The Nanite-Infusion Chamber looked less like a medical device and more like an iron coffin.
"The manual is corrupted," Skid said, her hands shaking as she typed commands into the console. "But I think I've bypassed the safety protocols. If I leave the safeties on, the machine will reject you because your DNA is... wrong."
"Wrong?" Julian asked, stripping off his coat. His left arm was a terrifying sight. The blue crystal corruption had hardened into jagged spikes near the elbow. The skin around it was necrotic black.
"It's 30% crystal," Skid winced. "The machine will read you as a foreign object. I have to trick it into thinking you're just... really, really sick."
"I am really sick," Julian muttered.
He climbed into the pod. The interior was padded with a gel-like substance that smelled of mint and gasoline.
"This is going to hurt," Skid warned. "The nanites are going to strip the dead tissue and weave a conductive mesh directly into your bone. It's like getting a tattoo on your skeleton. For three hours."
"Just do it," Julian lay back. "Before I change my mind."
Lyra stepped up to the pod. She placed her hand on the glass.
"Don't die," she said softly.
"I'll try not to," Julian promised.
The lid hissed shut.
Fluid filled the chamber. A thick, silvery liquid that blocked out the light.
Julian took a breath, inhaling the oxygenated liquid. It filled his lungs with cold fire.
Then, the needles deployed.
The Dream of Iron
There was no darkness. Only white pain.
Julian felt millions of microscopic machines swarming into his arm. They didn't attack the crystal; they built bridges over it. They devoured his dying flesh and replaced it with carbon-fiber weave. They drilled into his humerus bone and reinforced it with titanium lattice.
He screamed, but the fluid swallowed the sound.
In the delirium, he saw things.
He saw the Prime. It wasn't in the bunker. It was high above, standing on a mountain of scrap. It was ripping the fusion core out of a dead mech. It was eating. Growing.
I am the future, the Prime's voice echoed in his blood. You are the obsolete model.
No, Julian thought, fighting the pain. I am the error code.
He saw the Seven Titans. They were singing a harmony. But one voice was missing.
Titan 01. The Gilded King. The Emperor's Titan. It wasn't singing. It was screaming in a cage of gold.
Wake me...
The pain spiked one last time, a crescendo of agony that felt like his arm was being dipped in a star.
Then, silence.
The Awakening
HISS.
The fluid drained away. The lid popped open with a pneumatic wheeze.
Julian gasped, coughing up silver liquid. He rolled out of the pod, hitting the floor on his hands and knees.
"Julian!" Lyra was there instantly, throwing a towel over him.
He breathed heaving, ragged breaths. He looked at his left arm.
It was no longer a human arm.
From the shoulder down, it was encased in a sleek, matte-black sheath of interlocking metallic muscle fibers. The jagged crystals were gone, smoothed over and contained beneath the armor-skin. The veins glowed with a steady, controlled blue light, visible through thin vents in the black material.
It didn't look like a prosthetic. It looked like his arm had been dipped in liquid obsidian and hardened.
He clenched his fist. The servos whirred softly—a sound barely audible, like a cat purring.
"How does it feel?" Skid asked, holding a diagnostic tablet.
Julian reached out. He grabbed a heavy steel wrench from a workbench.
He squeezed.
The steel groaned. Then, it compressed like clay, folding in on itself.
"It feels... heavy," Julian said. "And quiet."
He looked at the Resonance Gauntlet. He didn't need to wear it anymore.
"Skid," Julian said. "The lens."
Skid handed him the Acoustic Silver focusing lens and the copper coils from his old gauntlet.
Julian pressed them against his new forearm. The nanites in his skin reacted instantly. The "Silver Blood" surfaced, grabbing the components and pulling them into the arm, integrating them. The lens seated itself in his palm, fusing with the flesh.
He was no longer wearing a weapon. He was the weapon.
"Integration complete," Skid whispered, awestruck. "You're a cyborg, Julian."
"I'm a Conductor," Julian corrected, standing up. He felt stronger. The ache in his bones was gone, replaced by a cold, humming power.
"Where is the Prime?"
The Scrapyard Surface
Zephyr and Isolde burst into the lab. They looked terrified.
"We have a problem," Isolde panted. "A big one."
"The Prime?"
"It's not just the Prime anymore," Zephyr said. "It has... accessorized."
They ran to the elevator and ascended to the surface.
The sun was setting over the Scrapyard, casting long, jagged shadows.
In the center of the yard, a mile away, stood a monstrosity.
The Prime had grafted parts of other mechs onto itself. It was no longer seven feet tall. It was twenty feet tall.
It had the legs of a heavy loader-bot. Its right arm was the massive hydraulic claw of a construction unit. Its left arm was a cluster of scavenged laser cannons. And on its back, it wore the jet-engine of a fighter plane like a backpack.
It was a Frankenstein of war machines, held together by white-and-gold armor plates.
And it was tearing apart the hull of a massive downed starship.
"What is it doing?" Lyra asked.
"That ship," Skid zoomed in with her binoculars. "That's an Eclipse-Class Dreadnought. It crashed fifty years ago. But its main weapon..."
"The Nova Cannon," Isolde finished, pale. "It's trying to rip the cannon off the ship."
"If it integrates a Nova Cannon," Skid said, "it won't need a sword. It will be able to level a city."
"It's building a body to challenge the Titans," Julian realized. "It wants to be big enough to fight a god."
He looked at his new arm.
"We have to stop it before it connects that cannon."
"How?" Zephyr asked. "It is a mountain of iron. We are flesh."
Julian scanned the Scrapyard. He saw the piles of unstable ordnance, the leaking fuel tanks, the rusted cranes towering over the site.
"It's big," Julian said. "But it's heavy. And this ground is unstable."
He turned to the crew.
"Skid, Isolde. Get to the White Raven. I need you to overload the ship's tractor beam. Turn it into a magnet."
"A magnet?" Skid frowned. "The range is terrible."
"I'll get it close," Julian said.
"Lyra, Zephyr. You're with me. We're going to play a game of David and Goliath."
He flexed his new metallic fingers.
"Let's go scrap some metal."