The Prototype didn't roar. It didn't have lungs for it. It just exhaled a cloud of caustic marrow dust and lurched forward.
Its four bone cleavers swung in a synchronized arc that would have turned a Bastion into a red smear. I didn't try to block. I didn't even try to dodge properly.
I fell.
I let my trembling, unhealed legs collapse, sliding beneath the first cleaver by a hair's breadth. The blade whistled over my head, slamming into a glass cylinder and showering me in amniotic fluid.
[STABILITY: 24%]
[WARNING: EXTERNAL CONTAMINANTS DETECTED]
"I'm literally covered in my own brothers," I hissed, rolling through the glass shards. "The contamination is a bit late to the party."
The Prototype turned with a mechanical stiffness. It was powerful, but it was a "Legacy" design. It moved in straight lines. It expected me to be a physical obstacle.
I wasn't an obstacle. I was a disease.
I lunged. My body screamed as my cracked ribs ground together, but the Architect's Needle was already in motion.
The black, whip thin limb didn't strike the Prototype's chest. I aimed for the junction of its secondary shoulder. The needle slipped between the chitinous plates with the ease of a hot wire through fat.
[VIRAL INTERFACE ESTABLISHED]
[TARGET: PROTOTYPE #000 - NEURAL CORE FOUND]
"Let's see what's under the hood," I clicked.
The world slowed. Through the needle, I wasn't feeling flesh. I was feeling code. The Prototype's biology was a mess of "Brute Strength" commands and "Ignore Pain" overrides. It was an unfinished book, and I had the pen.
I didn't try to kill it. I didn't have the biomass for a killing blow.
I Injected.
I sent a surge of my own unstable neural data -the white noise of my 24% stability- directly into its motor cortex.
The Prototype froze. Its left cleaver-arm began to twitch violently. Then, with a wet crunch, the limb turned inward and buried the bone-blade into its own neck.
[BIOMASS REWRITTEN: MOTOR FEEDBACK LOOP CREATED]
The creature let out a gurgling sound. It was confused. Its own body was betraying it, and it didn't have the processing power to understand why.
"Don't look at me," I said, stumbling back as my vision flickered. "Your coordination was always the problem. I'm just highlighting the flaws."
But I was paying the price. Every second of the Virus connection felt like my brain was being pulled through a needle eye.
[STABILITY: 21%]
[CRITICAL: NEURAL LATTICE DEGRADING]
The Prototype ripped the blade from its neck, dark fluid spraying the pedestal. It was learning. It locked its remaining three arms together, creating a whirlwind of bone that destroyed everything in its path. It was a meat-grinder on legs.
I was backed against the wall. To my left, the Apex Seed sat on its pedestal, glowing with an indifferent light. To my right, a row of unbroken cylinders.
The Prototype charged.
I didn't have enough stability for another injection. If it touched me, I would dissolve before the first cut was even finished.
I looked at the glass tube next to me. Inside was a "Weightless" variant a creature with hollow bones and massive, underdeveloped wings.
I didn't fight the Prototype. I fought the room.
I jammed my needle into the base of the glass cylinder.
[RE-WRITING COMMAND: EMERGENCY RELEASE]
The glass didn't shatter. It dissolved.
The "Weightless" failure tumbled out, a mass of wet feathers and hollow bone. I didn't let it hit the floor. I grabbed a handful of its discarded biomass and shoved my needle into its heart.
"I need a shield," I whispered. "And you need a purpose."
I didn't absorb the creature. I Grafted it externally.
Using the last of my energy, I wove the hollow bones of the failure around my own shattered ribcage, creating a temporary, external cage of white ivory. It was ugly. It was a parasitic armor made of a corpse.
[STABILITY: 19%]
[TEMPORARY ARMOR ACQUIRED: THE HOLLOW SHROUD]
The Prototype's cleavers hit.
The hollow bones shattered instantly, absorbing the force of the blow. I was launched backward, slamming into the Apex Seed pedestal, but I was still in one piece.
The Prototype lunged for the final kill, its three blades poised to skewer my core.
I didn't move. I waited until the central blade was inches from my remaining eye.
Then, I triggered the Virus one last time.
I didn't aim for its brain. I aimed for its stability.
"If I'm going down to 19%," I clicked, my needle arm blurring into a streak of black light, "you're coming down to zero."
I plunged the needle into the Prototype's open neck wound.
I didn't inject code. I withdrew it.
I ripped the biological "Glue" that held its massive frame together. I pulled the command for "Solidification."
The Prototype didn't die. It unravelled.
One moment it was a mountain of muscle; the next, it was a waterfall of gray slush. The cleavers fell to the floor with dull thuds, no longer attached to anything but melting gristle.
[THREAT NEUTRALIZED]
[BIOMASS HARVESTED: TIER 3 - RAW]
I lay in the puddle of my predecessor, my body shaking so hard I could hear my own teeth rattling.
I was a mess. I was a glitch. I was a "Virus" that had just survived a "System Purge."
I reached up and grabbed the Apex Seed.
This time, there was no choice menu. There was only a command.
[INTEGRATION COMPLETE]
[WELCOMED TO THE VOID HEART, ARCHITECT]
The golden light swallowed the room.