Chapter 40 Kage
KAGE
She’s in there, suspended in that containment sphere like some relic, something divine and defiled all at once.
Her tiny form floats, limp but eerily poised, caught in a false weightlessness that shouldn’t belong to a child.
But it’s the voice that guts me—Natalie’s voice, threaded through with that alien lilt, that mechanical echo.
It bounces off the walls in perfect harmony, too perfect, too clean.
My fists clench as she says again, "I'm scared, Mommy," and then—chilling, emotionless—"The vessel is ready. "
It’s both of her. My daughter. And the parasite coiled inside her like a second soul.
I take one step forward, deliberate and slow, and the air feels like it’s vibrating around me, thick with static tension. I speak through my teeth. “Get her out of there.”
The Cyberoids don’t so much as flinch. Their figures remain locked in reverence, unmoved by our presence.
The one that leads them—taller than the rest, with a long body that looks like glass melted over bone—glides forward.
Wires wrap around its limbs like ceremonial robes, its face blank and mirror-like, reflecting distorted versions of me back at myself.
It speaks without moving its mouth, voice blossoming into the air like it's been waiting centuries to be heard.
“You do not understand, Grolgath,” it says with serene finality. “She is transcending. She will unite us.”
My voice comes out as a snarl. “She’s a child, not your fucking messiah.”
Still they stand, still as statues carved in chrome.
Then I charge.
The first blow takes a head clean off. No blood—just sparks and oily smoke.
The body twitches and collapses, its circuits screeching as they shut down.
Another swings a staff at me, and I duck under it, sweep its legs, and drive my claws through its midsection. Its voicebox hisses static as it dies.
Bella’s somewhere behind me, shouting into her wrist comm, fingers dancing across the alien console with frantic precision. “This encryption’s wrong!” she yells. “It’s not synthetic—it’s alive! The code... it’s learning while I’m fighting it!”
“I don’t care how smart it is, keep going!” I bark as I cleave another cultist in two.
A wave of them pour in from the rear entrance, chanting in layered voices, modulated in dissonant harmony.
My hearing fractures under the weight of it.
One leaps at me—limbs whirring like helicopter blades—and I shoulder check it into the wall so hard the metal cracks.
Another tries to grab my arm. I twist and snap its wrist backwards, punch it through the chest, and throw its body at the leader.
He doesn’t even blink. “Her transformation is beautiful. You resist perfection.”
I shoot him in the neck. Twice.
He folds in silence.
And still, Natalie floats.
Her little fingers twitch. Her eyes flicker. She’s still in there. But so is it.
The barrier around the sphere pulses when I touch it—hot, high-frequency, like it’s judging me. My claws scrape off, leaving no mark. I hear Bella curse behind me, slam her fist against the panel.
“It’s fused! The interface is locked to her brainstem—I can’t pull her without triggering a cascade failure!”
I freeze. Brainstem.
Then I remember.
My father, before the stroke. Before he was just a ghost in his own skin. He had a pacemaker. He used to complain about solar storms. “One big flare,” he’d joke, “and this little bastard’s gonna fry me where I stand.”
Electromagnetic disruption. Short-circuit.
EMP.
I yank the pulse detonator off my belt. Standard-issue, enough to blank a small command center.
Bella sees it and her eyes go wide.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“EMP charge,” I grunt, twisting the dial past the red zone. “Overload the field. Kill the neural relay. Disrupt the fusion.”
She stares at me, dead pale. “That thing’ll nuke every synaptic pathway in your body.”
“Five minutes of blackout,” I say. “Maybe less.”
“And her? What if it... resets her too far?”
I stop. Just for a second.
“If I’m wrong...” My voice breaks in a way it never has before. “She dies.”
Bella’s lips part. Her hand trembles as it lifts to touch my wrist. Then she clenches her jaw, meets my eyes with something feral.
“Do it.”
I nod once. Hard.
“Trust me.”
I slam the detonator into the floor.
There’s no time to think. The light flares like a miniature sun, white and blinding.
My skin boils from the inside out. My muscles seize in waves, locking hard, jerking violently.
Every implant, every nerve ending—I feel them all go dark, one by one, until even my heart stutters and drops like a stone in water.
The world explodes into silence.
I drop.
So does she.
Bella’s scream is the last thing I hear before my eardrums short.
The cultists convulse, glitching as their communion is severed. Sparks rip through their bodies. One collapses, rigid and foaming with artificial saliva. Another bursts into flame, screaming in garbled code. The leader twitches, sparks flying from his skull, then falls face-first into the floor.
The barrier around Natalie cracks, collapses. Her little body tumbles forward.
Bella crawls to her. Her hands are shaking so violently she fumbles her grip.
“Baby,” she chokes. “Please—please come back to me.”
No response.
Not at first.
Then a breath.
A cough.
A groggy, terrified whisper.
“Mom?”
Bella crumbles, pulling her close, crying so hard her body shakes.
I can't move. Not yet. My brain is rebooting in slow fragments, like watching someone piece together stars from shards of black glass.
But I hear Natalie.
I hear her.
No metal. No harmony. Just her.
And even as the blackness drags at my limbs, I feel something beat again inside my chest.
Hope.
It’s terrifying.