The cable was heavy. Unnaturally heavy for a simple length of copper and insulation. I dragged it with my left hand, smearing bloody streaks across the white plastic floor. Every centimeter was a battle. My body—missing its right arm and half its blood—was screaming, begging me to just lie down and close my eyes.

  But I crawled.

  Ahead of me lay a heap of dead metal. Kyle. Or what was left of him.

  His helmet was pressed to the floor, the back of his neck exposed. There, among servos and artificial muscles, gaped a small, blackened socket. A direct access port. Valerius used it for diagnostics and command uploads.

  I was going to use it to hack death itself.

  “Faster, Iron…” Zeno’s voice in my head was fading, dissolving into white noise. “The connection is unstable. I’m losing integrity.”

  “I’m… almost…” I rasped.

  My fingers slipped. With effort, I found the plug—cold, angular, a precursor-standard connector unchanged for thousands of years.

  I brought it toward the port at the back of the Hound’s head. My hand was shaking so badly I missed three times, scraping metal.

  “Come on, you bastard…”

  Click.

  The plug slid into the socket with a soft, dense sound.

  And in that same instant, I felt a blow.

  Not a physical one.

  It was like someone had yanked the drain out of a bathtub full of water. The sensation of another mind’s presence—the constant whisper, the commentary, the cold irony that had been with me for months—vanished.

  Abruptly. Instantly.

  Silence fell inside my head.

  It was more terrifying than the roar of the Core. I was used to not being alone. Used to having a “second pilot.” And now I was left alone with the pounding of blood in my ears and the savage pain in my severed shoulder. I felt hollow. As if my spine had been pulled out.

  I looked up at the nearest monitor. Green lines of code began racing across the black screen.

  [External storage device detected. Data type: Neural personality imprint.]

  [Target: Bio-mechanical host “Hound MK-4.”]

  [Host status: Critical damage. Biological brain deceased.]

  [Overwriting… 10%… 35%…]

  I dragged myself back to the wall, clutching my stump to my chest. Ephrem’s tourniquet was soaked through, but the blood was no longer pouring—apparently my body had decided it had nothing left to lose and dropped my blood pressure.

  Ephrem stirred in the corner.

  “Iron…” The old man lifted his head with effort. “Why… why did you connect him? Why?”

  “It’s not him,” I whispered. My tongue barely moved. “He’s gone.”

  [Overwriting… 99%… Complete.]

  The screen flickered.

  Kyle’s body jerked.

  It was a horrifying sight. The massive, mutilated heap of steel that had been a corpse moments ago suddenly began to make sounds. Coolers hummed inside the armor. Relays clicked. Steam burst from shattered joints as the cooling system restarted.

  Then something moved beneath the ceiling.

  I looked up. Three mechanical manipulators descended from technical recesses—thin, spider-like arms tipped with laser heads and welding tools. They moved fast and precisely.

  One grabbed Kyle by the shoulder, lifting the heavy body. Another fired a thin welding beam straight into the torn chest plate, sealing the hole where I’d killed him with electricity. The third injected some kind of foam into the joints.

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  It was repair. Automatic, soulless, instantaneous.

  The Zero Sector had recognized a new administrator.

  “Holy Mother of God…” Ephrem breathed, trying to crawl farther away.

  The repairs took less than a minute. The manipulators retracted into the ceiling.

  The Hound lay still.

  Then the dark lens on the helmet flared to life.

  Not red.

  Green. Bright, clean, venomous emerald.

  The same light that burned in my left eye.

  The figure moved. Metal scraped against metal. The giant slowly, with an eerie, unnatural smoothness, rose to one knee. It didn’t move like a robot or a zombie. It moved like a man trying on a new, very heavy suit.

  The green eye swept the hall. Paused on the Core. On Ephrem.

  And finally settled on me.

  I pressed myself into the wall. Every instinct screamed: Run.

  The memory of this body trying to crush me five minutes ago was too fresh.

  The giant stood to his full height. He was enormous. Glass crunched beneath his feet.

  He took a step toward me. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Host damage level: seventy percent,” a voice boomed from the helmet’s speakers. It wasn’t Kyle’s rasp. It was a deep, synthesized baritone. Emotionless—but painfully familiar in its intonation.

  “Student damage level: critical.”

  I opened my eyes.

  Zeno—now I was certain—stood over me. He slowly crouched down. The mechanisms of his armor hummed a quiet song.

