"I can’t just sever it," Zervok hissed, his voice echoing with a metallic, synthesized resonance that made Qevran recoil as if struck. "It is woven into the architecture of my own spine now. To pull the cable is to pull the nerves from the marrow."Qevran shoved him, sending Zervok sprawling against the cold, jagged rock of the ridge. The younger scavenger’s face was pale, his eyes darting toward the distant horizon where the silhouette of the refinery loomed like a rusted monolith against the smog-choked sky. "Then you’re a liability, Zervok. A ticking, half-wired bomb. If you can’t control it, then we dump it. Right here. Let the rust take the damn thing."Zervok struggled to his feet, his movements jerky, lacking the fluid grace that usually defined him. He grabbed Qevran by the throat, pinning him against the basalt with surprising, unnatural strength. "Do not speak of the machine as if it were a heap of scrap, Qevran. It

Zervok stood over the wheezing, curled figure of his companion, his chest heaving with a rhythm that felt wrong—too mechanical, too precise. His own heart felt like a drum being beaten by an automated piston rather than a muscle of flesh and blood. He looked down at his trembling, gauntleted hands. The metal plating of the glove pulsed with a faint, rhythmic amber light, matching the steady thrum of the Reaper-cannon sitting silently a few yards away."I didn’t mean to," Zervok rasped, his voice dropping back into his own gravelly register, though the lingering metallic undertone still vibrated in his throat. He reached out, his hand shaking, but he stopped short of touching Qevran. "I didn't... that wasn't me, Qevran. The link. It’s like a tide. It just washes over, and I lose the shore."Qevran pushed himself up on one elbow, his neck blotched with vivid, dark-red finger marks. He looked at Zervok with a mixture of fear and lingering betrayal, wipin