I surfaced in the lower strata of Virelia Prime, a level so forgotten that even the cleaning drones refused to patrol it. The walls were stitched with wires like veins, the air thick with condensation and data bleed. I needed time. Space. Somewhere I could decrypt the map without being tracked.
I found an old Coretech node hub buried beneath a collapsed fusion substation—obsolete, but still linked to the grid's shadow current. I jacked in.
The ghost partition began to unravel.
Not gently. Violently.
The files fought me. Literally. The code wrapped around my neural implants like razor wire. The encryption wasn't just protective—it was reactive, semi-sentient. The Anti-Pattern had triggered an ancient defense protocol. I pushed harder.
The first image that decrypted wasn't a map. It was a memory. But not mine.
It was a battlefield.
Floating in low orbit over a dead planet, ships burned like candles snuffed out by a wind that didn't belong. And below them—on the planet's surface—a machine. Not a weapon. A being.
The Flesh Engine.
It moved like oil and bone and hunger. Every step tore rips in the atmosphere, and wherever it went, reality... bled.
"Nyxari sealed it," a voice echoed inside my skull. "But sealing is not the same as ending."
I pulled back, gasping, my vision spotted with static and afterimages. My fingertips were bleeding. Actual blood. The system had tried to overwrite my neural scaffolding with something else.
A language not meant for humans.
A language meant to awaken something.
There was a reason the Convergence buried this.
But they hadn't buried it deep enough.