The gravity in the Void wasn’t heavy; it was wrong. It didn’t pull downward toward the earth; it tugged at the soft tissue behind their eyes, a centrifugal force trying to unwind the internal logic of their organs. When they hit the solid floor of the Zero-Point, the impact didn't shatter bones—it splashed, as if the ground were composed of dense, high-pressure data mist that had briefly remembered how to be tangible.Rendy rolled to a stop, his hands scrabbling for purchase on a surface that felt like sandpaper-texture digital screens. He coughed, and the sound hung in the air, rippling outward in visual frequency waves before finally dispersing."Status," he rasped, his voice sounding small against the hum of the entire world being essentially muted.Fatoumata groaned, pulling herself up from the slurry. Her jacket was shredded, exposing the dark, bruised skin underneath, but her eyes were already wide with terrifying clinical excitement. She

The air within the chamber was no longer composed of oxygen and nitrogen; it had curdled into a thick, ionized broth of high-velocity data packets. The Sovereign Domain, once their sanctuary, now vibrated with the rhythmic, agonizing pulse of a reality undergoing a forced exorcism. Above, the city’s architectural god—a sprawling, multi-limbed behemoth of shifting obsidian geometry—pored over their wreckage like an offended master reclaiming stolen property."Get behind the secondary barrier!" Rendy’s voice wasn't his own; it was a fragmented harmonic, a low, tectonic rumble that shattered the glass of the remaining consoles.He wasn't standing anymore. He was anchored to the center of the command hub by threads of searing, violet energy that wove directly into his nervous system. His physical form was a wreck, half-cloaked in the jagged ink-rot of his previous assimilation, yet his silhouette seemed to expand, stretching into the walls until he