The laboratory was sickeningly sterile.
After the soot and stench of the boiler room, the smell of alcohol and ozone felt unnatural. The light was white. Perfectly flat.
Transparent tanks lined the walls. Inside them, in murky liquid, things were floating. A hand stitched to some kind of pump. An eyeball with a cluster of fiber-optic threads where the optic nerve should have been.
I tried not to look. But in one of the tanks, I noticed a hand. An exact copy of mine. Except it was charred black.
"How did I even realize it looked like mine?" I thought.
"Do you like it?" Silas’s voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once.
In the center of the room stood something between an operating table and a pilot’s seat. A man was literally melted into it. Not much was left: a pale face, a torso, one arm. Everything else had been replaced by cables, hoses, and hydraulic drives snaking into the floor and ceiling.
"I am so glad to see you in the flesh," Silas’s voice drifted out.
"Is it... is it really him?" Ephraim said, backing away.
"You're not that great," I said, looking at him.
"Perfection. That is what I am."
"Kid... we have to go," Ephraim whispered, gripping his staff.
"You aren't leaving," Silas said calmly.
A low hum vibrated through the room. My ears popped. Zeno suddenly jerked, and sparks showered from his joints.
"Zeno!" I stepped toward him, but heavy clamps plummeted from the ceiling.
One pinned Ephraim to the wall, snapping shut across his chest.
"It’s very simple," Silas looked at me with hollow eyes. "Your skill. 'Will to Live.' Give me access to your system core. Show me how your brain processes reality."
He tilted his head slightly.
"And I let the old man go."
"Go to hell," I spat.
Four thin manipulators descended from the ceiling. Laser scalpels glowed at their tips. I lunged aside, but one beam slashed across my thigh. There was almost no pain. Just the smell of burnt meat. And a cold sting.
They moved faster than I could think.
If I don't activate it, we all die...
To hell with it. I ripped all the limiters out of my head.
[ACTIVATION: WILL TO LIVE — MAXIMUM OUTPUT]
[WARNING: NEURAL NETWORK CRITICAL OVERHEAT]
The world became structural.
My arm began to vibrate so violently that the skin at the seam of metal and flesh began to tear and smoke. I stepped back exactly one millimeter before the laser sliced the air. Roll. Pivot. The body moved on its own. I barely realized what it was doing. Every second in this state felt like an hour of torture.
I reached Silas’s chair. My fingers drove into the control panel. Electricity surged through me.
I collapsed onto the tiles. The skill cut out. I couldn't breathe. My body thrashed in convulsions. My right arm wouldn't obey at all—the metal was glowing red.
"You okay?" Ephraim ran to me the moment the clamps released him. The old man looked terrified.
I tried to answer. Only a raspy groan came out.
"I thought your skull was going to crack from the voltage," he muttered.
"I'm fine," I leaned against the wall. I don't know what to say in moments like this.
Silas sat frozen in his chair. Alive. But his mind, overloaded by the feedback, was likely mush. We moved toward Zeno, ready to leave, when...
Laughter filled the room.
Silas slowly raised his head. His face, half-hidden by cables, twitched in a hideous smile. One eye was filled with blood, but the other burned.
"Exquisite... Valt and Valerius always told me you were a valuable tool. What I just saw... you made me believe it!" Silas laughed.
His fingers, fused into the panel, tapped rapidly on the keys.
"Since you showed me the perfection of your soul, I will show you the perfection of my flesh."
A synchronized click echoed along the walls. The lids of the glass tanks began to rise, and murky liquid flooded the floor. Shapeless, twitching lumps of meat and steel spilled onto the tiles.
"Move!" Ephraim barked, shoving me behind a stand.
I tried to lean on my right arm and screamed.
"Stay down and don't move," the old man pulled a chain with a heavy blue stone from his cloak and threw it to me. "'Amulet of Eternal Rest.' Hold it tight!"
A translucent azure sphere flared around me. One of Silas’s humanoids—a hunched beast with three jointed limbs—leaped at me but slammed into the dome, leaving only a fading ripple.
"B-bitch..." I wheezed, watching Ephraim pull out a second artifact that looked like a bone needle. "You said you had almost nothing left!"
"I saved it for you, you idiot!" The old man stabbed the needle into the floor beside me. "'Breath of Life.' Endure it. It’s going to itch so bad you’ll want to rip your skin off."
A freezing jolt ran through me. The pain in my thigh and shoulder turned into an insane, maddening itch. I watched the edges of the burns pull together before my eyes.
Silas purred from his chair:
"Your companion is a true antiquarian. So many rare toys in one pair of hands..."
"Shut up!" Ephraim raised his staff. "'Chain Lightning!'"
A blinding, branching bolt of lightning tore from the staff. The discharge struck the nearest beast, punched through it, and jumped to the others.
But there were too many. New creatures were crawling from the corners.
"Argh, it’s not enough!" Ephraim breathed heavily, sweat pouring down his face. He pulled out a small black sphere. "I wanted to save this in case I had to carry Zeno... but it looks like I have to use it now. 'Neves!'"
He crushed the sphere in his fist.
Debris, pools of liquid, and we ourselves began to lift off the floor. Zeno, who had been lying like dead weight, was now floating in the air. Silas’s creatures, deprived of footing, thrashed their limbs, unable to reach us.
"Lightning is pure energy, needs a conductor. The dome is frequency vibration. Gravity... he changed the density of space. If I live, I have to understand how this works."
"Ephraim!" I shouted, seeing a creature kick off the ceiling, flying straight at the old man. "Two o'clock! Higher!"
"Defense protocol... resumed," a voice grated.
"Zeno!" I yelled. Perfect timing. "Don't just hit them! Their core is in the neck-shoulder joint, where the fiber optics are!"
"Zeno, strike at eleven o'clock! Straight thrust!"
A dull thud—meat and steel splattered against the walls.
"Ephraim, hold the gravity!" I turned to the old man. "Don't let them group up!"
"I’m trying, kid..." Ephraim rasped. He was shaking from the strain. "But this artifact is eating me alive!"
The beasts tried to crawl along the ceiling, bypassing Zeno.
"Zeno, three-sixty rotation! Knock them off the supports! Ephraim, now!"
The old man momentarily eased the pressure, and the creatures tumbled down, right into Zeno’s strikes.
Finally, the path to the center of the room was clear.
Silas was still in his chair. He didn't even try to defend himself as Zeno stepped close.
"Look at this," Silas whispered, his eyes crazed. "Perfect symbiosis. Your mind, his power, this old man’s trinkets... You created something beautiful."
I pulled myself up with difficulty, leaning on my healthy arm.
"Finish him, Zeno," Ephraim said quietly, sliding down the wall in exhaustion.
Zeno raised his hand.
"Threat elimination," the robot said.
The blow struck the center of Silas’s chest. His head snapped back.
But a smile still played on his lips.
"That... was... exquisite."
His head fell to his chest. The optics in his chair went dark, one by one.
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