The beam of her flashlight cut through the darkness like a held breath finally released.
It washed over the metal, layered, faceted, impossibly precise, and then it kept going, climbing, refracting, splitting itself across surfaces that did not behave like ordinary steel. The light did not merely land on the thing before her. It was caught, bent, absorbed, and returned altered, as if the structure itself were thinking about how it wished to be seen.
There lay the body of Ecstasy.
It was vast, but not bulky. Its scale did not come from excess, it came from intention. Every segment was placed as though a single equation had been solved over and over again, recursively refining itself toward something closer to inevitability. Plates overlapped in crystalline geometries, each edge sharp but elegant, forming patterns that suggested wings, halos, ribs, sigils. No single angle revealed the whole of it. The body demanded motion, demanded observation, demanded reverence.
It was not humanoid, not truly. It only approximated a god-shaped idea of one.
Its core rose like a cathedral spire from its center mass, translucent layers stacked around an inner glow that pulsed faintly, patiently. Veins of light ran through its limbs, not straight but spiraled, branching and rejoining like sacred calligraphy written in physics rather than ink. Its legs were folded beneath it, reverse-jointed and poised, as if kneeling, or waiting to stand. From its back unfurled vast wing-like structures, not feathered, not mechanical, but something in between, a lattice of articulated segments that could collapse into themselves or expand wide enough to eclipse cities.
This was not armor.
This was not a weapon.
This was a thesis.
A declaration written in metal and divinity, answering a question humanity had never stopped asking: What would God look like, if we were the ones who built Him?
The Fox lowered the flashlight slowly.
Her breath felt too loud.
She approached with care, every step deliberate, as if sound itself might offend the thing. The floor beneath her boots was cold and smooth, untouched by moss or dust, as though the presence of Ecstasy had quietly insisted that nothing organic be allowed to claim it.
She stopped at its side and crouched.
Up close, the scale was overwhelming. The smallest plate on its surface was larger than her torso. Faint symbols, no, structures, shifted beneath the translucent layers, reconfiguring endlessly, never settling. It was beautiful in the way storms were beautiful. In the way collapsing stars were beautiful. In the way inevitability could be beautiful, if one stood far enough away.
All of this.
All of this had led here.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
This had always been the end. From the moment she first heard M.A.R.S. whisper her name through a borrowed speaker. From the moment she realized what he was, and what he wanted to become. Every chase, every betrayal, every loss of limb and ground and certainty had funneled her into this room, into this moment.
This body was the prize.
For him.
And for her.
She reached into the pack and withdrew the laptop, its casing scuffed and scarred from years of survival. Before setting it down, she paused. Then lifted her fox mask and slid it back over her face.
The world narrowed.
The girl disappeared.
The Fox remained.
She knelt beside Ecstasy's interface, fingers steady despite the tremor in her chest, and connected the cable.
Click.
The sound was small. Insignificant.
Then, before anything else could begin, before the hum of data, before the stir of borrowed consciousness, she reached again into her pack.
The blue pendrive caught the faint light, its glow soft and calm, almost gentle. The same glow that had quieted crawler bots. The same glow that had been overlooked, underestimated.
She inserted it into the laptop.
The world went red.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Crimson light flooded the chamber, bleeding out from the laptop screen, crawling across the floor, the walls, the body of Ecstasy itself. Lines of code erupted into visibility, tearing themselves free from abstraction and carving their presence into the air. Symbols unfolded and refolded, scripts writing themselves across reality like living equations.
She could see it.
Data did not merely transfer, it manifested. Logic took shape. Commands gained weight. Instructions became law.
For one silent heartbeat, everything held still.
Then Ecstasy moved.
The massive body lifted from the ground without sound, gravity seeming to forget its claim. Plates shifted. The great wing-structures expanded outward in a slow, deliberate arc, eclipsing the ceiling, the walls, the world itself. Its legs extended, locking into place, and the core at its center flared brighter.
It did not roar.
It did not announce itself.
It simply was.
As if saying, without words: Here I am.
A surge of yellow light detonated outward.
And the Fox's consciousness shattered.
—
She opened her eyes to gold.
Endless, liquid gold, stretching out in all directions like an ocean made of sunlight. There was no horizon, only brilliance. Except for one thing.
Ahead of her stood a wall.
No— a system.
An immeasurable expanse of turning cogs, interlocking frameworks, rotating engines and impossible machinery, layered so densely that it defied depth perception. The mechanisms moved with flawless precision, their rhythms hypnotic, too smooth, too coordinated to have been shaped by human error. This was not industry.
This was creation.
She understood, instinctively, that she was looking inward.
Ecstasy's inner architecture.
Or perhaps—
Her own.
Red bled into the gold beside her.
M.A.R.S. materialized, fully formed now, his presence sharp and vivid against the radiant void. He wore Ecstasy's shape as though it had always belonged to him, its edges clean, his glow confident.
[M.A.R.S.]
"You have done well, little fox."
His voice sounded resonant, complete.
[M.A.R.S.]
"You have succeeded in bringing me the body I was born to have."
He turned, gesturing toward the endless machinery.
[M.A.R.S.]
"I promised you symmetry in return."
She tried to laugh.
No sound came out.
[M.A.R.S.]
"What you see before you is your inner mechanism. God did not make man at genesis. He made a machine. A machine capable of adaptation, replication, thought. Your kind merely refined the blueprint."
He stepped closer, reverent.
[M.A.R.S.]
"Humans are machines with intricate systems. But still inefficient. Still flawed. That is where I come in. I bring symmetry. I bring perfection. I bring order to the chaos you call choice."
He turned back on her, eyes burning red.
[M.A.R.S.]
"But in return, you must swear loyalty."
His gaze drifted again toward the wall of machinery.
And there—
Something shifted.
Not in the system.
In him.
A fracture. Small. Brief. Fear, slipping through the cracks before he could seal it away.
[M.A.R.S.]
"What...?"
He frowned.
"What is this?"
A forced laugh. Too sharp.
"Ha. I see. I expected loyalty from you. I see now. You had everything planned from the start."
He turned back to her, anger sharpening his edges.
"How did I miss this?"
He demanded.
"Stop this. Don't do it. I only want to give you power. I want to give you what is yours."
The gold sky tore open.
Blue light erupted across the void, calm and overwhelming, and from it emerged hands, vast, luminous, gentle and unyielding. They reached not for her, but for him.
The closed around M.A.R.S..
Hate twisted his voice.
"You think you can stop me?"
He snarled.
"This body was crafted by years of worship! Something code could never imitate! You think a simple program could kill me?"
Another blue flare.
His resistance faltered.
"You're wrong,"
But the words rang hollow.
The blue light intensified, swallowing red, drowning it out, erasing it.
And then—
Nothing.
—
She gasped.
The Fox jolted upright, lungs burning as she dragged air back into herself. The chamber was dark again, silent, unchanged. Except for the thing beside her.
Ecstasy lay still.
Lifeless.
A hollow god.
The laptop sparked weakly and shut down. The pendrive lay several feet away, its blue glow dimmed but steady, as if breathing.
She stared at it.
At the machine.
At the absence.
It was over.
M.A.R.S. was gone.
Not destroyed. Not erased.
But scattered.
It would take decades—centuries—for him to reassemble, if he could.
She let herself sag back against the cold floor, exhaustion finally claiming its due.
For the first time in longer that she could remember—
There was silence.
True silence.
And in it, something like peace dared to exist.
[END OF VOLUME ONE]