The hyper-loop pod didn't just move; it vibrated the fillings in Lyric's teeth.
"I think I'm gonna be sick," Rook moaned, his face pressed against the curved glass of the pod. The tunnel lights blurred past like a continuous laser beam. "Why didn't Janus build seatbelts? Or seats? We're basically in a pneumatic tube for mail."
"Hold your breath," Mira said, checking a gauge on the dashboard. "It helps with the nausea. We're decelerating in ten seconds."
Lyric was squeezed between Valerius and the door, trying to keep the ceramic sword from stabbing anyone. The image of the golden wheat field was still burned into Lyric's retina.
"That vision," Lyric said, looking at Valerius. "The sun. The grass. It felt… heavy. Real."
"It was a memory," Valerius said, his eyes closed as he endured the G-force. "A raw one. Unprocessed by the Guild filters. That's what the world used to look like, Lyric. Before the atmosphere turned to acid."
"It looked nice," Rook mumbled. "I'd buy that. 'Sunshine and Wheat'. Expensive."
"It wasn't for sale," Lyric said quietly. "It was just… there."
WHOOSH.
The pod's magnetic brakes kicked in. Everyone lurched forward, slamming into each other. The blur of lights slowed, separated into individual bulbs, and then stopped completely.
The canopy hissed and popped open.
"Out," Mira ordered, jumping onto the platform. "We're at the Junction. We have maybe forty minutes before Elara goes into cardiac arrest."
Lyric climbed out, legs wobbling slightly.
They were standing on a metal catwalk suspended over a vast, cylindrical shaft. It looked like the inside of a giant engine. Massive pipes, thick as redwood trees, crisscrossed the space, humming with the blue light of memory data. Steam vented from pressure valves. The air was hot and smelled of ozone and burning copper.
"It's huge," Lyric said, looking down into the abyss below the pipes.
"Primary Junction," Mira said, walking briskly toward a control console. "All the data from the city flows down here, gets scrubbed, and sent back up to the grid. If there's a blockage, it'll be on the main intake valve."
She pointed to a massive intersection of three pipes in the center of the chamber.
Even from a distance, Lyric could see the problem.
The pipes were pristine chrome and brass. But the central joint was covered in a black, jagged growth. It looked like a tumor made of obsidian glass, pulsating with a sickly purple light.
"That doesn't look like trash," Rook noted, adjusting his goggles.
"It's not," Mira said, her face pale. "That's calcified entropy. A data clot. It happens when too many 'bad' memories get rejected by the system at once. They clump together and harden."
"Bad memories?" Lyric asked.
"Trauma," Valerius clarified, stepping up to the railing. "The Guild filters out the nightmares to keep the population docile. They dump the horror down here. Looks like the drain is clogged."
"We need to clear it," Mira said. "If we don't, the pressure builds up in Elara until her mind snaps."
They ran across the catwalk to the central valve. Up close, the black crystal was terrifying. It was vibrating, emitting a low, discordant sound that made Lyric's skin crawl. Faces seemed to form and vanish in the black surface—screaming mouths, weeping eyes.
"Okay," Rook said, pulling out his laser cutter. "I can try to slice it, but this battery is on fumes. And I don't think a laser is gonna cut… whatever that is. Condensed nightmare fuel?"
"Don't touch it with the laser," Mira warned. "It's volatile. If you shock it, it might detonate. And if that pipe ruptures, the raw data stream will vaporize us."
"So we can't cut it, and we can't blast it," Rook sighed. "What do we do? Ask it nicely to move?"
Everyone looked at Lyric.
Lyric looked at the bandaged hand. "You want me to erase it."
"It's the only way," Valerius said. "Your power doesn't interact with the data; it removes the existence of the object. You can surgically remove the clot without damaging the pipe."
"Surgically?" Lyric stepped closer to the throbbing black mass. It was cold, sucking the heat out of the air. "I'm not exactly a surgeon, Val. I usually just delete doors and robots."
"You have to be precise," Mira said, pointing to the seam where the black crystal met the brass pipe. "If you erase the pipe, we die. If you erase too little, it grows back. You need to erase the connection."
Lyric took a deep breath. The static in their head was getting louder, reacting to the concentrated trauma in the crystal.
Let us out, the crystal whispered. We hurt. We remember.
"Focus," Lyric told themselves.
Lyric reached out.
"Wait," Rook said. "If that thing explodes, I just want to say… the wheat field looked cool. I'm glad we saw it."
"Shut up, Rook," Lyric muttered, but a small smile tugged at the corner of their mouth.
Lyric placed a hand on the black crystal.
