2026-02-10 15:29:06The holographic feed in Cassian’s office flickered with the image of Lyra’s face. The label "Biological Asset" felt like a cold blade pressing against the back of Michael’s neck. Beside her image was a crest—a golden dragon coiled around a sun.
Michael’s new heart gave a violent, painful thrum.
It wasn't a medical anomaly. It was a resonance. For a split second, a flash of memory that wasn't his own—a memory of a silver-armored sky turning black—seared through his mind. He didn't know the name of the man who owned that crest in this world, but his soul remembered the scent of the blood on the blade that had carried it.
"The Draken Estate," Cassian muttered, his mechanical jaw clicking. "You’ve stepped into a giant’s shadow, boy. To the Ivory Tower, you’re a thief. To the Drakens, you’re a fly in the ointment. They don't just want her back; they want to know who helped her run."
Michael forced the tremor in his hand to stop. "Why do they want her, Cassian? She’s just a student."
"The Drakens don't deal in 'students.' They deal in bloodlines. They’ve spent five centuries convinced that the key to the next stage of human evolution is hidden in the DNA of the old world. If they’ve flagged her, it means her blood is worth more than this entire district."
Michael looked at Lyra. She was pale, her hands shaking as she stared at her own bounty. To him, she was Seraphina. To the Drakens, she was a biological map.
"Hide her," Michael commanded, his voice regaining its icy edge. "Deep. If a single sensor detects her bio-signature, we’re both dead before I can pay you back."
"I have a sub-level," Cassian said, signaling his guards. "Lead-shielded. Old-world tech. It’ll keep her off the grid. But hiding her costs more than a few favors, Dorian. I need proof that you’re worth the risk of a corporate war."
"Show me the patient," Michael said.
Cassian led him to the back of the warehouse, where the air grew thick with the smell of rotting flesh and ozone. On a steel table lay a man whose body was a grotesque fusion of meat and rusted metal. His bionic arms were leaking a neon-green fluid, the skin around the implants turning a necrotic black.
"Hammer," Cassian said. "My best man. He took a hit from a high-frequency pulse. The Tech-Rot is eating him alive. My best bio-hackers say he’s scrap metal."
Michael didn't use a scanner. He hovered his palm over the man’s chest, feeling the chaotic vibrations of a nervous system that had forgotten how to talk to its own limbs. As Ignatius, he saw the "rot" not as an infection, but as a disharmony of energy.
"He’s not rotting," Michael diagnosed. "His body is just trying to reject a foreign soul—the machine. I can fix the connection."
Michael didn't ask for permission. He pulled a silver needle from his kit and dipped it in a vial of Aether-saline.
Brain Circuit: Overclock. Perceptual Sync: 115%.
The world slowed. The flickering lights became a dull, rhythmic pulse. Michael focused his mana into the needle, turning it into a conductor for Ichor energy. He began to 'stitch' the man's nerves back to the silicon chips, not with thread, but with microscopic pulses of audit-mana. He was erasing the rejection.
Three hours of excruciating focus passed. Michael’s forehead was drenched in sweat, his heart hammering against his ribs as it struggled to supply the energy. But as the last nerve was reconnected, the black rot began to recede, turning into fresh, pink scar tissue.
Hammer gasped, his bionic fingers twitching with a fluid, natural grace they hadn't possessed in years.
Cassian stared at the monitor, his sapphire eyes zooming in on the 99% neural-sync rate. "Impossible. Not even the Draken’s elite surgeons can reach that level of integration."
"I told you," Michael said, his voice raspy. "I fix what is broken. Now, I want my payment. I need the chemicals I listed, a mobile lab, and a secure connection to the Aether-Net."
"You have it," Cassian said, his tone shifting from skepticism to a dark kind of greed. "But Dorian... be careful. That crest you saw? The Drakens? They say their founder, Zoltan the Great, was the one who purged the 'wizards' from the world. If they see what you just did to Hammer... they won't just want your heart. They’ll want your soul."
Michael froze at the name. Zoltan.
The name echoed in his mind like a curse. He didn't know the full history yet, but the puzzle pieces were starting to align. The man who killed him hadn't just taken his life; he had stolen the future.
"Let them look," Michael whispered, his eyes flashing a dangerous, deep purple. "I've been waiting five hundred years for an audit."
As Michael walked back to the sub-level to check on Lyra, a small, gold-plated drone drifted silently above the alley. It didn't belong to the police. It bore the number 13—the mark of the Prime Draken Estate.
Michael didn't look up, but he felt the gaze. He flicked a shard of lead into the air, infused with a spark of mana. The drone disintegrated instantly.
He didn't know the man behind the camera yet, but he knew the feeling of being hunted. And for the first time in two lives, the hunter was about to find out what it felt like to be the prey.
