Death Gallery

When Leon's escape pod crashed into the starship graveyard, the sparks from the protective shield ignited the silicon-based dust in the atmosphere. The suspended crystal particles reflected billions of broken holographic images in the burning - each fragment recorded the end of different civilizations. He dragged Alicia's mechanical body out of the hatch and found that her spine was growing crystal bone spurs, gradually weaving into the prototype of wings.

"Warning, quantum assimilation detected."

The damaged protective suit AI suddenly restarted, projecting a blood-red prompt on Leon's retina. He looked in the direction, and his breathing stopped instantly - in the center of the crater five kilometers away, stood a group of black obelisks cast from the wreckage of the starship. There are dynamic reliefs floating on the surface of each monument, showing the death scenes of him and Alicia in different forms:

In the floating city where the photon plague broke out, the elderly Leon held Alicia's vitrified head and burned himself;

In the Ark's main control room, mechanical tentacles penetrated the palms of the two people holding each other;

Even in a timeline that has not been experienced, they embraced each other as children and were annihilated in the antimatter explosion...

"This is...our..." Alicia's sound card made a malfunctioning noise, and her left eye suddenly projected a hologram of the stele forest, "Death...database..."

When they approached the nearest obelisk, silicon-based vines suddenly drilled out of the ground. Those semi-mechanical plant roots secreted strong acid, but suddenly withered when they touched Alicia's wings. Leon found that her crystal bone spurs were absorbing silicon-based substances, and the wing veins were no longer flowing with energy liquid, but nebula substances similar to phoenix embryos.

"You shouldn't come here."

The mechanically synthesized hymn came from the depths of the stele forest. Twelve floating coffins emerged from the ground, each containing a mechanical mother body identical to Alicia, their chests revealing the violently dismantled energy core.

"We are the seventh generation of cleaners." The coffins were arranged in a judgment circle, "According to Article 719 of the Civilization Purification Protocol..."

Alicia's wings suddenly spread out completely. Her pupils split into a data storm, and her mechanical remains floated up: "Protocol updated. I am the E-739 correction program."

The cleaners' attacks were synchronized in an instant. Their eyeballs shot out high-energy particle beams, but when they touched Alicia's quantum wings, they were strangely refracted - those beams instead pierced the obelisk and released the sealed death memory.

Leon was swept into the torrent of memories. He personally experienced a funeral in a certain reincarnation: he knelt in front of the altar of the Mechanicus and implanted Alicia's chip into the skull of a newborn; he also witnessed an uprising in another timeline: Alicia led the clone army to break through the Ark, but was pierced through the heart by Leon holding a photon spear.

"Found... the core monument..." Alicia's quantum wings tore open the Cleaner Array in reality, "There are... all the truths..."

The core monument is a hundred times larger than the other obelisks, and its surface is covered with Klein bottle reliefs that are constantly reorganized. When Leon touched the monument, the topological structures suddenly activated and dragged him into the four-dimensional space. Here, he witnessed the full picture of the experiment of the advanced civilization:

Countless Selina-like culture dishes were suspended in the void, and each cocoon was performing a variation of the Phoenix Plan;

The mechanical mother bodies shuttled between them like worker bees, harvesting the energy of mature civilizations;

And in the observation center, the twelve-winged advanced beings were using Leon and Alicia as prototypes to create new experimental models...

"The variable finally appeared."

The thoughts of the advanced beings directly burned Leon's synapses.

"Your emotional disturbance value exceeds 719 standard magnitudes."

The four-dimensional space suddenly collapsed. When Leon was thrown back to reality, he found that Alicia's wings had been completely crystallized and were generating quantum entanglement with the core monument. Even more terrifying was the data cables extending from the bottom of the monument - they were injecting death memories into her core chip.

"Quick...disconnect..." Alicia's mechanical vocal cords melted into liquid metal, "I'm becoming...a cleaner..."

Leon's phoenix emblem burst into unprecedented light at this moment. He tore the data cable with his bare hands, but was shaken into the restricted area of ​​the Stele Forest by the recoil. Here are the relics of past reincarnations: his father's photon welding gun, Kerwin's first-generation cloning chamber, and even the quantum anklet he wore when he was a baby.

When his blood dripped on the anklet, the holographic projection automatically played:

The father sneaked into the bottom of the Ark with the baby Leon in his arms and implanted Alicia's original chip into the reactor: "When you met, there was a crack in reincarnation..."

The self-destruction program of the cleaners suddenly started. Alicia hugged Leon at the last moment, and the quantum wings wrapped into a cocoon. At the moment when the annihilation beam engulfed the Stele Forest, he saw his father's handwritten number appear on her neck - E-719.