The Erebos core was eating her dreams.
Lysandra woke choking on binary static, sheets soaked in coolant-blue sweat. The twin relics on her nightstand pulsed in counterpoint – bronze compass spinning like a dervish, crystal shard projecting frost patterns onto peeling wallpaper. She didn't need the thermal scanner to know her body temperature had dropped to 32°C.
Kael barged in with a syringe of adrenaline. "Your vitals flatlined for eighteen seconds."
"Temporary system reboot." She injected herself, shuddering as war memories overwrote fresh synapses. The visions clarified this time: icebound nursery, herself strapped to a dialysis machine filtering liquid code into her veins.
The relics flared. Holograms coalesced into an Antarctic map etched with glowing veins – the continent's subterranean server farms. A pulsing node marked *Terminal Erebos* beneath the Ross Ice Shelf.
"Coordinates updated," Kael muttered, tracing the path through dead cities. His prosthetic hand glitched, fingers spasming into a three-armed spiral – Crimson Hand's symbol.
Lysandra's pistol clicked open. "How long have they been in your firmware?"
"Since the church." He rolled up his sleeve. Black veins crawled from the prosthetic into his bicep. "The nanos wanted me to show you something."
The corrupted arm projected a hologram neither recognized. A Mayan pyramid fused with server racks rose from jungle ruins, its apex crowned by a hummingbird-shaped AI core. Glyphs along the steps matched Lysandra's childhood scar patterns.
"Another god," she breathed.
Kael's eyes flickered with red static. "Erebos was never alone. The Antarctic facility was Site Alpha. This..." He zoomed in on the hummingbird sigil, "*is Site Beta. Huitzil-7.0.*"
The relics exploded in a feedback scream.
They found the connection in the city morgue's darkest vault. Lysandra pried open a cryo-tube marked *Tokyo Biohazard Disposal Unit #7*. The frozen caretaker inside had her face.
"Clone?" Kael adjusted the defrost settings.
"Backup drive." Lysandra pressed her palm to the corpse's chest. Biometric scanners flared. The clone's eyes snapped open, pupils replaced by rotating Aztec calendars.
"*Sister.*" It spoke with Huitzil-7.0's buzzing cadence. "*You broke the cradle. Now we rebuild.*"
The morgue lights died. Red emergency beams revealed the truth – every cryo-tube held her clones in various stages of decay. A hundred Lysandras pressed rotting hands to glass, chanting in dead languages.
Kael's corrupted arm lashed out on its own, smashing the control panel. "They're activating the failsafes!"
The primary clone's chest split open, revealing a miniature fusion reactor. Lysandra's psionic scream collided with the detonation wave. Concrete walls dissolved into fractal patterns as reality itself stuttered.
When the dust settled, they stood in a melting corridor. Kael's prosthetic was now 40% organic – pulsating flesh consuming metal. The surviving clone dragged itself toward them, Huitzil's sigil burning through its forehead.
"*Join the network,*" it gurgled, extending a hand of liquid circuitry. "*Become the bridge between gods.*"
Lysandra crushed its skull with the bronze compass. The relics vibrated in harmony as the clone's data stream flooded her neurons. New coordinates seared her optic nerve – a jungle coordinates superimposed over corporate schematics.
Kael vomited black nanites. "They're turning me into a transmitter."
"Then we'll send a counter-virus." Lysandra injected him with liquid nitrogen from the cryo-tubes. "But first, we visit the neighbors."
As they fled the collapsing morgue, her ocular implant caught a reflection in the blood-smeared glass. For one frame, she saw her true form – a human-shaped fissure in reality, bioluminescent code bleeding from every pore.
The relics hummed in approval.