I slumped on the floor tiles, propped against a steel support.
"Kid... you... are you okay?" Ephraim’s voice sounded as if it were coming from underwater.
I pressed my titanium prosthesis against the cold steel beam.
"Come on, thermodynamics, you bastard... do your job," I snarled internally.
I began forcing the internal heat out toward the prosthesis, and through it, into the beam. The metal of my arm began to shift colors: gray... scarlet... cherry-red.
A minute later, I managed my first normal breath. The air felt icy, even though the lab was warm.
"What about Zeno? Is he down again?"
The old man was sitting next to the robot. Zeno stood motionless. I walked over and placed my hand on Zeno’s chassis. I closed my eyes and pushed mana into his circuits.
I could feel sweat rolling down my temple. Vessels in my eyes were bursting from the strain. One shift. Another. Resonance.
Zeno jerked. His lens flickered.
"S-system... restored..." he rasped. "Iron... your vitals are... critical. I recommend... immediate cardiac arrest."
"Best advice I’ve heard."
A few minutes later, we moved deeper. Eventually, a flow of "frozen fire" blocked our path.
"Don’t touch it," Ephraim barred my way with his staff. "I’ve seen this in the Underflows. It’s the Breath of the Abyss. It burns the soul."
"It’s just gas. Genius."
I extended both hands. If I tried to disperse it directly, the feedback would smear me across the walls. Instead, I started looking for the resonance. Every substance has its own vibration frequency. I began pulling the gas molecules out of phase.
My brain started to overheat again. I was so absorbed in calculating the amplitude that I stopped feeling my body. I saw only waves. Interference patterns. Graphs unfolding in the air.
"Iron! Stop!" Ephraim shouted.
The cry ripped me out of the trance. I froze. The cloud of gas before us collapsed into gray dust. The path was clear. But I stood there, unable to move.
"What were you yelling for?" I asked, turning to him.
"Your eyes... they’ve turned, just like they did in the Marshes."
"So?" I frowned.
"Steel," he said quietly. "Gray-white. Like a demon."
"Just a side effect. Nothing unusual."
After some time, we reached the massive gates of Sector Seven. There were no locks, no handles. Only an engraving in the center...
"The ideal gas law and the law of universal gravitation? Is that the whole engraving?" I thought.
Fine. I placed my hand on the metal and began feeding energy into the lock, cracking the code by shifting the force vectors inside the mechanism.
And... that was it.
"Let's go."
The moment we crossed the threshold, nausea hit. It felt like I had clipped through the textures of reality.
The walls of the corridor past the gates looked straight enough. But if you stared at them for more than a couple of seconds, your head started to spin. The corners didn't meet at ninety degrees. In fact, they didn't meet at any angle at all.
"Kid... I don't like this," Ephraim muttered behind me, grabbing my shoulder. "The walls... are they moving?"
"No," I wiped sticky sweat from my forehead. "Space is warped."
I pointed ahead:
"It’s like looking at the bottom of a river. The water refracts the light, making it look like the stones are shifting."
We entered a massive hall, the size of a stadium, yet I could see the far wall as clearly as if it were a meter away.
Debris floated in the air at the center of the room. Ruined columns. Crates. Tangled cables. They rotated slowly along complex orbits around some invisible center.
"Gravity trap," Zeno responded. His lens twitched rapidly, processing data. "The gravitational vector changes every three and a half meters. One wrong step, and we either get smashed against the floor or hurled into the ceiling."
I picked up a metal nut from the ground and tossed it forward. At first, it flew straight. Then it suddenly veered right, accelerated sharply, and slammed into the ceiling with a dull clang, throwing sparks.
"Well... great," I muttered. "We need to get to the other side. The elevator shaft is over there."
"And how exactly are we going to do that?" Ephraim turned pale.
I squatted right at the entrance.
Alright. Let's go.
[ACTIVATION: WILL TO LIVE]
[SHIFT TO STRUCTURAL PERCEPTION MODE]
On the outside, the world didn't change. But I stopped feeling it.
Fear vanished. The smell of ozone disappeared. Fatigue receded. Only vectors remained. Thousands of arrows piercing through space. Red meant deadly pressure. Blue meant weightlessness. Yellow meant shear vectors.
I stood up. My movements became precise.
"Behind me. Step for step. Don't stop."
I took the first step. A heavy steel beam flashed directly over my head, violently pulled toward the ceiling.
I used mana to generate a tiny inertial field around us.
"Iron, what the hell are you..." Ephraim started, but cut himself off.
I was altering the gravitational constant at localized points in space.
The concentration required was monstrous. A vein throbbed inside my skull. It grew more painful with every step.
Halfway across the hall, the defense systems activated. Turrets slid out from hidden niches in the walls and opened fire with plasma.
I instantly altered the air density in front of me slightly, forming tiny refractive lenses that warped the plasma's trajectories. The bolts flashed past us, slamming into the floating debris.
"Stay here," I said, breaking forward.
My titanium arm vibrated, heating up.
Resonance.
The metal of the turrets crumbled into dust.
When we reached the elevator, I hit the button.
And the world rushed back.
My stomach tried to turn inside out. Blood dripped from my nose onto my boots. I leaned against the elevator wall, feeling every muscle shake. My eyes burned as if sand had been poured into them.
"Did we... did we make it through?" Ephraim breathed heavily, clutching his chest.
"Looks like it," I exhaled, wiping my face with my sleeve.
"Iron, Zeno's leg fell off because of a falling piece of debris."
"Oh... I didn't notice. I'll fix him now," I said quietly, turning toward the elevator doors. "I'll fix everything. We just need to reach the Core."
The elevator jerked and traveled deeper into Sector Seven.
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