Eternity is a terrible concept when you’re forced to spend it with the worst parts of yourself.The Warden didn't use shackles to hold me on the polished silver floor of the Archive. It didn't need to. I felt the pain in my arms and the bone fragments were so dense they were grinding against my muscles with every breath I took.The silver automaton, with its perfectly sculpted, metallic hand raised, said, "Initiating extraction.The ceiling above me was vaulted and a glow of light, light, light in a greyish hue fell upon me, bathing my fractured body. It was not hot nor was it cold. It was as if it was a numbing agent for the soul. I could sense the digital protocols of the Archive, penetrate my nervous system, grab hold of my localized consciousness, ready to rip out my Omniversal-baked flesh.Pain was a glitch, said the Warden's voice, which was the same base-level telepathy that the Grave-Minds had used, but perfected. You're hurting, Kaelen. Surrender the meat. Allow the format to

Anesthetics were designed for human metabolisms.They were designed to withstand a normal flow of blood, normal kinetic forces on bones. They were not made for a man whose bones were created in the raw, unformatted gravity of an Omniversal core.I felt everything on the operating table in the underground medical bay at the Citadel while lying on the blood-soaked table.It doesn't seem to be working, Nova said behind her surgical mask, her voice trembling. She was carrying a thermal-lance she had taken from one of Thorne's lifeless Praetorian Guards and localized to a single molecule. You're too dense to handle the chemicals, your biology is filtering them out before they even get to your brainstem.Then don't do it with the drugs," I ground out, my jaw aching with the pressure of my teeth.My arms were broken, bruised, and torn. The reality anchor's shockwave had broken my hyper-dense ulna and radius into jagged splinters. Nova could not simply cast the limbs to save the lives of the

There is a profound, terrifying intimacy in fighting yourself. You know the feints, the footwork, the exact moment the lungs burn and the muscles twitchHowever, when the mirror does not breathe, when the reflection is poured from flawless, everlasting silver, there is nothing but dirt that you are standing on.The Warden was not armed. It didn't need to. It was the administrator of a purist digital utopia, and it was the bringing of its absolute authority into the physical world.The Warden lifted a well-formed metallic hand, as the column of digitized silver light violently began to grow, threatening to engulf the entire spire of the High Council.The force of gravity in the plaza was not only changed, but broken.Leaps of the marble courtyard, polished and smooth, ripped off and floated up in the freezing air like mini asteroids. The remaining Vanguard and Iron Vipers were tossed into disarray, trying to hang on to the fractured ferro-crete barriers in order to not be swept into th

You can’t reason with an avalanche, and you can’t debate a steam-powered siege engine.The towering Caretaker didn't wait for a diplomatic counter-offer. It swung its massive, solid-iron wrench in a brutal, horizontal arc aimed directly at my ribcage. The weapon was the size of a mag-lev coupling, driven by the hissing, hyper-pressurized steam venting from the titan's brass joints. It was an execution stroke meant to shatter me into the magma river below.I didn't try to dodge. I dropped my center of gravity, engaged my Omniversal-baked mass, and brought both of my heavy, iron-plated forearms up to block.The impact was cataclysmic.The sound of solid cast-iron colliding with my scavenged analog cybernetics was a deafening, localized thunderclap. The heavy grated catwalk beneath my boots buckled violently, shearing its rivets and groaning under the transferred kinetic pressure. Sparks showered into the suffocating heat of Sector Alpha.My hydraulic pistons shrieked, the fluid inside t

Math is a ruthless commander. When fifty exhausted Vanguard veterans are surrounded by two hundred heavily armed Iron Vipers in a closed plaza, the math dictates a massacre.However, Nova did not do ordinary Mathematics. She was one of the first to develop the Genesis Grid and knew that the environment was just another factor that could be turned into a weapon."Fall back!" Nova shouted over the thunderous noise of Vargas' sawed-off shotguns. "Abandon the center! Send them to the main mag lift corridors!"The remaining Vanguard was not daunted. They tore through the defensive line, carrying off their injured over the rough concrete of the barricades they had left behind, as kinetic buckshot rained down on them in a storm.The sound of warlords laughter, a terrible echoing sound, permeated through the gunfire. He lifted his huge, doomed hydraulic claw, aimed at the retreating soldiers."They're breaking! Run them down!" Vargas bellowed, charging forward. "Take the spires! Take the city