The streets of the shipping sector were a blur of wet asphalt and screaming sirens as the West Corp transport tore after the white van. Elizabeth was at the helm, her jaw set in a lethal line, while Avan and Leon prepped their combat systems in the back.
But in the center of the cabin, Laura was a ghost. She sat huddled in her seat, her breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches. Every time she closed her eyes, she didn't see the road—she saw Victoria’s milky white eyes and the shivering, mechanical motion of her hand.
"Austin, keep that satellite lock!" Elizabeth roared over the comms. "Don't let that van out of your sight!"
The Interior of the Void
Inside the van, the world was silent except for the low, rhythmic thrum of the obsidian emitters. The air was thick with incense and the cold, metallic scent of the "Frequency."
Victoria Vega sat on the floor of the moving vehicle, her nude, athletic body swaying with the motion of the turns. She wasn't fighting the swaying; she was part of it. Her fingers were a frantic, rhythmic blur against her skin, following the "Correction" tempo with a shivering, super-powered precision.
Her radiant, vacant smile was fixed, her head tilted back against the padded wall.
"The temple is empty," Victoria droned, her voice a hollow, melodic chime that vibrated through the van's metal frame. "The Master is the only voice. My truth is the silence. I am happy to be a doll..."
She wasn't a girl anymore. She was a biological battery, her forced, synthetic pleasure being harvested by the cultists sitting across from her. They watched her with a hungry, religious fervor as the violet light of her Cybergem—buried deep in her subconscious—began to turn a sickly, bruised black.
"The resonance is peaking," the lead cultist whispered, checking a handheld monitor. "The Legend is broken. The Void is hungry."
The Shipping Sector Breach
The van screeched to a halt inside a massive, hollowed-out warehouse at the edge of the docks. Before the dust could even settle, the West Corp transport smashed through the corrugated metal doors.
"FREEZE!" Elizabeth surged out, her bow notched with a triple-pulse arrow.
Avan blurred into a streak of blue lightning, circling the van to cut off any exit, while Leon raised his hands, drawing the moisture from the humid bay air into a rotating shield of high-pressure water.
"Give her back!" Laura screamed, finally finding her voice, her armor snapping into Overdrive as she landed in a combat crouch.
The back doors of the van slowly creaked open.
The Awakening of Dementra
Victoria didn't fall out. She drifted.
She stepped onto the concrete floor, completely nude, her skin glowing with a faint, translucent violet light that made the air around her frost. Her eyes weren't just white anymore—they were emitting a cold, blinding radiation that pushed back the warehouse shadows.
She stopped her hand. She stopped her mantra. She stood perfectly still, looking at her former teammates with a gaze that felt like a billion years of cold stars.
"Victoria?" Leon whispered, his water-shield wavering.
"Victoria is... evicted," the thing wearing her skin spoke. The voice was a jagged layer of whispers, sounding like a thousand dying souls screaming at once. "The Reboot was a mistake. I have come to correct the timeline."
"ENGAGE!" Elizabeth roared.
She fired. The arrows turned to fine gray ash six inches from Victoria’s face. Leon sent a massive pillar of water toward her, but with a flick of her finger, Dementra-Victoria turned the liquid into jagged shards of black ice, sending them flying back with a force that pinned Leon to the wall.
Avan blurred toward her back for a neural-shock strike, but Dementra didn't even turn around. She reached back with a speed that defied physics, catching the fastest man alive by the throat mid-dash.
The lightning in Avan’s armor flickered and died as she drained the energy directly into her palm. She tossed him aside like a broken toy.
"You move with the speed of a dying spark," Dementra-Victoria intoned, her gaze turning toward the trembling Laura. "Do you want to feel that peace again, Laura Dawson? Do you want to stop fighting and return to the silence of the Gallery?"
Laura fell back, her Cybergem screaming a warning as the God-Queen of the Void took her first step toward the new world.53Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHL9cHf53O9
and then Add to home screen.