The converted hybrids shambled forward. The Zephyrian's wings were half-crystalline, one dragging on the floor. The human's arm ended in a corrupted plasma cannon, its flesh swollen and bruised around the interface. Their faces were twisted in agony, their minds trapped behind the corruption controlling their bodies.
"Don't kill them!" Mira cried out. "They're victims!"
"They'll kill us," Leyla growled, but her claws hesitated.
Echo's Error-Sight analyzed them frantically. The corruption was deep, intertwined with their nervous systems. But it wasn't complete. The grafting was fresh. The Surgeon-General had said they were test subjects. Their original selves were still in there, fighting.
He could feel it. Their blood—still their own, though polluted—sang a song of torment.
The Surgeon-General watched with academic interest. "The emotional conflict. A fascinating variable. Will you hesitate? Will you die for your morals? Or will you slaughter the innocent to survive? Data either way is valuable."
The converted human raised its cannon arm, a violet glow building at the muzzle.
Echo made a decision. He didn't raise his blade. He raised his hand, palm out. He reached not for their bodies, but for the blood inside them.
Not to command. Not to harm.
To listen.
He pushed his blood sense to its limit, filtering out the screaming static of the corruption, searching for the fading rhythm of their true selves. He found it—a faint, frantic drumbeat buried under the crushing violet noise.
He poured his will through his bloodline, but this was a new application. Not dominance. Not coercion.
Sovereign's Appeal.
It was a psychic pulse carried on a wave of blood resonance, a call that bypassed the corruption and spoke directly to the trapped soul within: "Fight. This is not you. Remember who you are. FIGHT!"
The human hybrid stumbled. The glow in its cannon arm flickered. Its face contorted, a war of expressions—blank obedience vs. dawning horror.
"Impossible!" The Surgeon-General shrieked, its clinical detachment shattering. "The graft is psychically sealed!"
Echo's nose bled from the strain. He turned his focus to the Zephyrian. "Remember the sky. Remember the wind in your feathers. FIGHT!"
The Zephyrian let out a raw, avian cry and slammed its crystalline wing into the wall, shattering the corrupting growth.
One by one, Echo called to them, his bond with Leyla, Mira, and Ryn feeding him the strength to sustain the effort. He was not purging the corruption—that required time and resources they didn't have. He was giving the victims a moment of clarity, of will.
It was enough.
The hybrids turned on their master.
With screams of liberated rage, they lurched toward the Surgeon-General. The monster backed away, its talons raised. "No! You are property! You will obey!"
The human hybrid grabbed a surgical laser from a tray and fired it point-blank into the Surgeon-General's primary eye cluster. The Corrupted Ascendant howled, flailing.
Leyla didn't give it a chance to recover. She phased through its flailing limbs and tore out its throat-node.
The Surgeon-General collapsed, dissolving into a pool of acidic fluid and scattered data-crystals.
The converted hybrids stood, panting, the violet light in their eyes fading to a dim flicker as the controlling influence died with its master. They looked at their own corrupted limbs with horror.
"The bridge… is one level up," the Zephyrian rasped, its voice a ruined echo. "The Admiral… he knows you're here. He's waiting. Go. We will… hold this door. It is all we have left to give."
Echo nodded, a lump in his throat. "Thank you."
As they ran for the access ladder leading up, Echo heard the sounds of renewed fighting behind them—the liberated hybrids making their final stand against the reinforcements surely pouring into the lab.
They had bought them seconds with their souls.