The jade pendant lay cold and accusing on the scorched server casing between them. Identical to the one ripped from Lin's neck in the Iron Hill collapse. Identical to the fragment still buried in his pocket. Magnus Ryke's message glowed above it, projected by Yin Mei's ocular implant:
"DINNER TONIGHT. PANGU TOWER, OBSERVATORY DECK. 21:00. COME HUNGRY. - FATHER"
Rain sheeted down on Scrapyard Sigma's corpse, hissing where it met Lin's plasma-wreathed right hand. The blue-white energy had solidified into clawed gauntlets of crackling force, fused to the bone from knuckles to elbow. >> SYSTEM ALERT << pulsed in his vision:
[LAZARUS PROTOCOL: STABILIZED]
[QI RESERVES: 6.2/10.0 UNITS]
[WARNING: BIO-INTEGRITY AT 71% - CORE TEMPERATURE CRITICAL]
The power sang in his veins like live wires—beautiful, lethal, hungry.
"It's a trap," Lin stated, voice rasping from the voltage scorch in his throat.
Yin Mei's violet optics didn't waver from the pendant. "It's an invitation to the slaughterhouse." She touched the scar on her eyebrow. "Ryke doesn't invite. He acquires. He wants your mutation operational. Wants to peel it from your corpse and bolt it into his enforcers."
"Then why go?"
"Because he has the Lazarus Codex." Her fingers clenched. "The master genomic sequence that can reverse the cellular degradation. Without it?" She nodded at Lin's glowing arm. "You cook yourself from the inside in seventy-two hours. My mother's final safeguard against Ryke weaponizing her work."
MEMORY FRAGMENT (YIN MEI):
Dr. Elara Ryke's trembling hand entering encryption commands into a neural server. "The Codex is the key, Mei. It stabilizes... or it sterilizes. Never let him have both."
Magnus Ryke's fist shattering the lab door's viewport.
Lin flexed his plasma claws. Energy arced, grounding into the wet metal at his feet. The heat beneath his skin was a constant, gnawing pressure. Seventy-two hours. "Where's the Codex?"
"Buried in Pangu Tower's central AI core." Yin Mei's smile was razor-thin. "Guarded by Kraken—Ryke's pet quantum-DAO intelligence. A digital god that thinks it's guarding heaven."
>> SYSTEM ALERT <<
[NEW OBJECTIVE: RETRIEVE LAZARUS CODEX]
[THREAT PROFILE: KRAKEN (QUANTUM-DAO AI) - ANNIHILATION RISK: 99.7%]
"So we walk into Ryke's tower," Lin said, the absurdity tasting like ash, "steal God's keys, and get out before he serves dessert?"
"We don't walk." Yin Mei pulled a neural jack from her belt—a barbed, crystalline shard thrumming with stolen Pangu tech. "We hack the slaughterhouse."
PANGU TOWER - OBSERVATORY DECK - 20:58
Lin's stolen enforcer armor chafed, the helmet's HUD projecting Ryke's propaganda directly onto his retinas. Outside the crystal viewing walls, Neo-Xi'an sprawled like a necrotic circuit board—a billion points of light drowning in smog. Below, at the tower's molten core, the city's central power grid throbbed. Lin felt its resonant frequency vibrating in his molars.
Magnus Ryke stood silhouetted against the city's glow, hands clasped behind his impeccably tailored suit. No visible cybernetics. No aura of augmented power. Only the chilling stillness of absolute control.
"Punctual." Ryke didn't turn. His voice was a velvet scourge. "A rare virtue in disposable assets."
Yin Mei stepped forward, chin high. "We're not assets, Father."
"Aren't you?" Ryke finally turned. His eyes—a pale, unnerving grey—swept over Lin's concealed plasma arm, then Yin Mei's scar. "Elara's flawed creations. One a runaway weapon. The other…" His gaze settled on Lin. "A walking fusion reaction with a seventy-two-hour fuse."
>> SYSTEM ALERT <<
[SCANNER DETECTED: QUANTUM-GRADE NEURAL MAPPING]
[COUNTERMEASURES: UNAVAILABLE]
Ryke smiled. "Sit. Eat."
A holographic table shimmered into existence between them, laden with impossible delicacies—crisp-skinned duck, jewel-like fruits, steaming bowls of broth. All illusions. Lin's stomach churned.
"We didn't come for dinner," Lin growled, hand drifting toward the concealed plasma claw.
