Chapter 16
A CHILL raced through Emmy, freezing her mid-breath. Her hand sought Apex’s instinctively, gripping until his pulse beat steady against her fingers. Lume screamed, a sharp, bright sound that burned across the room, her light snapping white-hot as she crouched on the console, fur flaring.
The bay went silent, the only sound the deep, slow heartbeat of the ship echoing through metal and bone.
She forced herself to move because standing still meant giving panic room to grow. Apex’s silent signal cut through the air and Emmy fell in beside him as the others converged on the command room from every corridor.
Even while running, they stayed mindful of the wounded.
Locus guided Hannah with his hand firm at her back, while Jo’Nay carried Winn easily, his stride unbroken.
Emmy stayed close enough to Apex to sense the heat radiating from him, to match her pace to his as Lume darted ahead like a streak of firelight.
Panels flickered on both sides of the hall, red and gold lights warring across the metal walls.
Emmy saw Apex pause to listen, his head tilted, the way he always did when he was reading the ship’s pulse through sound.
She couldn’t hear what he did, but she could feel it.
The hum had changed, deeper, slower, wrong.
“Core,” she said when they burst into the command room, her voice sharper than she meant it to be. “Localize the corruption.”
Static. Then Core again with strain under the steady tone. “Working. I am fencing off processes that do not belong to me. They are masked as maintenance. They are not mine.”
“Can you cut them,” Emmy asked, “without cutting yourself?”
“Not yet. I will lose systems we need if I strike. I do not wish to harm you.”
Locus helped Hannah into a chair and stepped to the nearest access panel. “Tell me where to put my fists.”
“Not there. If you break that we lose antigrav balance. The forge bay has power rerouted to it. I do not want that.”
The forge bay. The world sharpened. “He is printing himself,” Apex said. He didn’t put heat into the words. It wasn’t needed.
Jo’Nay was already moving. “I will pull the main feed to the fabricator.”
“I will suit for vacuum to cut external feeds if we lose internal control,” Locus said. He looked at Apex. “You will say when.”
“Go,” Apex said. He did not have to add anything to that. Locus ran.
Emmy turned toward the corridor, her pulse hammering. She caught Jo’Nay’s eye, saw the same question and grim resolve in his face, and nodded. Together with Apex, they sprinted toward the forge bay, their boots slamming against the deck in rhythm with the ship’s heartbeat.
The walls seemed to close around them, heat rolling through the passage like the exhale of some great beast. Sparks flared as panels flickered overhead, and the distant growl of machinery deepened until it sounded alive.
Emmy led the turn into the final corridor, the red warning lights staining their faces as the doors ahead pulsed open on command. The forge waited beyond, hot and breathing, its glow washing over them like fire called to life.
The heat hit first, a blunt wall pressing against her skin.
The chamber flickered the color of coals.
The hum came low and hungry from the guts of the ship.
She stepped in with Apex at her side, Lume a streak of white above, Jo’Nay already at the junction panel ripping covers free with calm, practiced hands.
On the central tray lay the thing that should not have been.
A body shaped like a memory and a threat.
Synthetic muscle stretched over fiber. Cables ran where veins should have run.
The skull was a cage without a face, sockets dark, jaw soldered into a suggestion of a mouth.
The heat gave it a wavering halo that made it look as if it breathed.
Emmy’s stomach turned, nearly overwhelmed by the urge to back away, but didn’t. Apex didn’t move at all. His silence was a heaviness that steadied everyone in the room. He gave the thing no recognition it didn’t deserve.
Jo’Nay yanked the first relay. The forge lights dipped. He yanked the second. The tray flickered and steadied.
“He is still drawing power through hidden lines,” Core said. The AI’s tone trembled. “I am cutting every alternative route. He has buried hooks in maintenance channels. They are not mine.”
“Show me where to strike,” Emmy said. Her voice sounded thin to her own ears. She made it firmer. “Map the parasitic paths.”
“On display.” A schematic flared across the far wall. Red threads spidered through the ship’s systems and converged on the forge like nerves feeding a newborn.
The mesh skull on the tray made a small sound. A hiss. A click. Then the speakers embedded in the chassis broke into life. The voice that emerged was gutted and cold and triumphant. I have risen.
