For three days, the world was nothing but a fragmented, feverish blur of shadows and light.
The catastrophic toll of the Architect's Dive had completely overwhelmed Nikki's fragile biological system. Plugging a human brain directly into a Class-5 neural port was a medical impossibility; surviving it was a miracle that had violently fried her nervous system. Her limbs felt like they were made of heavy, molten lead. The agonizing blisters on her palms—a brutal souvenir from holding the Supreme Commander's fracturing plasma core—throbbed with a relentless, burning ache.
But through the haze of the fever, the static in her mind, and the exhaustion that pulled her under, there was one constant, unyielding anchor.
Adonis.