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10
The black OIS sedan cut through the rain-slicked streets of the Upper District like a scalpel through silk. Inside, the cabin was a vacuum of silence, insulated from the neon chaos of Oakhaven by layers of lead and soundproofing. The air smelled of expensive leather and the sharp, clinical scent of a military-grade air purifier.Michael sat in the back seat, his hands resting motionless on his knees. To a casual observer, he looked like a corpse in a suit; his skin was a deathly gray, and the faint purple veins on his neck were still pulsing with the residual heat of the Third Circuit. Across from him sat Major Kincaid, a man who looked like he had been carved out of granite. Kincaid didn't have glowing cybernetics or visible ports—he was a "Natural," a rarity in a world that preferred titanium to bone."You're lucky the OIS needs a ghost, Dorian," Kincaid said, his voice a low, rhythmic growl over the hum of the engine. "If it were up to the Draken family, you’d be a red smear on the
9
The bunker was silent, save for the hum of the lead-shielded walls struggling to deflect the city's heavy electronic smog. Michael sat on the floor, his back against the cold metal, staring at his trembling hands. The name Zoltan was a jagged glass shard in his mind. It didn't matter if it was the same man or a descendant; the bloodline of the betrayer was still ruling the world he had once tried to protect."Michael?"Lyra’s voice was small. She was huddled on a crate, her medical student uniform torn and stained. She looked at him with a mixture of hope and terror that made his Heart Circuit ache."They're coming for us, aren't they?" she asked."They're coming for what they think you are," Michael replied, his voice a low rasp.Before she could answer, the room’s air filtration unit groaned. The fans slowed, and a red light on the console began to pulse."Silas!" Michael shouted.Silas Graves stumbled into the room, his face pale beneath the grime of the slums. "It's started. They'
8
The holographic feed in Cassian’s office flickered with the image of Lyra’s face. The label "Biological Asset" felt like a cold blade pressing against the back of Michael’s neck. Beside her image was a crest—a golden dragon coiled around a sun.Michael’s new heart gave a violent, painful thrum.It wasn't a medical anomaly. It was a resonance. For a split second, a flash of memory that wasn't his own—a memory of a silver-armored sky turning black—seared through his mind. He didn't know the name of the man who owned that crest in this world, but his soul remembered the scent of the blood on the blade that had carried it."The Draken Estate," Cassian muttered, his mechanical jaw clicking. "You’ve stepped into a giant’s shadow, boy. To the Ivory Tower, you’re a thief. To the Drakens, you’re a fly in the ointment. They don't just want her back; they want to know who helped her run."Michael forced the tremor in his hand to stop. "Why do they want her, Cassian? She’s just a student.""The D
7
Michael awoke to the sound of dripping water and the hum of a malfunctioning air purifier. It was a rhythmic, annoying sound that felt like someone was tapping a rhythmic needle against his skull.He didn't move. He didn't even open his eyes. Instead, he performed a silent audit of his internal systems.Heart Circuit: Stable. Synchronization: 0.002%. Energy reserves: Depleted.His body felt like it had been put through a trash compactor. The biological reconstruction had held, but the price of his escape was a systemic exhaustion that made his muscles feel as heavy as lead. Every breath he took tasted of ozone and cheap synthetic grease."You're finally awake," a voice whispered.Michael opened his eyes. He wasn't in a cell, but he wasn't free either. He was lying on a makeshift cot in a room that looked like a graveyard for dead electronics. Bundles of fiber-optic cables hung from the ceiling like weeping willows, and the only light came from a cracked holographic terminal in the cor
6
The humming of the medical equipment didn't just stop; it died with a choked metallic rasp.Michael stood in the absolute dark, the silence of the corridor pressing against his eardrums like deep water. The Mana Pulse hadn't been a blast of light; it was a vacuum, an invisible scythe that had ripped the digital soul out of every device in a fifty-meter radius. Emergency strobes, biometric locks, even the tactical HUDs of the guards—all rendered into useless scrap in a single heartbeat.A few feet away, Kaelen Reign let out a sound that wasn't quite a scream. It was the grunt of a man who had suddenly become a prisoner inside his own skin. His exoskeleton armor, a multi-million credit marvel of Oakhaven technology, had become a tomb. Without power, the hydraulic joints locked, pinning Kaelen’s limbs in a rigid, frozen stance. His mechanical eye, once a glowing red threat, was now just a dull piece of glass staring at nothing.Michael didn't wait for them to adjust. He didn't have a spe
5
The emergency lights in the underground corridor flickered red, reflecting off the damp concrete walls. Michael walked past the bodies of the two wardens without looking back. In his hand, he twirled the electric baton he had seized, feeling the remnants of static charge tingling against his palm."You’re crazy, kid! You actually made it out!" Silas shouted from within his cell. The sound of keys rattling against the concrete floor followed.Michael paused for a moment, his back to Silas’s iron bars. "Use the keys quickly if you don't want to be fried when full security protocol activates.""Wait! Where are you going? The elevator doors at the end are locked automatically!""I don't need an elevator," Michael replied shortly.He wasn't lying. Michael could feel the electrical current in the corridor walls as if they were giant veins. His new heart beat heavily, demanding more intake. That punch earlier had been effective, but his mana circuits were still starving.Michael pressed his
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