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Chapter 179: Blood of the Dynasty
The door between the cages opened and the floor changed at the same time. I felt it before I understood it. My left foot went down and the pull came from below, in a magnetic way, dragging the calcified portions of my legs toward the metal floor like extra gravity concentrated at the ankle. I took a step and the effort was wrong, like walking through packed sand with weights strapped to both feet.[Magnetic field detected. Ferrous content in calcification: high. Movement efficiency reduced by estimated 60%.]Sixty percent. Great.The Emperor walked through the door from his side. He moved better than me on the floor, his one arm loose at his side, his body lower and centered. He had been in the pit before, or somewhere like it. The walk said that."You've been on a magnetic floor," I said. "Several times," he said. "The Collector enjoys the variable." He stopped about four meters out. "You're carrying the calcification in your legs. That's a problem here.""I know," I said. "I'm not
Chapter 178: The Scavenger Pit
I woke up on my back on a metal floor with a bar across my chest and four walls of thick wire mesh on all sides.I sat up. My calcification was down to my knees, the rest had reverted during whatever they had used to knock me out. My ribs were tender on the left side, three of them, and my right eye was swollen enough that I had to turn my head to see the full width of the cage.The cage was in a pit. The pit was roughly circular, about forty meters across, with tiered seating rising up from the edges. Half the seats were filled. The audience was mixed, a dozen species at least, some I recognized and some I didn't. All of them watching the floor of the pit where two things were currently tearing each other apart.I watched long enough to get the layout. Three cages on the pit floor, mine was on the left. The center cage held the two fighters and the right cage was occupied.[Biological reserves at 34%. Calcification retracted. Current threat level: moderate.][Recommend assessment bef
Chapter 177: Vacuum Drifting
We came out of the airlock tumbling and I got my arm around his throat before we had cleared the ship's hull.He grabbed my forearm with his remaining hand and pulled, it wasn't enough. My calcified skin gave him nothing to work with and I tightened the hold and we spun together into open space.The ship launched above us, and I watched it go. The detonator was still in his hand.[Vacuum exposure detected. Evolution reserves activating.][Estimated survival window: nineteen minutes.]Nineteen minutes, I kept the choke and he kept pulling at my arm. We couldn't speak, there was no air. He knew that and I knew that. We just held on to each other and drifted, he tried to break my grip and I didn't let him. His remaining fingers found the edge of my wrist joint, the one gap in the calcification where the skin was still soft, and he dug in hard. I felt the pressure but not enough pain to matter.The detonator was between us. His thumb was still on it. I got my free hand to his wrist and p
Chapter 176: The Clone's Choice
"Wait," I said. The clone looked at me. The sludge was already moving up her wrists, she hadn't pulled her hands back."There's another way," I said."There isn't," she said. "I've been doing the math since the hangar. The path is two hundred meters and the Rot won't hold open for biomass it can't verify.It needs something alive and it needs it now." She looked down at her hands. "I'm the only one it already knows.""You don't have to do this," my father said. She looked at him. "I know." She looked back at me. "The escape vessel is in the private bay on the north side of the hangar level. The Emperor kept it separate from the main fleet. It's on a raised platform, above the sludge line." She pulled her display chip out of her pocket and held it toward me. "The layout is on there. Bay seven."I took the chip. "Go now," she said. "Once I go under, the path holds for about four minutes. Maybe five.""Four minutes," I said. "Yes. Move fast." I looked at her for a second. She had Elowen'
Chapter 175: The Obsidian Shield
The Rot-shape moved toward me and my father grabbed my arm from behind. "Back up," he said. "Working on it," I said.The shape was rough and slow but it was getting more defined as it moved. The arms were filling out and the head was getting a neck. It was building itself denser as it walked.My left leg buckled. The motor signal was gone from the knee down and I caught myself on the wall. The sludge was at my mid-shin now.[Warning. Pathogen consumption of lower extremities accelerating. Biological tissue integrity compromised.][Recommend immediate countermeasure.]Countermeasure. I looked at my hands, the plasma was gone. The phase state was compromised from the waist down. I had one option and it was going to hurt."Get back," I told my father. "Against the wall and don't touch the floor." He moved.I looked at my legs and pushed inward instead of out. It wasn't an expansion, rather a compression. I forced the Pearl's energy into my cellular structure the wrong direction, driving
Chapter 174: The Great Rot
The Emperor's hand was gone up to the wrist before I moved.It wasn't dissolved, but consumed. The skin peeled back in layers and what was underneath went the same way, fast and neat, like something was eating inward from the surface. He watched it happen with his jaw set and his eyes calm. "You need to leave the Garden," he said. "What about you?" I asked. "I've been exposed," he said. "Leaving won't help me." He looked up. "Go to sublevel four. Get your father and use the east corridor, not the main hall."I stood up, the bench under me had a dark patch spreading across the armrest nearest him. I looked at it, the material was softening, and going dark at the edges."Go," he said. I wentThe corridor outside the Garden was already wrong. The walls on the left side had patches of black sludge forming at the joins, spreading slowly down toward the floor.It smelled like something biological and old, not sharp, just heavy and pervasive. Two of the Emperor's guards were standing at th
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