trial, another test crossed her mind but she didn’t hesitate.

Samira slipped inside, pulling the panel gently closed behind her. The darkness enveloped her. She crawled forward on her elbows, knees scraping against cold metal.

Every breath sounded thunderous in the narrow space.

After what felt like hours she reached a junction. A maintenance grate blocked her path, rusted slightly at the corners. She braced herself and kicked.

Once. Twice.

It gave.

She tumbled into a narrow side corridor. Lights flickered overhead—older systems, long forgotten. No guards. No cameras.

She stood, adjusted her uniform, and started walking.

—

The corridor led her deeper into the lower levels of Prometheus, where the familiar gave way to the forgotten.

Dust. Real dust. That alone was terrifying.

She passed long-abandoned labs—rooms filled with outdated equipment, glass observation chambers, and rusted medical cots with restraints. There were no nameplates on the doors, just numbers. 7B. 7C. 8A.

Then, at the end of the hallway, a door unlike the others. Heavy. Reinforced. No keypad, but a retinal scanner—cracked and long dead.

Above it, stencilled into the wall: ARCHIVE WING – RESTRICTED

Samira stared at the word. Archive.

She looked down the hall, back the way she came.

No footsteps. No alarms.

She pushed the door.

To her surprise, with a bit of effort, it slid open with a long, aching groan.

Inside, rows of old terminals lined the walls, their screens dormant but intact. Data cores blinked with faint residual power. Samira moved through the space carefully, brushing away layers of dust until she found a terminal that still hummed.

She tapped the interface.

SYSTEM BOOT…

ARCHIVE ACCESS: LIMITED FUNCTIONALITY

ENTER QUERY

She hesitated, then typed:

SAMIRA ORTIZ

A list of entries appeared—logs, reports, genetic maps, video assessments. She selected the oldest one.

A recording blinked to life.

A man in a white coat—years younger than Halden—spoke into the lens.

“Subject ORTIZ, SAMIRA. Viability score: 96.7. High cognitive function. Successful implantation of genes relating to elevated social mimicry. Recommending placement in controlled leadership track for observational testing of ‘cooperative deviance’ traits.”

He paused.

“Initial prediction: high likelihood of eventual ideological fracture under stress.”

Samira swallowed. She clicked another.

Halden this time, speaking into the lens.

“Preliminary atmospheric analysis confirms it for the thirtieth consecutive year: surface conditions have stabilized. Radiation levels are well within habitable thresholds. However, the board has decided that Prometheus should remain sealed. Releasing the population now would be premature. We are not finished yet. 23.4% of Cohort 91 still display minor behavioural volatility. Deviance metrics in Sector G have plateaued. The Ortiz and Brenner gene models show increased promise year on year but are not yet confirmed stable under stress. Until we prove sustainable cohesion without external pressure, the experiment continues.

The ember of progress is sacred, only the perfected may carry us into the future.

We cannot risk opening Prometheus to corruption before purity is achieved.”

Then another, and another.

Every log confirmed the same thing: everything she thought she had known about herself, about Prometheus was a lie. Everything had been one experiment after another.

To see if failure could still be managed. If deviation could be disguised beneath a perfect exterior. A walking stress test.

She was the experiment. They all were.

And now, having done what she was designed to do, she was being removed.

Samira stepped back from the terminal, heart pounding. Her future had never been real. Only her response to its removal would be.

Repurposed.

She turned to the exit.

Not a door this time—but an emergency hatch in the back corner. Red lights marked it as sealed, but the override panel blinked green. As if someone before her had left it waiting.

She moved toward it and placed her hand on the scanner.

ACCESS GRANTED.

ELEVATOR ENGAGED. DESTINATION: SURFACE TRANSIT NODE.

Samira stared.

Surface?

The hatch opened.

Cold fresh air rushed over her as she stepped into the lift.

The hatch sealed behind her. The elevator groaned to life and began to rise.

She didn’t know what was waiting at the top. A lie. A wasteland. A truth too big for any one person.

But she knew one thing.

Whatever Prometheus had planned for her, it ended here.

Her voice was her own now.

And she intended to use it.