Chapter 6: Echoes in the Abyss

The world was a cacophony of groaning metal and searing light. Kai's ears rang as he clawed through smoke, his hands slick with ash and blood. Alice lay beside him, her face streaked with grime, coughing into her sleeve.

"Liang—" she started.

"Gone." The word tasted like iron. Kai dragged her to her feet, the Ark's corridor buckling around them. "Move. Now."

They stumbled through the disintegrating labyrinth, walls warping like living flesh. The air reeked of ozone and burnt circuitry, holographic warnings flickering: CRITICAL SYSTEMS FAILURE. CONVERGENCE PROTOCOL: TERMINATED.

Terminated.

The lie curdled in Kai's gut. Above them, the Ark's crystalline apex pulsed faintly, its light undimmed.

It's not over.

The escape route was a gauntlet.

Blackthorn's remaining agents lurked in the shadows, their eyes hollow, skin mottled with blue veins—failed experiments. They attacked in frenzied silence, teeth bared, fingers hooked into claws.

Alice's blade flashed. "They're not human anymore!"

"No," Kai muttered, pulsing energy through a collapsed bulkhead to crush three pursuers. "They're what happens when the Core rejects."

The black veins on his neck throbbed in sympathy.

They found her in the reactor core.

Dr. Voss stood bathed in the Ark's dying light, her lab coat pristine, hair slicked into a razor-sharp bun. The Core's shard glowed in her palm, its tendrils snaking up her arm like parasitic roots.

"Resilient, aren't you?" She didn't turn. "But then, mongrels always fight hardest."

Kai's power surged. "You're done."

Voss laughed. The sound echoed unnaturally, as if spliced from a dozen throats. "You think this pathetic spire was our only anchor? The Convergence is a pattern, Subject Zero. And patterns… replicate."

She flicked her wrist.

Holograms bloomed—dozens of Arks dotting the globe, their spires piercing skies from Siberia to the Sahara.

"You'll never burn them all," she whispered. "But you'll try. And in trying, you'll gift the Core exactly what it craves."

"Which is?" Alice demanded.

Voss's cobalt eyes locked on Kai. "You."

The fight was a blur.

Voss moved with inhuman speed, the Core's shard deflecting Kai's strikes. Alice darted in, blade aimed for the tendons—but Voss caught her throat, lifting her off the ground.

"Such fire," she mused. "I'll enjoy dissecting it."

Snap.

Kai didn't think. He ripped the energy from the reactor, channeling it through his fists. The blast tore Voss's arm clean off, her scream harmonizing with the Ark's death throes.

Alice fell, gasping. "Kai—your eyes—"

He didn't need a mirror. The corruption had reached his temples, veins branching like black lightning.

Voss writhed, her severed arm regenerating in grotesque fast-forward. "You see now, don't you? The Core wants you to use it. To become its perfect vessel."

"Shut up!"

"Or what? You'll kill me?" She grinned, teeth stained red. "I'll just wake up in another timeline. But you…"

The floor gave way.

They fell through darkness, crashing into frigid seawater. The Ark collapsed around them, steel and crystal dissolving into the Atlantic's depths. Kai's lungs burned, the Core's energy the only thing keeping Alice's heart beating as they breached the surface.

A storm raged. No land in sight.

Alice treaded water, her voice raw. "What did she mean? About the Core wanting you?"

Kai stared at his reflection in the waves. The veins reached his jawline now. "It's been inside me since Mars. Every time I use it, it… roots deeper."

"Can we cut it out?"

He met her gaze. "It's not a tumor. It's a part of me."

A distant rumble cut through the storm. A ship's prow sliced through the waves, its hull marked with a thorned helix.

Blackthorn.