Page 66 of Sixth
Chapter 16
A CHILLraced through Emmy, freezing her mid-breath. Her hand sought Apex’s instinctively, gripping until his pulse beat steady against her fingers. Lume screamed, asharp, bright sound that burned across the room, her light snapping white-hot as she crouched on the console, fur flaring.
The bay went silent, the only sound the deep, slow heartbeat of the ship echoing through metal andbone.
She forced herself to move because standing still meant giving panic room to grow. Apex’s silent signal cut through the air and Emmy fell in beside him as the others converged on the command room from every corridor.
Even while running, they stayed mindful of the wounded. Locus guided Hannah with his hand firm at her back, while Jo’Nay carried Winn easily, his stride unbroken. Emmy stayed close enough to Apex to sense the heat radiating from him, tomatch her pace to his as Lume darted ahead like a streak of firelight.
Panels flickered on both sides of the hall, red and gold lights warring across the metal walls. Emmy saw Apex pause to listen, his head tilted, the way he always did when he was reading the ship’s pulse through sound. She couldn’t hear what he did, but she could feel it. The hum had changed, deeper, slower, wrong.
“Core,” she said when they burst into the command room, her voice sharper than she meant it to be. “Localize the corruption.”
Static. Then Core again with strain under the steady tone.“Working. Iam fencing off processes that do not belong to me. They are masked as maintenance. They are not mine.”
“Can you cut them,” Emmy asked, “without cutting yourself?”
“Not yet. Iwill lose systems we need if I strike. Ido not wish to harm you.”
Locus helped Hannah into a chair and stepped to the nearest access panel. “Tell me where to put my fists.”
“Not there. If you break that we lose antigrav balance. The forge bay has power rerouted to it. Ido not want that.”
The forge bay. The world sharpened. “He is printing himself,” Apex said. He didn’t put heat into the words. It wasn’t needed.
Jo’Nay was already moving. “I will pull the main feed to the fabricator.”
“I will suit for vacuum to cut external feeds if we lose internal control,” Locus said. He looked at Apex. “You will say when.”
“Go,” Apex said. He did not have to add anything to that. Locusran.
Emmy turned toward the corridor, her pulse hammering. She caught Jo’Nay’s eye, saw the same question and grim resolve in his face, and nodded. Together with Apex, they sprinted toward the forge bay, their boots slamming against the deck in rhythm with the ship’s heartbeat.
The walls seemed to close around them, heat rolling through the passage like the exhale of some great beast. Sparks flared as panels flickered overhead, and the distant growl of machinery deepened until it sounded alive.
Emmy led the turn into the final corridor, the red warning lights staining their faces as the doors ahead pulsed open on command. The forge waited beyond, hot and breathing, its glow washing over them like fire called tolife.
The heat hit first, ablunt wall pressing against her skin. The chamber flickered the color of coals. The hum came low and hungry from the guts of the ship. She stepped in with Apex at her side, Lume a streak of white above, Jo’Nay already at the junction panel ripping covers free with calm, practiced hands.
On the central tray lay the thing that should not have been. Abody shaped like a memory and a threat. Synthetic muscle stretched over fiber. Cables ran where veins should have run. The skull was a cage without a face, sockets dark, jaw soldered into a suggestion of a mouth. The heat gave it a wavering halo that made it look as if it breathed.
Emmy’s stomach turned, nearly overwhelmed by the urge to back away, but didn’t. Apex didn’t move at all. His silence was a heaviness that steadied everyone in the room. He gave the thing no recognition it didn’t deserve.
Jo’Nay yanked the first relay. The forge lights dipped. He yanked the second. The tray flickered and steadied.
“He is still drawing power through hidden lines,”Core said. The AI’s tone trembled.“I am cutting every alternative route. He has buried hooks in maintenance channels. They are not mine.”
“Show me where to strike,” Emmy said. Her voice sounded thin to her own ears. She made it firmer. “Map the parasitic paths.”
“On display.”A schematic flared across the far wall. Red threads spidered through the ship’s systems and converged on the forge like nerves feeding a newborn.
The mesh skull on the tray made a small sound. Ahiss. Aclick. Then the speakers embedded in the chassis broke into life. The voice that emerged was gutted and cold and triumphant.Ihave risen.
Lume shrieked and answered with a burst of light. The strobe hit the forge optics and threw a wash of static across the sensors. The mesh head turned toward her like a hunting creature and then jerked as the cameras in the ceiling snapped to follow the movement.
Apex moved. He didn’t lunge. He didn’t howl. He crossed the space with that measured speed Emmy had learned meant violence was already decided. His blade left its sheath and came up under the printed clavicle. He drove it down and sideways. The chassis spasmed. Cables tore. The voice cut off with a wet crackle.
Jo’Nay braced on Apex’s left and caught an incoming swing from a printed arm that had not been there a heartbeat before. The printed hand latched on to his forearm with metal fingersand pulled. Jo’Nay set himself and held. The half-born body whirled half off the tray in a lurching motion that looked like drowning on land. It was fast. Too fast for something new. The fusion of code and flesh made it vicious and graceless.
