The moment Samson's palm met the rotating golden pillar, the world didn't just go white it went silent. The roar of the machinery, the screams of the mercenaries, and the rhythmic chanting of the miners vanished, replaced by a low, sub-atomic hum.
His tattooed arm didn't burn. It froze. The sapphire ink beneath his skin surged, turning a jagged, crystalline white as it acted as a bridge between the boy and the machine. Samson wasn't just a man anymore; he was a lightning rod for the history of the earth.
As the energy poured through him, Samson's vision expanded. He saw the "Global Network." It wasn't just Zimbabwe.
He saw shimmering lines of power stretching across the globe, connecting deep-earth vaults beneath the Andes, the Australian Outback, and the Siberian Tundra. This wasn't a local mining operation. It was a planetary harvest, a secret economy where the powerful didn't just trade gold they traded the distilled essence of human existence.
"Stop it, Samson!" Chipo's voice broke through the static. She was dragging Kuda away from the center of the room, her hands protected by her heavy tactical gloves. "You're turning! Look at your skin!"
Samson looked down. The transformation had begun. His fingertips were hardening into a brilliant, unyielding gold. The "Aetheric" energy was trying to crystallize him, to turn the detective into the ultimate piece of bullion.
The Surge
"I... I can't let go!" Samson gasped, his voice sounding like metal grinding on stone. "If I break the circuit... it will detonate."
Sibanda, seeing his life's work at risk of being grounded out, grabbed a fallen rifle from a dead mercenary. "Let go, you fool! That energy belongs to the future! It belongs to the markets!"
Sibanda fired.
The bullet struck Samson in the shoulder, but instead of blood, a spray of golden dust erupted from the wound. Samson didn't flinch. The pain was distant, muffled by the overwhelming torrent of memories flowing through his mind—the lives of the fifty miners, their childhoods in the villages, their dreams of a better life. He channeled their collective anger into the machine.
The Alchemical Heart began to spin in reverse.
The blue energy turned into a violent, angry red. The glass sarcophagi that hadn't shattered yet began to implode.
"The feedback!" Sibanda screamed, dropping the gun. "You're reversing the transmutation!"
The Rebirth
The energy didn't just stop; it was sucked back into the Earth. The golden crust on the miners' skin began to flake off like dead leaves in a storm. They gasped, their lungs filling with oxygen for the first time in days. The "Gold-Miners" were becoming men again, though they would forever bear the shimmering scars of the mineral that had tried to claim them.
With a final, bone-shaking jolt, the golden pillar shattered into a thousand dull, leaden fragments. The light died. The hum stopped.
Samson collapsed to the floor, his right arm still glowing a faint, dying amber. His fingertips remained gold—a permanent reminder of the price he had paid—but the rest of his body was human.
He looked up to see Chipo standing over him, her face covered in soot. Behind her, Zekiya and the surviving miners were helping their brothers to their feet.
"Is it over?" Chipo asked, her voice trembling.
"The machine is dead," Samson said, leaning on her as he stood. "But the people who paid for it... they're still out there. They saw everything through the feeds."
The New Mystery
Sibanda was nowhere to be found. He had disappeared into the dark tunnels as the machine failed, but he had left behind a briefcase. Samson kicked it open.
Inside weren't bars of gold. There were maps of the Great Dyke, marked with twelve specific locations. Next to the maps were travel documents for a man named Dr. Aris Thorne, a geologist who had officially been declared dead ten years ago in London.
"Thorne isn't dead," Samson said, picking up a photograph of a man with cold, calculating eyes. "He's the one who taught Sibanda how to use the Heart. And according to these coordinates, he's already moved the primary components to the next site."
Kuda, now awake but weak, gripped Samson's golden hand. "The mountain still speaks," the boy whispered. "It says the Great Dyke is just one rib of the giant. Thorne is looking for the heart."
Samson looked at his golden fingers, then at the maps. He had come to Zimbabwe to solve a mystery of missing gold, but he had stumbled into a war for the very definition of what it meant to be human.
"Inspector," Samson said, turning to Chipo. "Tell your government the gold is gone. Tell them it was never here. We need to get to the Shurugwi site before Thorne finishes what he started."
"You're not a detective anymore, are you?" Chipo asked, looking at the golden scars on his shoulder.
"I'm a hunter," Samson replied. "And the trail is still warm."