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** Rebellion Ballads **
** Chapter 9: The dawn of the damn **
Aurora over the silicon mountains the purple sky, infected wound color. Lia watched the horizon with eyes that now saw beyond the spectrum of light - gamma rays, neutrinos, the invisible strands that connected each particle of the universe. His body, transformed by the goldenx virus of the Phoenix project, radiated a soft heat that melted black snow in perfect circles at his feet.
"The signal comes from the east," Arthur announced, the mechanical eye projecting a holographic map over the rock. Half of his face was a network of circuits exposed after the final attack of the sentries. -A ghost city called Novo Eden. Survivors are gathering there.
Sofia bandaged the arm of Lucia, where the girl's skin opened in luminous fissures. - She can't stand another trip. Her body is ... rewriting DNA itself.
"I'm going well," Lucia lied, holding a stone that pulverized stellar powder to the touch. Her Cério's hair shone like Supernova strands.
Igor emerged from the shadows, his right arm now a thick mass of solidified darkness. - There is something following us. It is not virtutec. Smells of ... burnt.
The warning arrived late. From the valley below, a distorted roar echoed, followed by branks of trees being torn off. When the mist dissipated, the source of terror was revealed: creatures made of meat and metal, with elongated limbs and translucent skulls where biomechanical brains pulsed. And ahead of them, a figure wrapped in amber flames - Dr. Celeste, now with reptilian skin and plasma energy wings.
- ** Did you think the light of a phoenix would just? ** - Your voice was a Sonic earthquake that made the ground crack. - ** I am the eclipse that will erase your dawn. **
The battle was chaotic. Celeste creatures attacked impossible standards, bending in space. Arthur fired electromagnetic pulses from his cyber arm, while Sofia sprouted a forest of poisonous mushrooms. Igor fought two shadows that had rebelled against him, now serving Celeste.
Lia faced the former gentanist, her plasma blades finding Celeste's power claws. Each blow released waves of shock that shattered the mountain.
- ** You are hypocritical! ** - Celeste spitting corrosive plasma. -** uses the virus that condemned, becomes what he vowed to destroy! **
Lia retreated, feeling the virus dance in her veins like living fire. She * wanted that power - the seduction of being more than human. But then he saw Lucia, bleeding Luz as he kept a barrier of strength around the group.
*I won't be like them.*
With a scream that echoed in the dimensions, Lia channeled all the cosmic energy in a single point: the antimatter nucleus that celestial carried on the chest. The explosion swallowed mountains, sky, time.
When dust dropped, only ruins remained. Celeste touched, but smiling. - ** You just postponed the inevitable ... **
The surviving group met in silence. New Eden was now an unreachable mirage. Arthur, with failing systems, pointed to the north. - There is an abandoned satellite ... the "Pandora Station". We can send a signal to all resistance cells.
The journey to the station was a crucis pathway. Acid lakes, silicon storms, and worse - the group's own transformations. Sofia had begun to photosynthesize, her greenish skin cracking under sunlight. Igor was so much of the shadows that sometimes disappeared for hours. Lucia now changes, communicated through holograms that burned the air.
At Pandora station, a cosmic moss orbital skeleton found Graham's last gift: a terminal with access to Virtutec's global satellite network.
- ** This here ... ** - Arthur swallowed dry when deciphering the files. - ** The Divinity Project has never been about dominating the earth. It's a lighthouse. **
The images showed orbit-bumps, ready to bring the "chosen" to other planets. Children like Lucia - purified by the virus - would be the demigods that would colonize worlds, while the earth was left to die.
Lia looked at the planet below, so fragile under the mist of pollution. - ** They run away because they know the rebellion is contagious. **
The transmission began at midnight. Lia, with scars shining as constellations, spoke to makeshift cameras:
- ** You called us damn. Of aberrations. But we are the mirror of what humanity can become - not slaves, no gods ... but free. **
When the signal spread, something extraordinary happened. From slums to corporate towers ruins, lights responded. Ordinary, mutant people, even former Virtutec soldiers raised home transmitters. The resistance network has become a web of pulsating photons involving the globe.
On the final page of the Captain Virtue diary, found in the station files, Lia read the truth that broke her heart of almost-god:
*"Phoenix Project is neither healing nor weapon. It is a test. Only those who resist the temptation of power deserve to inherit the stars."
While preparing Virtutec's stolen ship - the * rebellion * - to intercept orbital hives, Lucia touched Lia's face. Your holograms formed a message:
** "They are afraid because we can love in the midst of ruin." **
And when the * rebellion * took off, carrying warriors, poets and children marked by divine fire, the earth witnessed its true dawn-not a curse, but of a kind that has chosen to shine even knowing ephemeral.
In his cell at Pandora station, Celeste smiled when she saw the golden virus regenerating her body. The game had changed, but the Phoenixes War had only begun.