Karl finally regained enough clarity to focus his eyes. His breathing steadied. The taste of blood faded from his mouth. The aches in his joints were dull now instead of crippling.
He still couldn't move — Agnes made sure of that — but at least he could think.
Agnes' avatar sat perched on the edge of the cockpit's projection frame, legs crossed, arms folded, expression burning with a strange mix of fury and exhaustion.
"Good. You're awake enough," she muttered.
Karl exhaled.
"…Agnes. I already said I'm—"
"Look."
She snapped her fingers.
A pile of digital blueprint sheets materialized in front of Karl, projected mid-air like floating holograms.
Karl blinked, confused.
"That… that's what I grabbed from the jet center?"
"Yes," Agnes replied, voice razor-sharp.
Karl's eyes scanned the first blueprint.
His stomach dropped.
It wasn't a jet design.
Not a wing schematic.
Not an engine core.
Not even a propulsion prototype.
It was…
"…A drone?" Karl muttered.
Agnes nodded with painful, sarcastic calm.
"A fighter drone.
Not even a completed one." She zoomed into the wiring schematic. "It's missing 40 percent of the structural data and 70 percent of the engine notes."
Karl frowned.
"There must've been more. Maybe the main jet schematics were—"
Agnes cut him off with a slap.
Not a violent one—
but a sharp, scolding reminder.
"No excuses."
Karl winced, more at the disappointment in her voice than the sting.
She tossed another blueprint toward him, letting it flicker in the air.
"This one? A prototype stabilizer fin design for a drone that doesn't exist."
Another slap of paper.
"This one? A test chart for aerodynamic stress simulations. Completely useless alone."
Three more pages appeared.
"Fuel line sketches.
Sensor mount brackets.
A half-drawn cockpit for something the size of a motorcycle."
Agnes leaned in.
Karl stared at the pieces — realization and humiliation slowly spreading across his face.
"…There were no jets," he whispered.
"No. There weren't."
Agnes' voice trembled with anger and heartbreak.
"And you destroyed yourself for this."
Karl exhaled shakily.
Agnes slapped him again — the sharp crack filling the cockpit.
Karl hissed from the sting.
"Agnes—"
"Don't talk."
Her voice was low. Controlled. Deadly serious.
"You nearly let ichor crawl into your brain and Vythra core… for blueprints that can't even build a toaster with wings."
Karl swallowed hard.
"I didn't know. I thought—"
Another slap.
"You didn't think," she snapped. "You rushed in. You pushed until your bones cracked. You collapsed in a pool of ichor with your organs half-melted—"
Her voice cracked.
"And for what?"
Karl stared at the useless blueprints floating around him.
Agnes wasn't done.
She stepped closer, her avatar kneeling in front of him, grabbing his immobilized face between her hands.
"You want to know what the only complete blueprint in that whole building was?" she whispered.
Karl forced himself to look at her.
Agnes flicked her wrist.
A final hologram appeared.
It wasn't a jet.
It wasn't even a vehicle.
It was a laundry list.
A catalog sheet.
Parts inventory.
Nothing more.
Karl felt heat crawl into his cheeks from embarrassment and frustration.
Agnes dropped it in front of him like a judge throwing down a guilty verdict.
Then another slap.
"That," she said, voice trembling, "is what you almost died for."
Karl closed his eyes.
"…I see."
"No. You don't."
Agnes' voice sharpened again.
"If you so much as think about going back into Pittsburgh, I will personally make sure you never reach the edge of that city."
Karl opened his eyes slowly.
"Agnes—"
Another slap.
Harder.
Her digital tears fell again.
"You're not stepping one foot back in there," she whispered, voice breaking.
"I don't care if you beg. I don't care if you shout. I don't care if you shut down my systems."
She leaned in, nose touching his, eyes sharp and wet.
"If you try to return," she said softly, "I will override your motor pathways and keep you frozen in this cockpit until the ichor across the entire state evaporates."
Karl swallowed.
"That's not—"
She slapped him again.
His cheek burned.
Agnes' voice turned into a trembling whisper.
"You can threaten to shut me off."
"You can try to wrestle control."
"You can hate me for locking your body."
She leaned closer, almost trembling against him.
"But I'm not letting you die again. Not for drones. Not for scraps. Not for anything."
The cockpit fell silent again.
Karl stared at the floating blueprints.
All useless.
All incomplete.
All worthless compared to what it cost him.
And Agnes stood over him —
shaking, furious, sad, protectively domineering,
but undeniably terrified of losing him.
Karl's cheek still throbbed with the aftershock of Agnes' last strike. She wasn't hitting him out of cruelty, and Karl knew it — the trembling in her digital fingers, the redness around her projected eyes, the subtle glitch in her voice modulation made that obvious.
She was terrified.
Terrified of losing him.
Terrified of watching him die because of his own stubbornness.
And she hated that she had to be the one stopping him.
Karl inhaled slowly.
"…Agnes."
She tensed instantly.
Her avatar stood over him, arms folded tightly, her digital coat twitching like a snapped nerve.
"No," she said.
"You don't get to talk your way out of this one."
Karl blinked.
"You won't even hear me out?"
"I will," she said, glaring. "But you're not going anywhere. You're not standing up. You're not unstrapping yourself. You're not transforming. You're not touching the controls. I am not lifting a single restraint until your Vythra stabilizes enough that ichor can't lace itself into your bloodstream again."
Karl exhaled.
"I wasn't planning to—"
"Karl," she cut in, "you literally untransformed yourself to sneak into a death zone alone. You ARE the plan. The bad one."
He shut his mouth.
Agnes stepped closer, her voice dropping into something softer.
Still angry.
Still sharp.
But undeniably shaken.
"You can't keep doing this," she whispered.
"You're not… disposable."
Karl looked away.
"I never said I was."
"You acted like it."
Her words hit harder than the slaps.
Silence lingered between them.