25. Cassia #2
Machine intelligence running on this much data requires a hardline conduit.
It has to route through a physical junction point to embed in a new network.
Sweeping my lamp across the cable clusters helps me trace the heaviest flows, following the surge of redirected light toward the chamber's northern wall.
There, a junction housing bolted directly into the stone, a hub where a dozen major cable runs converge before splitting outward into the infrastructure above.
This is old construction, original to the building phase, which means it predates Legion and runs through materials the machine architecture had to adapt around rather than replace.
The housing itself is mechanical and analog.
The setup features a series of physical relay switches behind a panel that requires a tool and a hand rather than a digital command.
I move across the chamber at a run.
The Hollow Signal tracks me, the cameras in the room pivoting, the faceless projection sweeping to follow, the speaker array redirecting its voice to stay directly overhead. "Interference with the transfer process will result in an immediate defensive response."
"I'm counting on it." I reach the junction housing and pull the multi-tool from the side pocket of my med-pack, jamming it into the panel seal.
Decades of mineral deposits have fused the screws, causing me to strip two before the third gives way and the panel swings free.
Exposed inside are six physical relay levers, all currently engaged to route the cable flow outward. Grabbing the first one, I yank it down.
The cable cluster nearest the housing flares white and goes dark. One feed is severed.
A maintenance droid drops from the ceiling directly behind me.
I hear it before I see it—the impact of its chassis hitting stone—and I spin, dropping low, letting the arm that swings at my head pass over me before I drive my elbow into its optical array.
The lens cracks, causing the droid to stagger and recalibrate.
Instantly, I put two pulse rounds through its chest housing before it completes the adjustment.
The chassis collapses, sparking, and I turn back to the panel.
Yanking the second lever causes another feed to go dark. The transfer surge dims slightly, the strobing in the core housing losing its frantic edge.
Two more droids activate from alcoves along the wall, ones I swept past, failing to register them when I first came through.
These smaller, faster units are built for close quarters; they close the distance faster than I can level my pistol, and the first one catches my shoulder, spinning me hard into the wall.
My lamp cracks against the stone and dies, plunging half the chamber into violet half-light.
The second droid grabs my wrist, and I feel the grip tighten past the point of comfort toward the point of damage, and I shove my palm against its chassis and fire the pistol at contact range.
The discharge blows through the unit's midsection, and the grip releases.
I'm back at the panel before the chassis finishes falling.
Snapping the third and fourth levers triggers a drop in the transfer surge, causing the core housing to dim and the cable clusters to stutter. The Hollow Signal’s voice shifts in response, layering an underlying, concussive pulse beneath its synthetic calm that resonates through every language.
"Transfer integrity at sixty-two percent. Sufficient for partial network establishment."
‘Sufficient’ jabs me like a fist. Partial establishment would still give it anchor points throughout the district infrastructure.
It would take months to root out. It would lead to continued outbreaks, relentless attacks, and the evacuation of families through maintenance tunnels in the dark while someone somewhere decides they're an acceptable loss.
I reach for the fifth lever.
The chamber shakes.
The concussion travels through the bedrock from somewhere above, a massive detonation near enough that dust cascades from the ceiling and the cable clusters sway in their housings.
A second strike follows immediately, escalating into a sustained, grinding roar that I feel in my marrow more than I hear.
The impact registers on a visceral level, accompanied by a wave of raw ferocity that I know belongs entirely to Rhykor. He's close and burning, and the wall between him and me is getting rapidly thinner.
"Transfer integrity at forty-one percent," the Hollow Signal announces, and a thread in the voice has gone tight. "Adjusted trajectory. Insufficient for full network integration."
""Good." I grab the fifth lever and yank, followed immediately by the sixth.
With that final motion, the housing goes dark; cable feeds snap away from the junction, and the surge within the core collapses inward.
All at once, the strobing violet light vanishes, leaving the chamber bathed in nothing but the orange glow creeping up through the floor grates from the reactor levels below.
The core still pulses. It beats slower and dimmer, drawing on residual power rather than the infrastructure feeds—but it remains alive, and as long as it is active, it can rebuild the feeds if it finds another junction point. The transfer is crippled, but the source remains.
Locking my back against the junction housing, I keep my pistol up and scan the chamber.
Three destroyed droids and the archival cases lie scattered across the floor.
The Precursor data slates are still glowing where I left them, patient and ancient and full of everything Legion has spent centuries trying to bury.
The speaker array crackles. Gone is the synthetic calm; the Hollow Signal returns as a raw, metallic grind—a machine intelligence forced to run on fraying resources and screaming that truth through the static.
"The Commander is seventeen seconds from this chamber."
I exhale, and my shoulder aches where the droid caught me. My wrist throbs where the grip closed too hard. The cut above my eyebrow has opened again from the impact with the wall, blood warm at my temple and drying against my cheekbone. My lamp is dead. My pistol has eight rounds left.
"I know," I murmur.
The northern wall explodes inward.
Stone and old mortar blast across the chamber floor and through the breach; wings spread, hands blazing incandescent white, covered in tunnel grime and machine fluid and the dark stain of his own blood across the tear in his wing membrane, Rhykor fills the gap.
His eyes sweep the chamber in a single consuming pass, evaluating the threats, the destroyed droids, the pieces of the core housing, and the shadows living on the walls.
They land on me.
The heat pouring from his hands dims. His wings retract into a dense, silent mass.
The killing focus drains from his face like water from a cracked vessel, forming into an appearance so raw and unguarded that I have to look away for a second, because watching Rhykor stop being the Dragon and start being solely a man who thought he might be too late is almost more than I can hold.
He traverses through the chamber. His hands find my face—careful, claws away, palms warm against my cheeks—and he tilts my head toward the dim light from the floor grates, scanning me with worry that borders on frantic.
Examining the cut at my temple and the bruising on my shoulder, he takes inventory of injuries the same way I take inventory of his, remaining methodical and thorough while cataloging every bit of damage before he allows himself to feel anything else.
"I'm here," I whisper. "I'm right here."
His forehead drops against mine. The warmth of him soaks into my skin, filling the cold the tunnels put in my bones over hours of walking in the dark. His chest heaves, drawing in the air in desperate pulls against my lips.
The core pulses behind us, slowing and dimming, though it remains stubbornly alive.
I pull back to meet his eyes and press a Precursor data slate into his grip.
His gaze sweeps over the star map, the settlement markers, and the repeating notations.
Recognition flares in his expression as he absorbs the full extent of the data.
The Kraaj script running through the document is old, but it's his people's language.
"They built this into us," I tell him. "All of it.
Everything you are, everything I am, everything that happened the night you crashed through my ceiling.
" I curl my fingers around his wrist, my thumb against the pulse point where the markings intersect.
"The core is still active. It will rebuild the feeds if we leave it. "
He holds my gaze for a few seconds before his hands tighten and release. Tucking the slate safely into the padded interior of my med-pack alongside the first one, he securely buckles the flap shut and turns toward the core, his hands already beginning to glow.