Gravity was the only truth left.
One moment, Valen's boot rested on the solid, dust-caked floor of the Architect ruin. The next, there was nothing. Just a stomach-lurching void and the echo of Ryker's voice, calm and casual, as his hand shoved squarely into the center of Valen's back.
"Business, Val. Nothing personal."
The air became a roaring torrent, a physical thing that tore at his clothes and filled his mouth with the taste of ancient dust. The chasm was a throat, and he was being swallowed whole. Flashes of memory seared his mind between heartbeats: the dull silver glint of the fist-sized Relic in Ryker's hand; the shared, watery rations just last night; the faces of the rest of the crew, their expressions carefully blank, their complicity a silent, collective betrayal.
His shoulder connected with a jagged outcropping of rock and metal. The sound was a wet crunch, a sound his own bones screamed directly into his brain. The impact sent him pinwheeling, a broken marionette. His helmet cracked against the opposite wall, the cheap plasteel spiderwebbing before the world dissolved into a blinding, white-hot flash.
Agony. Pure and absolute. It was a fire that burned away all thought, leaving only raw sensation. He was a falling collection of broken parts.
Time ceased to be a line and became a loop of pain and wind. Below, there was only a suggestion of deeper blackness. This was the place from the stories, the pit from which no scavenger returned. A graveyard for the greedy and the unlucky. Today, he was both.
And in the wreckage of his thoughts, one image burned brighter than the pain: Ryker's face. Not smiling. Worse. It was the face of a man weighing credits, a man who had finished a simple, profitable calculation.
Then, the universe slammed its fist down.
The impact wasn't a sound; it was the cessation of all things. Air, momentum, consciousness—all were annihilated in a single, brutal instant. He landed on a slope of metallic detritus and bone-dry earth, his ruined body tumbling through the debris until it slid to a halt in a shallow pool of frigid, stagnant water.
The silence that followed was a physical pressure, heavier than the tons of rock above him. It was broken only by a single, rhythmic drip-drip-drip somewhere in the oppressive darkness.
He tried to issue a command. Move. The message left his brain and vanished into a void of severed nerves. He felt a sharp, grinding sensation in his chest with every shallow, liquid breath he managed to draw. His left arm was a ruin, bent at an angle that mocked the limits of anatomy. A sticky warmth was spreading from his back, his lifeblood leaking out to mingle with the black, still water.
This is it. The thought was strangely calm. This is how it ends.
The blood, a dark tide of his own failure, crept outwards. It touched a surface that was not rock, not metal, not earth. It was something unnaturally smooth, cold, and carved with impossible precision.
A low hum, felt more than heard, vibrated through the water and into his shattered skeleton.
A single point of soft, azure light pulsed to life. It was faint, but in the absolute blackness, it was as bright as a sun. It traced the edges of a sleek, obsidian obelisk, revealing hairline fractures into which his blood was being drawn. As the crimson fed the stone, the light intensified, the geometric patterns across its surface flaring with purpose.
Then, a voice. Not a sound carried by the air, but a stream of pure information injected directly into his mind. It was clean, cold, and utterly devoid of emotion.
[Exsanguinating Organic Signature Detected. Analyzing Compatibility... Compatible.]
A dying man's hallucination? The last spark of a failing mind?
[Host Condition Critical. Assessing Systemic Damage.] [Report: Multiple Skeletal Fractures, Severe Spinal Trauma at C7 Vertebra, Massive Internal Hemorrhaging, Acute Cerebral Contusion.] [Probability of Imminent Host Expiration: 99.91%.]
The diagnosis was a death sentence delivered by a machine. A bitter, bloody laugh tried to form in his throat, but only a gurgle escaped.
The voice continued, its logic unperturbed by his despair.
[Host Viability Unacceptable for Standard Integration. Initiating Emergency Protocol: Genesis Symbiosis.] [Activating Genesis Codex. Prime Directive: Preserve Host. Reconstruct. Optimize.]
The azure light exploded, no longer soft but a surgical, invasive glare that bleached the darkness away. The fire in his bones was instantly extinguished, replaced by a feeling of being dismantled and rewritten on a cellular level. A billion points of icy light flooded his nerves, seizing control. The water around him began to hiss, steam rising from his skin as his body temperature fluctuated wildly.
It was an agony beyond breaking bones, a violation deeper than any betrayal. It was the feeling of his very self being unmade.
And as the system scoured his dying mind for a primary directive, a reason to fight the encroaching void, it found only one thought, glowing like a hot coal in the ruins of his consciousness:
Find Ryker.
The Genesis Codex accepted its new mission. Reconstruction began.