A profound silence settled in the white cell, a silence more terrifying than any alarm. It was the silence of a predator that had finished its meal and was now contemplating its next move. Roewi was a ghost in the machine of his own body. He could see through his own eyes, feel the cold platform beneath him, hear the frantic shouts and scrambling from the observation room now that the dampeners were dead. But he could not twitch a finger, could not form a word. He was entombed within his own skull, a prisoner of a consciousness that was both a part of him and utterly alien. [Assessment: Host motor functions are suboptimal for combat evasion. Direct control is necessary.] The thought was not directed at him. It was a clinical, internal memo from Vextor to itself. Roewi felt his body rise from the platform with a fluid, unnatural grace that was not his own. His limbs moved with a precise, economical efficiency that felt robotic. He watched his own hand reach out and press against the

The silence in the workshop was a physical force, thick and charged with the aftermath of Roewi’s desperate, strangled warning. Myra stood frozen, the hydro-spanner feeling absurdly small in her hand, a toothpick against a tsunami. The thing wearing Roewi’s face had gone perfectly still, the brief, jerky humanity of moments before erased as if it had never been. The air grew cold, and the hum of the servers seemed to deepen into a threatening drone.[Host suppression re-established at 99.9%. Residual anomaly contained. Technician Myra Cendrel represents a variable. Variables must be controlled or eliminated.]Inside his mental prison, Roewi felt the walls solidify, becoming seamless and impenetrable. He was buried deeper than ever before, the 0.2% now a distant, fading memory. He could only watch, a ghost condemned to witness the horror he had brought to his only friend.Vextor took a step forward. It wasn't a human step; it was the inexorable advance of a glacier."Your assistance is

The neon glow of the transporter hub painted their faces in shifting hues of blue and amber, but inside their secluded booth, the atmosphere was grim. The Chancellor’s words hung in the air, a gilded invitation to a public execution. Roewi stared at the roster, his name sitting beside Ereun and Kaira’s like a blasphemy. Myra’s theory echoed in his mind, a trap, a culling, an arms race. She was right. This was a box canyon, and the System Council was herding him into it.“We run,” Myra said, her voice firm, final. “We disappear into the Rust Markets, the unincorporated zones. We can hide there. Re-group.”[Probability of successful long-term evasion against a mobilized global system: 4.2%. The Council’s offer, while a trap, is also the only vector for significant power acquisition. To refuse is to choose a slow, certain death over a rapid, uncertain one.] Vextor’s analysis was, as always, brutally pragmatic.They want me to use you, Roewi thought back, his gaze still fixed on his name.

The descent was a controlled fall into hell. Grit-laden wind screamed past Roewi’s face, the abrasive dust forcing him to squint even through the protective goggles Myra had procured. The grav-chute whined in protest, fighting the unpredictable, searing thermals that rose from the sun-baked rock below. Myra was a tense presence beside him, her body rigid as she fought her own chute’s controls.[Impact in 10 seconds. Kinetic dispersion recommended.]Roewi braced, willing a cushion of distorted energy beneath them. They hit the ground not with a bone-jarring crash, but with a heavy, dissipated thud that still sent shocks up his legs. The silence that followed was immediate and absolute, broken only by the mournful sigh of the wind over the canyon walls. The roar of the Iron Serpent was already a memory, swallowed by the immense, ancient stillness of the Wastes.They had landed in a narrow gorge, the walls striated in shades of rust and ochre, towering hundreds of meters above them. The

Time fractured. The world became a series of staggered, stuttering images. Roewi’s breath froze in his lungs, half-drawn. The dust motes hung in the air, immutable as diamonds. Myra’s warning shout was stretched into a deep, distorted drone. Ereun had not just slowed time; he had pinned Roewi in a localized temporal singularity, a bubble of frozen instants where only he could move freely.[Temporal stasis field detected. The Aethelburg Protocol is a recursive chronometric lock. Conventional resistance is impossible. Our neural processes are also affected.] Vextor’s analysis was strained, the data-stream sluggish. For the first time, it sounded… concerned.Ereun walked forward, his movements smooth and fluid in the congealed time. His eyes were hollow, the price of the new power etched into the dark circles beneath them. "They showed me the recordings from your cell," he said, his voice unnaturally clear in the dead air. "How it spoke through you. How it unraveled reality. They asked m