The Lock and Key of Evolution

"Silvana... Will you support me? Will you help me get to Black Swan?" Adam asked in a calm voice, with an emotionless face.

Silvana sighed, and her expression returned to normal, remaining as serious as usual.

"I am your Operator, so I will do everything in my power to help you, but I'd like to hear what happened to you before you entered the Dead Lands. Mr. Douglas didn't give me all the information about you, your first hours as a Phantom remain to me shrouded in a veil of mystery."

Adam nodded slightly, "Sure. Trust between Phantom and Operator must be maximized, so I think it's time to tell what happened at Morton Observatory."

...

After a few moments, Silvana nodded deeply, her gaze growing a little darker.

"Aiden Henk... To be honest, I've heard a few times that he was involved in various scandals, but he's the chief scientist of the Morton Observatory, so... it hasn't come out in public."

"If you know about it, but Black Swan probably has more information on him, don't they?"

Silvana sighed.

"Sure. You're probably not the only one who has been treated the same way. I know that many scientists consider the government's initiative to search for Sparks in the slums to be a failure and pointless. The chance is too small that a person whose parents aren't Phantoms has a Spark."

Adam leaned back in his chair and looked intently at Silvana.

"What do you think? Does it make sense to give people from the slums a chance?"

Silvana smiled slightly.

"Of course, after all, if it wasn't for their initiative I wouldn't have such a capable Phantom, no, a partner like you." Silvana replied sincerely.

However, this did not lift Adam's mood at all, on the contrary, his face only became darker.

"Yeah... The problem is that to some extent, Aiden Henk was right. I didn't have a Spark, I wasn't even noticed by the Spark Seeker, like a blank slate. As ironic as it sounds, if Aiden Henk hadn't been such an inhuman bastard, I wouldn't have ended up in Tar Lake, and I wouldn't have become Naturalborn Phantom."

Silvana's eyes went wide. She had nothing to reply. Adam was right, a series of coincidences and creepy events were a major factor of why he ended up here now.

"Anyway... First, you need to build your Nexus and finish your week's vacation. Then, after a few missions when you get stronger, it will be a good time to head to Lower Ring. I'll help you get to Black Swan." Silvana said calmly.

Adam nodded silently.

"What are you going to do if, with Black Swan's help, you can finally bring Aiden Henk to justice?" Silvana asked with a slight wave of her hand.

"Well... that depends on what I find out. Even though he sent me to my death, I didn't want to kill him. He should have been punished, but not executed. However... maybe the Black Swan will disagree with that, and maybe they'll be right."

...

The conversation was difficult, so until the night before they just stayed silent, immersed in their thoughts. Adam was supposed to go home as usual, but at one point, he fell asleep in his chair.

Silvana didn't wake him up and instead sat down to work, preparing an important document that would help Adam develop.

The Phantoms had many paths of power: Artifact, Nexus, combat experience, training, and even knowledge. All of these factors could create a real chasm between the two Phantoms.

However, there was another factor in front of which everything else no longer seemed so significant - the Cirlce. 

The Evolution Tree as well as the Initial Gene had to evolve, they were the two main points in a Phantom's strength, like the brain and heart of a simple person. One could live without one lung or kidney just as one could live without an artifact or nexus, but not without a heart or brain.

It might seem that it was easy to become stronger by absorbing more genes from different monsters, but that was only partially true. Only ordinary people not related to the Phantoms thought so, and if the Operators had heard them, they would have smiled bitterly.

Silvana realized that Adam didn't know about this, so she had to make him understand as much as possible.

The development of the Artifact, or Nexus, was somewhat straightforward, at least compared to the development of the Evolution Tree and the Initial Gene.

...

"Agh...? Where am I?" Adam muttered, squeezing his eyes shut from the bright light of the monitors falling on him.

[5:45]

Dawn was about to break soon.

'What...? I fell asleep at Silvana's house?' Adam looked around, 'What's more, it looks like someone overestimated their powers.'

Adam smiled slightly at the sleeping Silvana. She had fallen asleep right at her desk. On the monitors were open various articles, photos, and videos, as well as a central document that she had created especially for Adam.

She was going to close the file and go to sleep. However, the sleep deprivation and overwork were too much.

"Well, I can take care of her a little this time, right? But... what is it?" Adam muttered, walking over to the monitor and peering at the file name.

[Lock and Keys: Evolutionary Progression.]

Adam wasn't going to read the file, he wanted Silvana to explain everything to him, but once he started he couldn't stop.

His eyes sparkled, like a warrior who has seen the path to power, but a hard and fair - a challenge for a worthy one. 

...

Hours later Silvana awoke, but not from the sunlight, no sunlight entered her room, but from the smell of badly over-roasted coffee. It literally knocked her out of sleep with a direct hit of vigor.

She usually followed a schedule and always got up on her alarm clock, but yesterday had been a challenging day.

"Oh... right, I didn't bother to wake him up." Silvana muttered before heading into the kitchen.

There she saw Adam, who had already made breakfast: spicy noodles and eggs, but was battling the strongest opponent in his way: the coffee machine.

After all, where would a coffee machine come from in a slum?

"Here. We need to press here." Silvana said calmly cleverly fixing the situation.

Adam flinched slightly at the sudden voice but quickly regained his composure and turned around with a smile on his face.

"Well, well, looks like we switched roles this time?"

"Only for breakfast. Right after that, we'll practically have a lecture waiting for us. It's important for your future as a phantom." Silvana said seriously.

Adam shrugged.

"You're talking about the Lock and Keys, aren't you?"

"Agh...?" Silvana's eyes went wide, "How do you know that?"

"Sorry, I just saw the file, I didn't want to read it, but I couldn't stop now."

"And...? Did you figure it out? What do you think about it? A lot of Phantoms when they first find out the path they're supposed to follow are pretty upset." Silvana muttered.

However, Adam only smiled broadly.

"Hah, this is fucking awesome! Some parts of it scared me, though."

Silvana nodded, "Fine, then let's talk about it again. Right after we eat."

...

"Did you understand everything?" Silvana asked sternly after a four-hour conversation.

Adam grabbed his head. Even though he had read the file, Silvana had explained everything to him in such detail that his mind was overwhelmed.

"Fine, then it's time to create your first Neutral Gene and unlock the Lock!" 

Without further ado, Adam's eyes flashed brightly and he was transported to the Evolution Tree. He had 15 Living String, but he also had one gene of the Thick-headed Desert Lizard.

It was the perfect contender for the first attempt.

'Alright, it's already inside me, I just need to concentrate.' Adam muttered before extending his arm forward.

Whoooooooooosh.

A white gene flew out of the Vault, a massive white book - simple, but it had once belonged to a living being.

The gene floated in the air while something slowly appeared around it, some sort of round object emerging from the darkness.

"Hah... I did it! I can summon it the first time, though... not that it's hard." Adam exclaimed happily.

The object was a structure with a wide metal ring as its base. Inside the ring, two cone-shaped figures were looking at each other, they were pointing towards each other but their sharp tips did not collide, keeping a gap between them.

Then, into the empty space headed the gene, the tips of the cones pointed at it.

It was the Transmutator - the tool of all Phantoms with which they could do one simple but crucial thing: turn genes into neutral ones.

The ring began to rotate as the cones did, faster and faster, putting enormous pressure on the gene and forcing it to change until it lost its shape completely and became a perfect gray sphere.