Zayn's fingers were no longer just gripping the bio-mechanical wall; they were melting into it. The heat from the [Kinetic Overload] was turning his sweat into steam, but the Scavenger Mites were closing the gap. Their serrated bone-legs clicked against the titanium plating like a thousand hailstones on a tin roof.
"Zayn! Twelve o'clock!" Liora screamed from below.
He didn't look. He felt the displacement of air. A Mite leaped from a higher rafter, its mandibles wide enough to snap a human torso in half.
[REACTION STAT: CRITICAL]
[SKILL ACTIVATED: VOID-FLICKER (STUTTERED)]
Because of the King's suppression field, Zayn didn't teleport. Instead, his body simply glitched six inches to the left. The Mite sailed past him, screaming as it plummeted into the acidic soup below.
Zayn didn't waste a second. He hammered his fist into a pulsing nerve-cluster, using it as a stepping stone to vault the final ten feet. He landed on a narrow catwalk made of translucent, glowing fiber-optics.
In front of him sat the Neural Node.
It looked like a human heart the size of a furnace, encased in a cage of vibrating silver wires. Every pulse sent a ripple of neon-blue light through the entire walking city.
[TARGET DETECTED: SECTOR-4 NEURAL BYPASS]
[STATUS: PROTECTED BY SYSTEM ENCRYPTION]
[WARNING: VOID-CORE INCOMPATIBILITY DETECTED]
"Encryption?" Zayn spat a mouthful of copper-tasting blood onto the glowing floor. "I'm not here to hack your code. I'm here to delete it."
Below him, the Mites had reached the catwalk. Liora was standing her ground at the base of the pillar, her green Qi forming a jagged barrier of thorns, but she was pale. Every Mite she crushed took a toll on her remaining spirit.
"Zayn, do it now!" she yelled, her voice breaking. "The purge valves are reopening!"
Zayn didn't use a terminal. He didn't look for a lever. He reached out and plunged both hands directly into the pulsing, silver wire-cage.
[DANGER: DIRECT INTERFACE INITIATED]
[THE KING'S WILL IS INVADING YOUR MIND...]
Suddenly, Zayn wasn't in the machine anymore. His vision exploded. He saw the Scapelands from a mile up. He felt the weight of twelve hydraulic legs crushing Oakhaven. He felt the hunger of the King—a cold, mechanical greed that saw humans as nothing more than batteries.
"STAY IN YOUR SQUARE, SCRAP-BORN," a voice boomed inside his skull, vibrating with the power of a thousand engines.
"My square?" Zayn's eyes snapped open, bleeding pure, concentrated indigo light. The white streak in his hair flared, glowing with a cold, lunar radiance. "I'm the hole in your board."
[CORE OVERLOAD: 120%]
[CONVERTING KINETIC HEAT INTO VOID-PRESSURE]
Zayn didn't siphon the energy out. He did the opposite. He opened the floodgates of his Primal Core and pumped the "Void" into the King's brain.
It was like pouring liquid nitrogen into a hot engine.
The silver wires turned black. The neon-blue pulse of the node flickered, turned violet, and then shattered.
SCREEEEEEE—!
The entire mountain-sized city buckled. Outside, the twelve hydraulic legs locked up, sending a shockwave across the desert for ten miles. Inside, the acid spray turned into a harmless mist, and the Scavenger Mites froze in mid-air, their neural links severed.
[SYSTEM ALERT: CRITICAL BRAIN-PATHWAY CORRUPTED]
[SECTOR-4 NEURAL BYPASS: OFFLINE]
[ANOMALY STATUS: THREAT LEVEL ESCALATED TO 'SYSTEM VIRUS']
Zayn pulled his hands back. They were charred black to the elbows, smoke rising from his skin. He slumped against the cage, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
The suppression field vanished.
In its place, a heavy, dark indigo aura settled over the chamber. The Void was back, and it was hungry.
"Zayn?" Liora called out, her voice echoing in the now-silent chamber.
Zayn looked down at her. His pupils were gone, replaced by swirling indigo nebulas. He looked at his charred arms, and before her eyes, the black skin began to flake off, revealing fresh, translucent-white flesh underneath.
[PASSIVE TRIGGERED: VOID-RECONSTRUCTION]
"The King is blind in this sector," Zayn said, his voice sounding like a chorus of echoes. "Now, we go for the heart."