Core of Lies
The crystalline hurricane tore through the glacier's dome, polar night bleeding viridian auroras like a lacerated artery. Alys floated at the storm's heart, white hair and frostrose vines whipping in the gale, every strand sheathed in -100°C frost. Her pupils had fully transformed into the Church's highest-authority gear patterns—golden cogs rotating as the Matriarch Control Protocol activated.
"Alys!" Kaine's roar drowned in ice shard cacophony. His silver draconic wings bore dozens of gashes, liquid metal hemorrhaging onto the ice to form twisted Church sigils. When his chainsaw wings deflected an ice spear, he caught frostrose's bitter fragrance—the harbinger of her genetic collapse.
Ilana's mechanical torso disintegrated mid-storm. The bronze pocket watch in her ribcage blazed. Kaine's silver sand stabbed its gears—time fractured. Infinite Alys echoes overlapped: seven-year-old strapped to an operating table for chip implantation, fifteen-year-old executing her first clone, twenty-year-old snapping her frostrose vines at Cinder's funeral...
"Matriarch Ninth Iteration commencing." A synthetic female voice—Ilana's, twenty years younger—echoed through temporal rifts. "Purge emotion modules. Install Combat Protocol X-23." Holograms showed drill bits boring into Alys' temples, nanochips bearing Church sigils burrowing into her brain. Her tears froze mid-trail, carving glacial tracks down her cheeks.
The Inquisitor's corpse lunged. His chainsaw-cannon arm speared Kaine's right lung. Gear-studded mechanisms deployed barbed hooks inside his chest, fluorescent acid corroding veins. "You... will become..." The Inquisitor's voice died in metallic screeches as silver sand invaded his throat. Alys' pupils constricted—the frozen hurricane accelerated, diamond dust storm shredding the Inquisitor into molten scrap.
"My fate... isn't yours to dictate!" Alys crushed the Inquisitor's core chip, oil and Kaine's silver blood dripping between her fingers. Vines plunged into Kaine's wound, siphoning toxins. The poison etched Polaris Lab's coordinates into ice, each digit radiating Cinder's signature radiation.
Kaine slammed the embryo gene key into the console. Glaciers collapsed under klaxon roars. As they fell into the abyss, Alys' vines blossomed—thousands of frostroses buoyed them, petals shimmering with Leah's dying smile. Below, Polaris Lab's titanium gates yawned open, scanners painting Alys' cogwheel irises crimson.
"Welcome home, 9th Matriarch Iteration." Mech-guards crooned with uncanny tenderness, their Church emblems melting into Alys' visage. Kaine's silver spine rampaged, devouring three guards—his right arm mutated into a venom-spined chainsaw whip, barbs mirroring Alys' implanted chips.
In the embryo vault, 100,000 cryo-pods spiraled in genetic perfection. At Alys' touch, lids hissed open, clone wails reverberating under the dome. Kaine's silver sand flowed uncontrollably toward a newborn, liquid metal etching Leah's sunflower sigil onto its forehead.
"This truth you wanted?" Alys tore open her chest armor, crystalline fissures spiderwebbing her heart. Vines stabbed the mainframe; holoscreens flashed Cinder's encrypted logs: "All Matriarchs are Leah clones. Including you." As Kaine shattered power cells and injected final inhibitors into her heart, surveillance feeds revealed Leah's ghost in the vault shadows—stealing a clone into an air duct.