Viability

The work is holding. Viable subjects brought to term through the sealed stasis matrix beneath the secondary vault. Cellular replication proceeds without drift. Neural patterning aligns with design. Metabolic variance within parameters. Breathing, self-regulating, stable.

They are the intended form of our species. Built to endure. Directed continuity. Lineage made scalable beyond terrain constraint. I should note that somewhere more formally. Later.

Purpose

They were not created for war. I know they will be used for it. If not by their own will, then by the hands that claim them. I gave them life for the conquest of regions natural biology has failed to reach after three thousand years of imperial expansion. The uninhabited stratospheric peaks where pressure distorts perception. The subsurface corridors where undocumented organisms erase exploratory trails within hours. Likely sentient. We should return to that. The equatorial jungles where mimicry overwhelms both visual and thermal trace. No man returns from there. The glacial valleys where the ice bears claim territories larger than provinces.

I have been reading expedition reports from Ngorrhal again.

On the Ngorrhal Ice Bear

How does something like this exist. Head larger than a Frost Sentinel's body. Lifespan of five to seven centuries. Intellect sufficient to target humans specifically despite abundant megafauna. Why? What evolutionary pressure produced a creature that kills without feeding? Sport? That is what the reports suggest. Sport-like behavior from a predator. I do not understand it. I wish we had a specimen.

The males are larger. How much larger? The reports do not say. They claim territories so vast that entire expeditions become impassable. Not routes. Expeditions. The creature decides what moves through its land. Firing at it in the open is described as certain death. The only survival strategy documented is retreat to confined terrain. Caves. Ruins? Places where its frame cannot follow.

Ngorrhal produced this. The same frozen passes that bred the Frost Sentinels. What is it about that continent? The cold alone cannot account for it. There is something in the selection pressure, something in the isolation, that creates organisms of extraordinary

I am drifting. The Frost Sentinels are relevant to my work. Their genetic material forms the foundation of the Assault lineage. But that is documented elsewhere.

The ice bear. If we could study one. If we could understand what permits a metabolism to sustain that mass in those temperatures for that duration. Seven hundred years. The implications for longevity research alone would be

I was writing about the Engineered.

Reproduction

I have done something that will change our world. Or maybe. It is difficult to know at this stage.

I have enhanced more than them. I have enhanced how they become more. The females of the Assault lineage will reliably carry multiple gestation. Up to eight individuals, for a slightly shorter term. I have only simulated this. The drive to continue is embedded without hormonal distortion or compulsive spread. They replicate only when the environment allows. Not from appetite. From alignment. Bloodlines follow structure, not hunger.

The Scout-Class females are different. I am struggling with them. I will be fortunate if they can reproduce at all. There is something about their adaptations that resists natural replication. I am not sure of exactly what it is yet. I will find it. I always find it. There is always a reminder in something.

The issue I am having with the males of the Assault lineage is impulse control. I do not want this to backfire on reproductive urge. That could be disastrous for focus and temperament. I am watching the adolescents closely.

The Scout Lineage

My current work is a lineage built for terrain surveillance. Independent of failing equipment. The first has entered his toddler stage. He appears strange. Given his adaptations, that could not be avoided. When he stares into emptiness, I scan the room across extended spectrums. He is not staring at nothing. He is staring at everything.

I will take him to the countryside soon. He has never seen the sky.

Variance in the Assault Lineage

Some of the Assault-Class are smaller than their siblings. Not much weaker, but far smaller. Much stronger than natural-borns. They do not stop solving problems. They do not tire of questions. Where others rest, they disassemble. Where others eat, they arrange. I have watched them as infants, as toddlers, as children. Now as adolescents. The pattern holds. Their bodies did not match the template, but their minds outpaced it.

I do not yet know what to do with them. I am watching.

They are not soldiers. They are the continuation of us. Into places we were never built to go. They are alive. They are more human than we are.