Consciousness didn't return to Kaelen all at once. It came in flashes of neon pain and the smell of antiseptic—a luxury he hadn't encountered since he was a child in the med-tents of the Outer-Rim.
He tried to gasp, but a thick rubber tube was forced between his teeth. His left arm was clamped to a metal table, and he could hear the high-pitched whine of a laser-welder.
"Stay still," the voice from the tunnels commanded. "The Core is trying to override your autonomic nervous system. If I don't bridge these neural pathways now, your brain is going to forget how to tell your lungs to breathe."
Kaelen's eyes snapped open. He was in a small, cramped room lit by the soft glow of a dozen computer monitors. The walls were lined with rows of kinetic ammunition and jars of preserved biological parts. It wasn't a workshop; it was a sniper's nest.
The girl was leaning over him, her multi-lens eye glowing red as she worked on his arm with a pair of precision tweezers. She had stripped off her stealth-shreds, revealing arms covered in tattoos that looked like circuit diagrams.
"Who..." Kaelen managed to choke out around the tube.
"The person currently preventing your heart from exploding," she snapped without looking up. "My name is Elara. And you are the most interesting piece of trash I've found in a decade."
She pulled a long, silver filament out of his bicep—a stray wire that had been piercing a vein. Kaelen hissed through the rubber, his body arching off the table.
"You have no natural conductivity," Elara noted, her voice turning into a professional mumble. "Your Aether-resistance is nearly 100%. By all laws of physics, that Sentry's discharge should have turned you into a charcoal briquette. But you didn't burn. You... bypassed."
She stopped working and looked him directly in the eyes. Her amber eye was suspicious, but her mechanical one was analytical.
"I saw the footage from the Sentry's black box before I destroyed it," she said. "You flatlined. Your heart rate hit zero for twelve seconds. During those twelve seconds, your Aether-absorption spiked into the Sovereign range. How?"
Kaelen spat the rubber tube out, his breath coming in shallow hitches. "Hard... work."
Elara let out a short, sharp laugh—a sound like breaking glass. "Hard work? You think you can out-work a fundamental law of nature? You found a glitch in the world, Scavenger. And now, the Inquisition knows it too."
She turned to a monitor, which showed a live feed of the tunnels they had just left. A massive, four-legged machine—a Cavalier-Class Hunter—was sniffing the air near Kaelen's bloodstains. It was accompanied by a dozen heavily armored Wardens.
"They aren't just looking for stolen tech anymore," Elara said, her face darkening. "They're looking for the 'Anomalous Scavenger.' You've become a 'Priority-One' target. Which means my life is now at risk just for being in the same zip code as you."
Kaelen struggled to sit up, his arm feeling heavy and strange, like it was made of solid lead. "Then let me go. I'll lead them away."
Elara grabbed him by the front of his tattered tunic, pulling him close. Her mechanical eye clicked as it zoomed in on his pupils.
"You're not going anywhere," she hissed. "That Mark-VII Core is fused to your bone now. If I try to cut it out, you die. And I'm not letting a potential goldmine like you wander off into the dark. You're going to help me get into the High-City. You're going to be my 'Zero-Pulse' battery."
Kaelen stared at her, the reality of his situation sinking in. He had traded his anonymity for power, and his life for a Core. He wasn't a free man anymore; he was an asset.
"And if I refuse?" Kaelen asked, his voice steadying.
Elara reached for her sniper rifle, leaning it against her shoulder. "Then I'll see if my bullets can travel faster than your heart can stop."
Kaelen looked at his arm, the blue veins glowing brighter now, fueled by the stabilizer she'd injected. He didn't feel like a hero. He didn't feel like he had a "Golden Finger." He felt like a man who had sold his soul for a rusted engine, and now he had to keep it running or be crushed by it.
"Fine," Kaelen said, his hand closing into a fist. "But we're doing it my way. We don't hide. We climb."