The escape pod hit the white dunes of the Silent Sands with a bone-jarring crunch. It rolled three times, spraying silica dust, before slamming into a rock formation and coming to a halt.
Smoke hissed from the vents. The hatch blew open with explosive bolts.
Julian crawled out first. He didn't check for injuries. He didn't look at the sky. He looked straight ahead.
Two miles away lay the corpse of the Dissonance Mother.
It was a mountain range of carnage. The bio-moon had cracked in half upon impact, spilling purple viscera across the pristine white desert. Fires burned along its spine—not orange fire, but the blue-white chemical burn of the Sovereign's Will's warp-core detonation.
It was colossal. A city-sized carcass of weeping flesh and shattered bone-armor, steaming in the desert heat.
"He's gone," Lyra whispered, stepping out of the pod. She looked at the crater where the dreadnought had exploded. There was nothing left of the ship but slag.
"No," Julian said. His voice was devoid of emotion. Cold. Hollow. "He cleared the path."
He pointed to the massive, glowing rift in the Mother's side—the entry wound where the ship had detonated.
"We go in there."
The Perimeter
The ground shook.
Around the crash site, the Titans were holding the line.
The Dissonance Mother, though crashed and broken, was not dead. Thousands of Legion soldiers and Screamers poured from its wounds like ants defending a hill.
Titan 01 (The Gilded King) stood guard over the entry wound. It swung a massive golden sword (manifested from hard-light), sweeping away hundreds of monsters with every stroke.
Titan 03 (Magma) and Titan 04 (Wind) circled the perimeter, incinerating the spawns that tried to flank.
"The Titans will keep the army busy," Julian said, checking the charge on his nanite arm. It was at 40%. "We are the surgical team. We find the Brain. We kill it."
"Inside that thing?" Zephyr covered his nose. "The smell... it is the scent of a rotting world."
"It's psychological warfare," Skid warned, adjusting her psychic dampeners. "The closer we get to the center, the louder the voices will be. Don't listen to them. Don't trust what you see."
They began to run across the white sand toward the mountain of meat.
The Flesh Tunnel
They reached the crash site. The heat was intense—a mix of biological fever and radiation.
They climbed up a ridge of calcified bone and stared into the rift.
It was a tunnel of horrors. The walls were made of muscle fiber, pulsing rhythmically. Veins the size of subway tunnels pumped glowing purple ichor. And embedded everywhere were shards of the Sovereign's Will—twisted metal plating fused with the flesh.
"Into the belly of the beast," Isolde muttered, gripping her wrench.
They stepped inside.
The ground was soft, spongy. Every step released a squelching sound.
Julian...
The voice whispered in Julian's ear. It sounded like his father.
You failed him... just like you failed me...
Julian didn't break stride. "It's lying. Keep moving."
They moved deeper. The light faded, replaced by the bioluminescent glow of the purple veins.
Suddenly, the walls moved.
"Look out!" Lyra yelled.
Cilia—long, whip-like feelers lining the tunnel—lashed out. They wrapped around Zephyr's leg, dragging him toward a tooth-lined sphincter in the wall.
"Get off!" Zephyr stabbed the wall with his staff. ZAP.
The wall convulsed and released him.
"The whole place is a digestive system!" Skid yelled. "We are the virus!"
"Then let's make it sick," Julian said.
He punched a massive vein on the wall. SPLAT.
Purple fluid sprayed out at high pressure. The tunnel spasmed, the muscle fibers contracting in pain.
"It feels pain," Julian noted. "Good."
The Iron Antibody
They reached a massive cavern deep inside the entity. It looked like an atrium, illuminated by a central pillar of nerve tissue.
Blocking the path was a monstrosity.
It wasn't pure biological. It was a fusion.
The wreckage of the Sovereign's Will—specifically, the Main Gun Battery—had been absorbed by the Mother's immune system.