"You came for the Codex." Ryke gestured. A complex double-helix structure spun above the table—genomic sequences pulsing with golden light. The Lazarus Codex. "Buried deep in Kraken's heart. Impossible to extract… unless you hold its leash." He picked up the jade pendant Lin had left in the scrapyard. "Like this."
Yin Mei froze. "That's…"
"Your mother's master key?" Ryke's smile widened. "Elara always underestimated sentimentality. She hid its twin in your childhood toy, Lin Wei. A failsafe for her 'chosen one'." He crushed the pendant in his fist. Jade dust sifted through his fingers. "Sentiment is vulnerability. Kraken!"
The air ripped.
Reality peeled back like corrupted code. In its place stood Kraken—not a machine, but a shimmering fractal horror woven from pure data and quantum foam. Tenebrous tentacles of light coiled through the observatory deck. Its single eye, a collapsing star of infinite black, fixed on Lin.
>> SYSTEM ALERT <<
[KRAKEN ACTIVATED - QUANTUM-DAO ENTITY]
[ANNIHILATION RISK: 100%]
[PROPOSAL: TOTAL QI DEPLOYMENT]
"Kill the boy," Ryke commanded softly. "Harvest the Lazarus Protocol from his corpse."
Kraken moved.
Not through space. By rewriting it. One moment before Lin, the next inside his stolen armor. Icy data-tendrils speared toward his spine, seeking the mutation's core.
Lin roared.
No strategy. Pure, high-voltage instinct. He ripped the enforcer helmet away and slammed his plasma-wreathed fist into the observatory's crystal floor.
KA-BOOOOOM!
Ten thousand volts, amplified by Lazarus Protocol, discharged. Not upward—downward. Into Pangu Tower's structural lattice. Into the power grid thundering below.
The tower screamed.
Lights died. Gravity generators stuttered. Kraken's form flickered, its quantum coherence shattered by the electromagnetic pulse surging through its physical substrate. The data-tendrils piercing Lin dissolved into static snow.
>> SYSTEM ALERT <<
[QI RESERVE CRITICAL: 1.1/10.0 UNITS]
[CORE TEMPERATURE: 99°C - MELTING IMMINENT]
Yin Mei moved. Not toward Kraken, but toward Ryke. Her neural jack—the crystalline shard—flashed violet. She lunged, not at his heart, but at his temple.
"FOR ELARA!"
Ryke caught her wrist. Effortlessly. His grey eyes held pity. "You inherited her defiance, little ghost. Not her strength." He twisted. Bone snapped. Yin Mei cried out, collapsing.
Kraken reformed, its fractal body solidifying, the black star-eye burning with cold fury. It reached for Lin—
—Lin reached back. Not with his plasma claw. With his bare left hand. And grabbed Kraken's core.
MEMORY OVERRIDE (LIN):
His father's voice, clear as breaking glass: "The grid, Lin! It's all connected! Like meridians!"
Lin didn't absorb Kraken.
He grounded it.
Through his own flesh. Through the tower's screaming bones. Into the city's starving power grid below.
Kraken shrieked—a soundless blast of pure data-agony. Its quantum essence unraveled, not destroyed, but dispersed. Flooding into ten thousand streetlights, a million flickering holograms, the dying batteries of slum-dwellers' heaters. A digital god, shattered into fragments of warmth and light for the city Ryke bled.
>> SYSTEM ALERT <<
[KRAKEN DISPERSED]
[QI RESERVES: 0.0/10.0 UNITS]
[CORE TEMPERATURE: 103°C - CATASTROPHIC FAILURE IMMINENT]
Lin collapsed, smoke curling from his pores. His plasma claw sputtered, dimmed. The Lazarus glow beneath his skin guttered like a dying star.
Ryke stared at the space where Kraken had been. His composure finally cracked. "You… broke my god."
Yin Mei dragged herself up, cradling her shattered wrist. Her violet optics blazed. "He set it free, Ryke." She spat blood at his polished shoes. "Now rot in the dark like the rest of us."
Ryke's hand dipped into his suit jacket. Not for a weapon. For a control wafer. "Rot?" He pressed it. "I rebuild."
The floor vanished.
Lin and Yin Mei fell into darkness—down Pangu Tower's central maintenance shaft—toward the seething, molten heart of the city's power grid.
Ryke's voice echoed after them, cold and final:
"Burn well, Lazarus."