  A massive hand encased in black steel reached toward me. I flinched, but the hand stopped. One finger, as thick as my healthy arm, gently touched my shoulder just above the tourniquet.

  “Does it hurt?” the speaker asked.

  “What do you think?” I laughed hysterically. Tears streamed down my face. “I lost my arm, teacher. I’m… crippled.”

  “You lost a component,” Zeno cut in. “Components are replaceable. The processor is what matters.”

  He slid his arms under me. I felt the cold metal and the rigid composite armor. He lifted me as easily as if I were an empty backpack. I hung in his arms, pressing my forehead against the cold chest plate. He smelled of scorched metal and fresh lubricant.

  “Ephrem,” Zeno commanded, turning his head toward the old man. “Can you stand?”

  The old man stared at him with his mouth open. Superstitious terror filled his eyes.

  “Y-you… what are you?”

  “I’m the one getting your asses out of this hole. Get up. We have three minutes before Valerius realizes his chain dog slipped the leash.”

  Grunting and leaning on the wall, Ephrem stood.

  Zeno walked toward the far wall of the chamber. In the shadows was another door—not an airlock, but a cargo ramp. He didn’t bother looking for a control panel. He drove his fingers into the gap between the doors. Servomotors howled. Metal groaned, then yielded. The doors slid apart, revealing the dark maw of a tunnel.

  Inside hovered a capsule—sleek, bullet-shaped, matte silver. It floated a few centimeters above the rail on a magnetic cushion.

  “Get in.”

  Zeno gently placed me into a soft seat inside. It automatically adjusted to my body.

  Ephrem limped in after me, casting wary glances at the giant.

  Zeno entered last. His weight made the capsule dip slightly before the magnetic field stabilized. He sat at the controls. His massive fingers flew across the sensors with inhuman speed.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as consciousness began to drift into merciful darkness.

  “Away from the sewers,” Zeno replied.

  The capsule shuddered and shot forward.

  G-forces slammed me into the seat. The tunnel walls blurred into a single gray streak. We raced through the earth at speeds the Order could only dream of. I stared through the side viewport. Occasionally, lights of technical stations flashed past—vast caverns packed with containers.

  The world beneath us… it was alive.

  “Look, Iron,” Zeno’s voice pulled me from my haze.

  The capsule slowed. The tunnel ended, giving way to a transparent tube that led to the surface.

  We burst outside.

  It was night. But the darkness wasn’t like the swamps—thick and suffocating. It was clear. Open.

  The capsule stopped on an overpass suspended above a cliff. The hatch opened with a soft hiss.

  Wind hit my face—strong, damp, cold.

  Zeno lifted me and carried me outside. Ephrem followed, gripping the rails.

  “What’s that smell?” the old man asked, inhaling greedily. “Salt?”

  I opened my eyes.

  Before us stretched a black, shifting abyss as far as the eye could see. It roared. Massive white crests rolled somewhere far below, smashing against unseen cliffs.

  “The ocean,” Zeno said. He stood at the edge of the platform, towering over the world like an iron monument. Wind tugged at loose wires on his helmet.

  I had never seen so much water. I hadn’t even known there could be so much water in the world. In the Order, they said that beyond the Fog lay the edge of the world—an endless drop into nothingness.

  They had lied.

  I looked back. Far on the horizon, through the haze, rose the spire of the Citadel. It looked small now—almost toy-like. Above it climbed a column of black smoke—the aftermath of my interference with the Core. Somewhere there, Valerius was running, mages were screaming, walls were collapsing.

  But here… here it was quiet.

  Here there was space.

  “We escaped…” I whispered.

  I looked at my left hand—dirty, burned, nails broken. Then at my right shoulder. The blood had stopped flowing, leaving only a dull, aching emptiness.

  “We didn’t just escape,” Zeno turned to me. His green eye glowed in the darkness like a beacon. “We’ve entered operational space.”

  He placed his heavy hand on my good shoulder.

  “You lost an arm, Iron. You lost your home. You lost faith in what you were taught. But look at me. I was code in your head—and now I stand on my own feet.”

  He squeezed my shoulder. Not painfully, but firmly.

  “We’ll find you a new arm. Better than the old one. We’ll find resources. And one day, we’ll return to Valerius. Not as fugitives—but as engineers who’ve come to tear down a rotten structure.”

  Ephrem sat down on the concrete slabs, legs dangling over the edge. He watched the waves and, for the first time since I’d known him, smiled. Toothless, weary—but sincere.

  I closed my eyes. The sound of the ocean lulled me.

  The pain receded.