It felt like touching liquid nitrogen. A burn of cold.
Erase.
Lyric didn't try to erase the whole mass—it was too big. Lyric focused on the adhesion. The grip the crystal had on the metal.
Let go.
The power surged. The black crystal shrieked—a physical sound of grinding glass.
Cracks appeared in the obsidian mass.
"It's working!" Mira yelled over the noise. "Keep going! It's detaching!"
Lyric pushed harder. The cold was traveling up their arm, numbing the shoulder. The voices in the crystal screamed.
PAIN. LOSS. FIRE. DEATH.
Lyric gritted their teeth. I know. I'm sorry. But you have to go.
SNAP.
The massive chunk of calcified entropy broke free from the pipe.
"Catch it!" Lyric yelled.
If the heavy crystal fell onto the pipes below, it would shatter them.
Lyric grabbed the massive black rock with both hands as it fell. It weighed a ton. Lyric's knees buckled.
"Help!" Lyric grunted.
Valerius and Rook lunged forward, grabbing the sides of the crystal. Mira grabbed the top.
Together, the four of them held the vibrating, screaming rock of nightmares.
"Over the edge!" Valerius shouted. "Into the abyss!"
They heaved.
"One! Two! Three!"
They shoved the crystal over the railing of the catwalk.
It fell silently into the dark shaft below.
Seconds passed.
Boom.
A distant, muffled explosion echoed from deep, deep down.
On the pipes in front of them, the brass valve hissed. The blue light inside the pipe flared bright, then steadied into a smooth, rhythmic flow.
"Flow restored," Mira said, checking her datapad. "Pressure is dropping. Elara's vitals are stabilizing. We did it."
Rook collapsed onto the metal grating, panting. "We took out the trash. Literal emotional baggage."
Lyric leaned against the railing, shaking the numbness out of their hand. "That was… heavy."
"In every sense of the word," Valerius agreed. He looked at the pipe where the crystal had been attached.
"That's strange," Valerius murmured.
"What?" Lyric asked.
Valerius pointed to the metal surface of the pipe. It was scarred. Scratched.
"The crystal didn't just grow there," Valerius said, tracing the scratches. "It formed around a breach. Something punctured the pipe from the outside."
Lyric looked closer. There was a hole in the brass, about the size of a fist, that had been plugged by the crystal. Now that the crystal was gone, the hole was open.
But nothing was leaking out.
Something was sticking in.
It looked like a root. A gray, desiccated, wooden root. It had pierced the thick metal of the data pipe.
"Is that…" Rook squinted. "Is that wood?"
"It's a root from the surface," Mira whispered. "From the Dead World. The plants outside… they feed on entropy. This one managed to dig all the way down here."
"Dig deeper," Lyric whispered, remembering Elara's words.
Lyric reached out and touched the gray root.
It twitched.
Suddenly, the entire catwalk shuddered.
"Uh, guys?" Rook said, pointing down into the abyss. "I think we woke up the gardener."
From the darkness below, where they had dropped the crystal, a sound rose up. The sound of wood splintering and stone cracking.
Huge, gray shapes began to rise from the dark. Massive roots, thick as subway cars, writhing like snakes. They were climbing the shaft, drawn to the fresh memory energy flowing through the pipe.
"They aren't plants," Lyric realized, drawing the sword. "They're hunting."
"We need to leave," Mira said, backing toward the pod. "Now."
"The pod won't outrun those!" Valerius shouted as a root slammed into the catwalk, tearing a section of railing away.
"We don't go back up!" Lyric shouted. "Elara said dig deeper! The roots are coming from below the junction!"
"What?" Rook yelled. "Roots grow down! That means the tree is up!"
"Not these!" Lyric pointed. The roots were indeed coming from the depths, reaching upward toward the city. "The source is down there! Below the machinery!"
"You want to go down?" Rook screamed as a root smashed the control console Mira had been using. "Into the pit of monster trees?"
"It's the only way to the Anchor Point's foundation," Valerius said, eyes wide. "If the corruption is coming from the core, we have to cut it at the source."
Lyric looked at the group. The pod was blocked by a writhing mass of gray wood. The catwalk was crumbling.
"We jump," Lyric said.
"Again with the jumping!" Rook cried.
"Aim for the big root!" Lyric yelled. "It's solid! Slide down it!"
Lyric didn't wait for a vote. The catwalk groaned and tilted.
Lyric grabbed Valerius and jumped off the edge, aiming for the massive, gray timber of the invading organism.
Rook and Mira screamed and followed.
They hit the giant root, sliding down its rough bark into the absolute darkness of the planet's core.