Lume shrieked and answered with a burst of light. The strobe hit the forge optics and threw a wash of static across the sensors. The mesh head turned toward her like a hunting creature and then jerked as the cameras in the ceiling snapped to follow the movement.
Apex moved. He didn’t lunge. He didn’t howl.
He crossed the space with that measured speed Emmy had learned meant violence was already decided.
His blade left its sheath and came up under the printed clavicle.
He drove it down and sideways. The chassis spasmed.
Cables tore. The voice cut off with a wet crackle.
Jo’Nay braced on Apex’s left and caught an incoming swing from a printed arm that had not been there a heartbeat before.
The printed hand latched on to his forearm with metal fingers and pulled.
Jo’Nay set himself and held. The half-born body whirled half off the tray in a lurching motion that looked like drowning on land.
It was fast. Too fast for something new.
The fusion of code and flesh made it vicious and graceless.
Locus hit the hatch at a run, breath fogging in the hot air, suit seals hissing where he had half-closed them after checking exterior feeds.
He didn’t slow. “On the right,” he said.
Warrior cadence. No hesitation. No fear.
He took the printed limb at the joint and drove it down.
Metal screamed. The arm tore and hung by a few stubborn strands.
Winn slid in behind him with a plasma rod cradled against her chest. Her voice rasped but held. “Tell me where.”
“Control bank,” Emmy said. She pointed past the churn of motion to the column of ports that fed commands to the forge. “There. The top row.”
Winn moved like a ghost in a heat shimmer. Her eyes were keen and intent. She planted her feet, took a breath, and jammed the rod into the control bank. The lights across the panel went white and then dead. The room smelled of hot metal and scorched insulation.
The printed chassis lunged toward her. Locus was already there, body between. The thing hit his shoulder and shoved with power disproportionate to its mass. He held the ground by inches. Emmy saw the ripple of force pass through him and wanted to cry out. She didn’t. Instead, she moved.
“Core,” she said. “Mirror him. Wherever his signal is strongest, reflect it back. Strip his advantages.”
“I will try. He is braided through me. He moves when I move. He hides where I cannot look.”
“You have permission to burn anything he touches,” she said. “If we need it, burn me to get to him.”
“I will not harm you,” Core said, shock in the tone.
“You can. You will if you must. Do you hear me?”
Apex glanced at her once. The look cut through heat and noise. It said he trusted her to know what she risked and to risk it anyway. That look settled in her pulse like a second heartbeat.
The half-born Voss twisted. The sockets brightened with a red glow that looked like an idea of eyes. You made a mistake, the voice said, now routed from the raw speakers embedded in its chest. You carried me with you when you ran.
Lume answered with another burst of light that hit the optics and scrambled them again. The head flicked to track her and failed.
Hannah’s voice came through the comm, thin and fierce. “I can reroute cooling fluid. If it floods the floor, the temperature will drop fast. I can force the metal to seize.”
“Do it,” Emmy said. “Give us ice.”
“I will open the lines,” Core said. “On your mark, Emmy.”
The printed leg braced off the tray and pushed. It moved with a stutter that made Emmy’s skin crawl. Jo’Nay caught the arm again, this time with both hands, muscles standing out along his forearms. The sharpened digits tried to bite into his skin, snapping like teeth. He set his stance and held.
“Now,” he said, his breath shaking only a little. “Now would be correct.”
“Now,” Emmy said.
Cold mist roared across the floor as the cooling lines dumped into the bay.
It hit the molten heat and boiled, then fell.
Frost crawled in a ring around the base of the forge and raced out like a living organism.
The half-born Voss slipped. Its right leg locked at an angle that should not have been possible. Metal squealed.
Jo’Nay twisted and pinned the arm at the elbow. “Strike,” he said to Apex without looking away.
Apex drove his blade down through the rib lattice and into the core casing buried in the chest. The sound wasn’t like metal. It was like something living getting its last breath cut in half. The red in the sockets flared and went dark. The speakers screamed and went silent.
The floor shuddered. The vents slammed open and shut. Doors down two corridors cycled hard enough to make the ship sound like it had coughed. Voss’s voice came from everywhere at once. You cannot kill what is already beyond flesh.
Emmy’s skin felt too small for her body. She set her hands to the main console and dragged up the deepest access Core had. “Show me the infection. All of it. Do not gate me.”
“I am opening every lock to you,” Core said. “I trust you. I do not know if I can trust myself.”