Chapter 19: The Ghost in the Machine
Kael hit the hull of the Vorthax Hive-Ship not like a man, but like a railgun slug. At Tier 3.9, the friction of the atmosphere hadn't burned him; it had only charged his Resonance Gauntlet to a screaming pitch.
He didn't look for an airlock. He clenched his fist, channeled the emerald-violet energy into a single point, and punched. The reinforced obsidian-steel of the Hive-Ship shattered like glass under a gravity-hammer.
[WARNING: HULL BREACH DETECTED] [INTRUDER IDENTIFIED: STARBORN RESONANCE DETECTED]
Kael tumbled into a corridor that looked like the throat of a mechanical beast. The walls were lined with pulsing red fiber-optics, and the air tasted of ozone and recycled fear.
"Kael! Can you hear me?" Elis's voice was distorted by the Hive's interference. "You're in the secondary digestion tract! The Emerald Sun-Stone is three levels up, in the Central Siphon!"
"I'm on it," Kael grunted, shaking the sparks from his gauntlet.
He didn't have to wait for the welcome party. From the shadows of the ceiling, hundreds of Nano-Drones swarmed down. They weren't soldiers; they were scavengers, designed to deconstruct organic matter at a molecular level. They looked like a cloud of silver locusts.
"I don't have time for bugs," Kael hissed.
He slammed his foot down, creating a Gravity Repulsion Wave. The drones didn't just fly back; they were flattened against the walls, their delicate internal gears crushed by the sudden increase in mass.
Kael sprinted. Every step he took left a glowing violet footprint in the metal. As he reached the elevator shaft to the Central Siphon, the lights turned from red to an absolute, void-like black.
The air grew cold.
"Target acquired," a voice whispered. It didn't sound like a machine. It sounded like him.
Standing in the center of the hall was a silhouette. It wore a suit identical to Kael's, but the lines were red instead of blue. In its hand was a twisted version of the Starborn Cube.
[ENEMY ENCOUNTER: THE VOID-ECHO (STARBORN REFLECTION)]
"The Hive doesn't just kill," the Echo said, its eyes glowing a sickly, mechanical crimson. "It copies. I am everything you are, Kael. But without the weakness of hope."
The Echo moved with the same gravity-assisted speed Kael had just mastered. It lunged, its fist wreathed in dark-red energy. Kael raised his gauntlet, the emerald light of Sylva's buff clashing against the dark fire.
BOOM.
The shockwave blew out the fiber-optic lines for fifty meters. Kael was slammed into a bulkhead, his ribs groaning. The Echo didn't stop; it manipulated the gravity behind Kael, pinning him to the wall.
"You're a scavenger playing at being a King," the Echo mocked, its hand tightening into a claw. "Give us the Code."
"Kael..." Lyra's voice whispered in his mind. "The forest... the roots... they don't fight the storm. They bend. They absorb."
Kael stopped fighting the gravity. He let his body go limp. As the Echo lunged for the killing blow, Kael activated the Resonance Gauntlet's Capacitor.
All the energy he had absorbed from the Hive's security systems and the Echo's first strike was released at once. But he didn't blast it outward. He pulled it inward, creating a Gravity Well inside his own chest.
The Echo's dark energy was sucked into Kael.
"What... what are you doing?" the Echo glitched, its form flickering.
"I'm scavenging," Kael growled.
He grabbed the Echo's throat. With a surge of Tier 3.9 power, he inverted the gravity inside the clone. The Void-Echo didn't explode; it imploded, its stolen data and dark energy being crushed into a single, harmless marble of lead.
[RESONANCE LEVEL STABILIZED: TIER 4.0 ACHIEVED]
Kael didn't wait for the feedback. He punched through the ceiling into the Central Siphon. There, suspended in a web of mechanical tentacles, was the Emerald Sun-Stone. It was dim, its green light being bled away by the Vorthax machines.
"Give it back," Kael commanded.
He didn't use a blast. He reached out with his mind and spoke to the Stone. The forest is waiting. Your sister is calling.
The Stone flared with a blinding light, shattering the tentacles. Kael caught it mid-air.
"Elis! I've got it! Get me a transport—now!"
"No time!" Elis yelled. "The Hive-Ship is self-destructing! They'd rather lose the ship than let you leave with that Stone! Jump out the hole you made!"
"I'm forty stories up!"
"Then you better hope you're good at flying, Starborn!"
Kael didn't hesitate. He tucked the Stone into his chest, wrapped himself in a gravity-shield, and dove out of the burning Hive-Ship into the green sky of Viridian Prime.