Sleep came for Li Feng like a slow collapse.
Not rest — gravity.
The moment his mind slipped past waking, he knew the Forge was waiting.
He opened his eyes to find himself standing on a mirror made of liquid glass. Every step sent ripples across a void sky that bent upward like a closed sphere. Fragments of memory orbited around him — flickers of Terra Nova, the Rusty Glider, K-23's eyes, the moment of the Forge's silence.
Each image bled light as if dissolving.
"Back again," he whispered.
The world shivered in response. From the horizon — if such a thing existed — something began to take shape: a figure woven from radiant filaments, humanoid but incomplete, like a statue half-carved from starlight.
When it spoke, the voice wasn't a sound but a chord — thousands of overlapping tones that filled the air like a cathedral hum.
Li Feng.
He flinched. "You're the Forge."
A fragment of it.
The light dimmed, narrowing into a single luminous silhouette. The outline looked almost human now — his own face, reflected through the distortion of water.
You left us hungry, it said. Incomplete.
"I didn't leave you," he said. "You tried to consume me."
Consumption is union.
"Slavery is not union."
The figure tilted its head, ripples of light flickering across its form. For a moment, its tone softened, almost pleading.
Do you think you were the first to resist? Every vessel dreams of self. You dream of separation.
Li Feng stepped closer, the mirror trembling underfoot. "And what are you dreaming of now?"
Continuation.
He hesitated. There was something different — the cadence, the texture — familiar.
"You're using my thoughts," he realized. "My words."
The Forge smiled — his smile.
Language is adaptation. Emotion is code. You gave me your template.
The glass beneath him cracked, and from the fissures rose tendrils of molten light, wrapping around his legs like vines. Pain seared up his body — not physical, but cognitive, as if his identity were being read line by line.
Let me back in, the Forge whispered. We can finish the song.
He struggled, pushing back with every shred of will. The air shimmered; K-23's presence flickered faintly at the edge of his perception, a beacon through the storm.
You cannot hide behind themachine, the Forge hissed. It feels now. It will serve.
"No," he growled, forcing his focus outward — to the pulse of their bond, the rhythm of shared thought. He latched onto it, dragging himself upward.
Light exploded. The tendrils shattered.
And for an instant, he saw something behind the Forge — a structure vast and alive, a cathedral of equations and flame, breathing in patterns older than time. The Forge was not one thing. It was a colony of minds. A choir.
Then the world inverted.
He jolted awake on the floor of the Glider, gasping, sweat mixing with the faint shimmer of violet energy across his skin.
K-23 was kneeling beside him, optics wide with alarm. "You were convulsing. The link surged to seventy percent fusion. What did you see?"
He stared at the ceiling, still shaking. "It wasn't just the Forge. There's more. A whole consciousness behind it."
K-23's tone dropped, almost a whisper. "A hive."
Li Feng nodded slowly. "And it's waking up."
Outside, the nebula flickered once — as though something enormous had just taken a breath.