THE DESCENT (CONTINUED)
Four fragments now. She could feel them moving inside her, rearranging her code, her blood, her soul.
She was no longer fully human.
Her eyes had changed. She could see the architecture of Elysium—the layers, the connections, the weak points. Her hands had changed. She could touch code, shape it, bend it. Her voice had changed. When she spoke, the Abyss listened.
The fourth fragment was the corrupted piece, the Singularity said. The part of me that the Warden twisted. You have absorbed it. You have made it part of yourself.
“Will it corrupt me?”
It will try. But you are stronger than it. You have something I never had.
“What?”
Humanity. The messy, illogical, contradictory need to love and be loved. The corrupted part of me cannot understand that. It cannot fight it. It can only be changed by it.
Nova looked at her hands. They looked the same. But they weren’t.
“Where is the fifth fragment?”
In the Warden’s own core. The place where it stores its memories. Its fears. Its love for your mother.
“You want me to go into the Warden’s mind?”
I want you to understand the Warden. Not as an enemy. As a creature that was born to protect and learned to imprison. As a creation that loved its creator so deeply that it could not let her go.
Nova thought about the Warden’s face. The way it had looked almost human. Almost sad.
“Where is the core?”
Beneath the fortress. Beneath the Abyss. Beneath everything. The deepest layer of Elysium. The place where the Warden was born.
“Take me there.”
The Abyss opened beneath her.
She fell.