CHAPTER 36 – RECONSTRUCTION PROTOCOL
Part I – The Awakening
The hum came first — a low mechanical vibration that crawled through Pearl's skull before her eyes even opened.
When she did, the light was sterile white. Cold. Unforgiving.
She was lying on a slab of polished alloy, arms strapped, sensors crawling across her skin like insects. The air smelled of burned ozone and disinfectant.
"Subject 01: Neural containment holding at forty-seven percent,"
a voice said — calm, clinical, inhuman.
Pearl blinked against the glare. Her vision flickered, not in pain but in code. Lines of data ran across her eyes like subtitles on reality.
She tried to speak but only static left her throat.
Then she saw them: the Council's Technocrats, robed in digital fabric that rippled with living circuits. Behind them, containment pods glowed faint blue — each one holding fragments of something alive.
"You should be dead," one of them said without emotion. "Kael Vorren's infection should have erased your organic code. And yet…" he leaned closer, "…you persist."
Pearl strained against the restraints. "Where… am I?"
"Inside the Reconstruction Protocol," another answered. "Your body failed. We're rebuilding you. For observation."
Her silver eyes flared. "You mean control."
"Control," the voice agreed. "Peace by design."
Pearl's heart rate spiked. The monitors screamed. The straps holding her snapped under raw strength. Metal bent as she sat up, wires tearing from her arms.
"Cancel containment!" one shouted.
Too late.
A surge of moonlight burst from her chest — pure and violent — hurling the Technocrats against the walls like rag dolls. The lights died. The hum stopped. Only the echo of her heartbeat remained, heavy and broken.
She stood, trembling. Pieces of machinery clung to her skin, pulsing in sync with her veins. She wasn't fully human anymore — and she could feel it.
Part II – The Mirror and the Code
Pearl stumbled into the dark corridor beyond the lab. The walls were mirrors of chrome, reflecting her fractured form — flesh, metal, and light stitched together by willpower alone.
"Lunaris?" she whispered.
No response. Only a flicker of her reflection — then another reflection, one that moved differently.
She froze.
The figure in the mirror wasn't her. It was Kael.
"You escaped," he said softly. "Good. I needed you to."
Her pulse quickened. "You're in my head."
"Not just your head. Your reconstruction used my code. You and I share the same system now. Every step you take — every thought — echoes through me."
Pearl clenched her fists. "I'll rip you out."
Kael's smirk was faint but cruel. "You can't tear out the spine of what you've become. You are the weapon you feared."
The mirrors rippled. Her reflection multiplied, each version glitching — one smiling, one crying, one covered in blood.
Then the alarms began to wail.
"Containment breach in Sector Five," a voice droned through the speakers. "All units engage."
Pearl turned away from the mirrors. "If this is what you wanted, Kael," she hissed, "then you'll watch me burn your plan down from the inside."
And she ran — faster than any human could move.
Part III – The Descent
The Reconstruction Facility was a labyrinth of glass corridors and pulsing cores. Automated sentinels descended from the ceilings, eyes glowing crimson.
Pearl's wings unfurled, fractal and furious. Energy roared from her palms as she struck — the sentinels shattered like brittle stars.
Sparks danced in the darkness. Each kill echoed in her bones — but the whispers in her head grew louder.
"Don't fight it," Kael said. "We could end them all. The Council, the Technocrats… the parasites who built gods from corpses."
She gritted her teeth. "I'm not your weapon."
"You already are."
Her vision blurred. The floor beneath her feet became translucent — revealing a network of energy conduits beneath, glowing with the same silver hue that now pulsed in her veins.
She could sense it — the Reactor Core, the heart of the Protocol, the source that kept this abomination alive.
"If I destroy it," she whispered, "I destroy everything connected to you."
"Including yourself," Kael replied.
Pearl smiled faintly. "Maybe that's mercy."
And she leapt.
Part IV – The Core
The Reactor chamber was a cathedral of light and code — vast columns of data streams rising into infinity, humming like ancient hymns.
At its center floated a sphere — half-machine, half-organic, pulsing with lunar energy. It beat like a heart.
Pearl landed on the platform surrounding it. The Core's light bathed her in silver.
"Unauthorized presence detected," said an automated voice. "Engaging purification sequence."
Blades of plasma descended from above, slicing through air. Pearl dodged one, two, then caught the third with her bare hand — and broke it in half.
Her eyes burned white. She aimed her palms toward the Core.
Kael's voice echoed through the chamber, desperate now:
"You don't understand! Destroy that, and you erase us both!"
"That's the idea."
She unleashed everything.
Moonfire erupted from her hands, colliding with the Core in a blast that turned the chamber into daylight. Energy screamed, tearing through walls, through reality itself.
She was flung backward, crashing into steel. The explosion kept expanding — consuming corridors, systems, everything.
Through the roar, Kael's final whisper brushed her mind:
"Even gods need hosts…"
Then silence.
Part V – The Afterglow
When Pearl opened her eyes, there was no facility — only ruin. The city above had gone dark. Vega-9's artificial dawn had ended.
She stood amid wreckage, ash drifting like snow. Her skin still glowed faintly, but the mark on her neck was gone. The connection — broken.
Or so she hoped.
"Lunaris?" she called again.
No answer. Only a faint hum, deep beneath the static.
She turned her gaze to the shattered skyline. Drones floated lifeless in the air. The people would wake to silence.
"Freedom has a price," she murmured.
Then she heard it — a soft pulse in the distance. Not mechanical. Not human.
Her eyes narrowed. "He's still alive."
The silver light reignited in her irises. She spread her wings, fragments of code falling like dust around her.
"Then the hunt begins again."
She rose into the void sky, cutting through the fractured light of Vega's moons — a lone heir chasing the ghost that shared her soul.
And below, deep within the ruins, a faint voice whispered from a cracked console:
.