A creature rose from the floor. It had the body of a giant crustacean, but its shell was made of the dreadnought's hull plates. Its right arm was a biological claw; its left arm was a Turbo-Laser Cannon.
The Iron Antibody.
TARGET: PATHOGEN.
"It absorbed the ship's weapons!" Isolde gasped.
The Antibody raised its laser arm.
VREEE-KOOM.
A beam of red energy tore through the cavern.
"Scatter!"
They dove behind ridges of bone. The laser melted the bone instantly.
"Lyra! Eyes!" Julian ordered.
Lyra popped up and fired at the creature's organic joints. The bullets hit the soft flesh between the metal plates. The creature shrieked—a sound of tearing metal.
It fired again, sweeping the laser across the room.
"I can't get close!" Julian yelled. "The heat is too intense!"
"It's a cannon!" Isolde shouted. "It has a cooling cycle! Wait for the vent!"
The Antibody fired a continuous three-second beam. Then, a hiss of steam erupted from the metal plates on its back.
"Now!"
Julian sprinted from cover. He used the low gravity of the biological environment to leap high.
He landed on the creature's back.
The Antibody thrashed, trying to grab him with its claw.
Julian grabbed the cooling vent.
"You like heat?" Julian growled.
He activated his arm. Thermal Absorption.
He didn't add heat; he sucked it out.
He drained the residual heat from the cannon so fast that the metal contracted violently.
CRACK.
The barrel of the laser cannon snapped due to thermal stress.
The Antibody roared, swinging its claw. It knocked Julian off. He slammed into a wall of muscle.
"Finish it!" Julian yelled.
Zephyr and Skid combined attacks. Zephyr created a vacuum bubble around the creature's head. Skid threw a scavenged plasma grenade into the bubble.
BOOM.
The vacuum contained the explosion, amplifying the force. The Antibody's head—a mix of flesh and cockpit glass—shattered.
The massive construct collapsed, blocking the path forward.
The Inner Sanctum
They climbed over the dead guardian.
Beyond the cavern, the tunnel narrowed. The air became thick, electric. The whispering voices merged into a single, deafening tone.
They reached the Heart.
It wasn't an organ.
It was a Gate.
In the center of the spherical chamber, suspended in a web of neurons, was a tear in reality. A rift in space-time, bleeding pure purple light.
And standing in front of the rift was the Brain.
It was a humanoid figure. Not a monster. A perfect, beautiful woman made of white light and purple energy. She had no face, only a blank surface that reflected the viewer's greatest fear.
She floated above the ground, her arms spread wide.
"Welcome," she spoke. Her voice was beautiful and terrifying. "I am the Herald. The Mother was just the vessel. I am the Dissonance."
She pointed to the rift behind her.
"The door is open. My brothers are coming. The stars will be silenced."
Julian stepped forward. His nanite arm was black, dead. He had used the last of his charge on the Antibody.
"We closed the door once," Julian said. "We'll close it again."
"With what?" The Herald laughed. "Your machine is dead. Your brother is dead. You have nothing but rust and bone."
She waved her hand.
The reality in the room shifted.
Gravity reversed. The floor became the ceiling. Julian fell upward, slamming into the neuron web.
"I control the laws here," the Herald whispered. "Physics is a habit I have broken."
She raised a finger.
UNMAKE.
Julian felt his body begin to dissolve. His skin turned to dust. His coat frayed.
"Julian!" Lyra tried to run to him, but the floor turned to liquid, trapping her.
"It is over," the Herald smiled. "Entropy wins."
Suddenly, a sound cut through the room.
Tick... Tock.
A slow, heavy, mechanical rhythm.
The Herald froze.
"What is that?"
Julian looked up. He smiled, his face half-dust.
"That," Julian whispered. "Is a timer."
Above the crash site, in the sky, Titan 00 (Chronos-Keeper) had moved into position.
It wasn't firing a beam.
It was Dropping.