Chapter 9: The Forbidden Key
Renee's arrow grazed Leah's cheek, embedding itself into the edge of the altar's groove with a quivering hum.
"Don't touch it!" Renee's roar echoed through the metallic chamber, her left arm—now webbed with silver veins from mechanical toxins—clutching her bleeding shoulder. "Your father died to seal this thing, and you're going to pry it open?!"
Leah's fingers hovered over the groove. The star chart burned in her palm, its constellation markings pulsing in sync with the altar's engravings like a waking heartbeat.
"He left the star chart for this exact moment." Her voice was barely audible, like wind through ashes.
Her father's flickering hologram glitched above the altar, his mechanized pupils dilating and contracting like a broken projector. His lips moved, but only static emerged. Yet Leah understood the shape of those words—
No.
Renee lunged to grab her, but Leah's mechanical right arm erupted in blue light, throwing her back. The moment synchronization hit 75%, the star chart wrenched free from Leah's grip—drawn like iron to a magnet—and slotted perfectly into the groove.
Click.
A soft sound, yet it plunged the entire city into silence. Even the ever-present hum died.
Then—
The altar's ring of gears accelerated into a blinding white blaze. Cracks spiderwebbed across the floor, and deep within the fissures, something stirred. Not shadows, not machines—but something primal, viscous as tar, oozing upward.
"Gray Plague..." Renee whispered, her face bloodless. "The ancients buried it at the planet's core..."
Leah's mechanical arm rose against her will, palm facing the altar. The blue veins now crawled up her neck, her skin revealing gear-like capillaries identical to her father's. Data flooded her vision—
ARK PROTOCOL: FINAL STAGE INITIATED
ECOSYSTEM RECONFIGURATION: 00:59:59
NEW VESSEL SYNCHRONIZATION: 89%
Her father's crystal pillar exploded. Silvery fluid surged out, coalescing into his final form in midair. His mechanized hand pointed downward, his voice clear for the first time: "The sonic disrupter... is inside Renee's—"
Three jagged shadows speared through his hologram, shattering it into glitching fragments that fell like tears.
"Leah!" Renee tore open her bloodied collar, yanking free her amber pendant. At its core was a tiny metallic prism. "Your father gave this to me. He said—"
The fissures split wider. A hand—ten meters across, formed of Gray Plague—clawed out of the abyss. Renee's words were drowned in the screech of twisting metal.
Leah's mechanical eye zoomed in. The prism wasn't jewelry—it was a micro-sonic emitter, etched with the same spiral patterns as the star chart.
"You were the real key all along." She reached for it, but her body locked up. At 90% sync, the altar controlled her like a puppet, forcing her toward the fissure's edge.
The colossal plague-hand paused before her, its palm splitting open into a vertical, pupil-like slit. Inside swirled a living star map—not Mayan, but something older, its constellations connected by writhing gray threads.
ACCEPT PROTOCOL TO KNOW TRUTH
REJECT PROTOCOL TO WITNESS ANNIHILATION
The choices flickered across Leah's vision—just as Renee's arrow shattered the amber.
The prism unleashed a pulse.
The plague-hand convulsed, dissolving into a black downpour. Leah seized control back, but Renee's final cry cut through: "Coordinates—on the arrow! Go! I'll hold them—"
Three shadows impaled her chest, pumping nanomist into her wounds. Yet before the conversion completed, Renee bit the pins from every smoke grenade on her belt.
In the explosion's cover, Leah snatched the arrow—its shaft carved with coordinates—and leapt into the abyss.
Her father's voice echoed one last time in her skull: "Remember... the true door was never the altar..."
Falling, she saw what lay at the planet's heart—
Not molten core, but a mechanical planet—a sphere of interlocking gears—turning slowly inside the Earth.