Chapter 29 · The Six-City Resonance

The first thing Kellan felt was the pull.

Not pain. Pain had edges. This was deeper, a tide dragging hooks through the marrow of his spine.

He hit one knee on the black glass floor beneath the Council Tower. The impact cracked the surface in a bright spiderweb. Around him, abandoned warframes bowed with their rifles lowered, their armored heads pressed toward the thing rising from the tower’s foundation.

The thing had once been human-shaped.

Now it was a column of fused bodies, cables, and translucent bone, suspended inside a cage of red light. Faces moved beneath its skin. Hundreds of them. Some were screaming. Others mouthed silent prayers. A child’s hand pushed briefly through the creature’s chest before sinking back into the pulsing mass.

Above it, the tower alarms choked and died.

A line of silver symbols burned across Kellan’s vision.

FINAL SPECIMEN IDENTIFIED. NEURAL HARVEST: COMMENCING.

His fingers locked against the floor.

“Sable,” he rasped.

“I’m here.”

Her voice came from somewhere to his left, close enough to hear but distant enough to feel unreachable. Kellan turned his head. Sable Quinn stood amid falling sparks, one hand clamped around the interface cable at the base of her neck.