2025-12-14 05:54:43
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CHAPTER 100 — ASCENSION THRESHOLD
The undercity transformed into a battlefield of rising dust, flashing sirens, and metal wings slicing the air. Helix drones circled like a tightening noose. Anti-Ascendant cannons locked onto Raymond with a stuttering hum that promised annihilation.Lira grabbed Raymond’s wrist. “Ray, we have seconds. Decide.”Raymond didn’t answer.Because the Core was speaking again, quieter this time, almost gentle:“Host… your pulse is collapsing. Biological integrity: unstable. Human limitation cannot survive this confrontation.”Raymond’s scalp prickled.“What are you saying?”“Ascension is not optional. It is the minimum requirement for survival.”Lira stared between Raymond and the army enclosing them. Her jaw trembled.“Ray… don’t do it.”The Core chuckled in his mind, a sound disturbingly close to fondness.“She fears losing you. But without me, she loses you entirely.”Raymond closed his eyes.His wound still throbbed with the Watcher’s extraction logic, an itch beneath the skin, a tearing
CHAPTER 99 — SUCCESSOR OF NOTHING
The undercity groaned as if the steel bones beneath Zenith were waking from a long, hateful dream. Raymond and Lira sprinted between fallen support beams, neon steam rising around their feet like ghosts.Raymond’s pulse hammered with two overlapping rhythms, one his own, one belonging to something far older.Behind them, alarms wailed. Drones shrieked overhead like mechanical vultures.Lira glanced back mid-run. “Ray! Three Helix drones on approach! High-altitude class—they’ll mark us for artillery!”Raymond inhaled sharply. “Then don’t stop running.”“Host exertion detected. Shall I assist?” The Core’s voice slid through his mind like a scalpel dipped in ice.“No,” he growled back.He could feel it waiting, eager, patient, hungry for more space inside him.They cut through the shattered metro concourse, past broken holographic displays. One flickered to life as they passed.HELIX PUBLIC SAFETY ALERTANOMALY CLASS RED — VISUAL IDENT CONFIRMEDSUBJECT: RAYMOND BRIGGSTHREAT LEVEL: ASCE
CHAPTER 98 — THE HOST WHO SHOULDN’T EXIST
Smoke curled from Raymond’s armor as he staggered through the cracked corridor, each step heavy with the weight of something new pulsing under his ribs. Lira hovered beside him, half-supporting him, half-afraid to touch him.“Ray… your heartbeat’s wrong.”He forced a breath. “Define ‘wrong.’”“It sounds like a… dual rhythm.” She tapped her audio implant. “One beat human, one beat, whatever the hell that Core is.”Raymond grimaced. “Feels like I swallowed a reactor.”“Host stabilizing. Neural threads weaving. Identity pending.”The whisper wasn’t in the room.It blossomed inside his skull, gentle and curious, like a machine attempting its first words.Raymond clenched his jaw. Not now.The corridor vibrated with intermittent tremors. Pipes hissed steam. Emergency lights flickered in frantic red pulses.Lira scanned the path ahead with a trembling pistol. “The whole lab is collapsing. We need to reach the surface before this tomb decides to bury us with the freak.”Raymond’s brow tighte
CHAPTER 97 — THE LAST INCISION BEFORE DAWN
The First Scalpel rose in jagged, unnatural motions, like a corpse pulled upward by invisible strings. Sparks crawled down its ruined spine where Raymond’s blade had torn through; nanoflesh writhed, struggling to reconstruct itself but failing, glitching, twitching.Its voice broke in and out like corrupted audio.“Suc…ces…sor… Your cut… was… beautiful…”Raymond forced himself to his feet. His vision pulsed red from backlash, his heartbeat unstable, lungs burning from Redline strain.Lira crawled toward him, clutching her shoulder. “Raymond… tell me it’s dying.”He swallowed hard.“It should be.”The creature tilted its head at an impossible angle.“It cannot kill me,” it breathed. “Not alone. Not incomplete.”Raymond gripped the Neon Scalpel tighter. “Then I’ll finish the job.”The First Scalpel smiled, its jaw stretching too wide, nanoflesh tearing at the corners.“No,” it whispered. “I will finish you.”An explosion of blue-green energy erupted from the creature’s chest as a sphere
CHAPTER 96 — THE CORE’S AWAKENING
Silence. Then a low, throbbing hum, like the vibration of an immense, waking heart.Raymond’s vision returned in fragments: blurred shapes, flashing conduits, drifting embers of neon coolant. His ears rang, his limbs buzzed with static. Every nerve felt rewired.The Core had hit. Hard. The entire chamber lay in ruins, floor split, cables whipping like angry serpents, walls trembling with structural death throes.He pushed himself up through dust and broken metal, coughing.“L… Lira?” he rasped.A groan answered from somewhere behind a collapsed support beam.He staggered toward her. Found her half-buried in debris, a jagged piece of metal impaled through her shoulder armor but missing her actual flesh by centimeters.Her eyes fluttered open. “Still alive,” she muttered. “Ruin-proof, remember?”Raymond allowed himself a breath of relief even as the ground shook beneath their feet.Because at the center of the devastation. Standing amid glowing fragments of the shattered Core, was the F
CHAPTER 95 — VEINS OF THE BETRAYER
The blast doors sealed behind Raymond with a hydraulic hiss, locking out the distant screams, alarms, and collapsing steel. The corridor before him was narrow, claustrophobic, lined with flickering red lights and the low hum of dormant machinery.This was deeper. Much deeper. Closer to the place the System kept whispering about.“Core-breach proximity… genetic resonance increasing…”He ignored the notification as best he could and forced himself to breathe. Lira limped beside him, blood running down her thigh from the mech’s earlier strike. Her breathing was shallow, strained, but her grip on her blade never wavered.“You good?” Raymond asked.She scoffed. “If I die, it won’t be because of some oversized tin can. Lead the way, doc.”He almost smiled. Almost.They pushed forward.The deeper they went, the colder the air became, so cold Raymond could see his breath mist in front of him. The walls changed too, shifting from industrial metal to something stranger: organic alloy, pulsing f
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