arkness wasn't just an absence of light; it was a physical weight. The pressure on Kael's chest was a constant, rhythmic reminder of the tons of steel and concrete perched precariously above him.
Every breath was a sandpaper rasp in his scorched throat. The acid leakage was no longer a stinging heat; it was a numbing cold that traveled through his veins, a sign that the 'Acid Spit' graft was destabilizing under the trauma of the collapse.
[WARNING: GRAFT INTEGRITY AT 42%]
[Internal Corrosive Damage: Level 3.]
[Host Body Temperature: 103.4°F. Administering basic coolant protocols...]
"Internal... cooling..." Kael wheezed, his voice sounding like dry leaves skittering over pavement.
The coolant protocol was another lie from the system—a temporary suppression of his nervous system's pain response that only served to make his limbs feel like lead. He reached out with his needle-fingers, but they were sluggish, the Root-Weaver DNA nearly extinguished by the strain.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The sound of the Ironbark salvage team was closer now. He could hear the muffled shouts of enforcers and the heavy, metallic tread of a crawler unit. They were clearing the upper layers. If they found him, they wouldn't pull him out. They would cut the Seed from his chest and leave the rest for the spore-crickets.
"Not... today," Kael hissed.
He turned his head toward the jagged beam pinning his leg. The iron was thick and rusted, far beyond his physical strength to move. He uncoiled his throat, the effort sending a spike of agony through his chest that made his vision flicker white.
He didn't aim for a jet. He didn't have the breath for it. Instead, he let the glowing yellow bile pool in his mouth until the pressure was unbearable, then he leaned forward and let it spill directly onto the beam's hinge.
The hiss was immediate. A cloud of acrid, white smoke filled the tiny pocket of space, stinging Kael's eyes and lungs. He squeezed his eyes shut, breathing through his sleeve, as the acid ate through the oxidized iron.
[CAUTION: BIO-LOAD AT 94%]
[Warning: Extended use of Acid Spit in enclosed space may cause respiratory failure.]
He waited, the seconds ticking away in a blur of fevered heat. Then, with a groan of failing metal, the beam buckled.
Kael wrenched his leg free, the movement tearing through his scav-pants and leaving a trail of blood on the concrete. He didn't stop to check the wound. He began to crawl, using his needle-fingers to hook into the gaps between the rubble, pulling himself through the narrow, jagged veins of the collapse.
He emerged into the humid, spore-choked air of a side-alley, twenty meters from the pylon's base. The Sprawl was a nightmare of flickering orange emergency lights and the silhouettes of Ironbark patrols moving through the canopy.
"Search teams, fan out!" a voice roared—Jax. The squad leader was here.
Kael stayed low, his body shivering despite the heat. The "Graft Fever" was hitting him now, a violent reaction of his Inert DNA trying to purge the foreign biological code. His skin was flush, his heart hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm.
He moved through the shadows, a ghost in a city that wanted him dead. He used the rusted skeletons of abandoned crawlers and the thick curtains of strangler-vines for cover, his senses dialed to a frequency of pure survival. Every snap of a twig, every distant hum of a sensor-drone, sent him diving into the mud.
He turned into a narrow, lightless alleyway behind a row of collapsed housing pods. The cleaner air of the upper levels felt like a cruel joke; down here, the Rot was thick, and the shadows were deep.
His knees buckled.
He reached out for a wall, but his hand slipped on a patch of slick Moss-Rot. He collapsed into the filth of the alleyway, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
[STATUS CRITICAL: HOST ENTERING GRAFT FEVER STUPOR]
[Bio-Load Overload. Shutting down non-essential sensory arrays.]
"Just... one... more... step," Kael whispered, but the darkness was no longer just in the alley. It was rising from within him, a cold, heavy tide.
His eyes drifted shut. The last thing he saw wasn't the Ironbark patrols or the neon flicker of the Sprawl. It was the "Orchard" in his mind—the single plot of grey soil, now glowing with a sickly, unstable yellow light.
A pair of boots stopped in front of his face. Not the heavy, armored boots of an enforcer. These were soft, worn leather, stained with gene-drab chemicals.
"Well," a woman's voice said, sounding more curious than concerned. "You certainly look like you shouldn't be alive. Let's see why you are."
Kael's world went black as a cold hand touched the glowing graft in his chest.