The Dawn's Edge was sparse, functional. Wu Gen's "crew" were three others:
Li Na: A young woman with neural interface cables snaking from her temples (Sensors/Comms).
Baylor: A hulking cyborg fused with his pilot's chair (Navigation/Weapons).
Silas: Rebuilt. Half his face was gleaming metal, one eye a cold blue lens. "Hello again," he rasped.
Wu Gen jabbed a finger at Lin Mo. "You woke the Tombs. Got the Black Pagoda obliterated. Dragged their attention to the Belt. Give me one reason not to toss you back."
"The Void Seed," Silas interjected, his mechanical eye whirring as it scanned Lin Mo. "He has a functioning fragment. And… something else." He frowned. "Omega?"
Lin Mo explained. The Chen feud. The Bloom. The Pagoda's deal. Tomb-01. Omega.
Wu Gen spat. "Pagoda fools. Thought they could leash the Void." He pointed at Yu. "And the anchor? Stabilized, yes. But the Tombs remember her signature. They'll hunt her. Hunt you."
[KEEPER DATABASE ACCESSED (LIMITED)]
[MISSION: SALVAGE VOID SEED FRAGMENTS]
[GOAL: RECONSTRUCT THE CONSUMER'S CORE TO CONTROL/DESTROY IT]
[ALTERNATIVE: DESTROY ALL FRAGMENTS, SEVERING ITS CONNECTION TO REALITY]
"We hunt the fragments," Wu Gen said. "Before the Tombs find them. Or worse – before someone like the Pagoda tries to use them." He eyed Lin Mo's ring. "You're a walking fragment. Useful bait. Or a liability."
Li Na gasped. "Incoming! Tomb signature! Bearing 274 mark 8! It's… smaller?"
The viewscreen showed not a tetrahedron, but a jagged shard of obsidian, shedding Tomb-01's debris. It accelerated toward them.
[ANALYSIS: TOMB PROBE | DESIGNATION: SEEKER]
[PRIMARY TARGET: VOID SEED SIGNATURE (LIN MO/YU)]
Baylor slammed his fist on the console. "Brace! It's painting us with a gravity lens! FTL jump in 30 seconds!"
Wu Gen drew his rusted sword. It hummed with latent power. "Seatbelts, thief. The real war starts now."
The Seeker fired. Not an erasure beam. A net of crackling black energy.
[OMEGA GHOST: READY]
Lin Mo's knuckles whitened. The hunt had become the hunted.