Chapter 17

I replayed the data cube we'd found in the Complex—the one by Nazrek.

There was no mistaking it.

It lacked the venom, but the cadence was the same. It was him. The Entity.

I was willing to bet he'd tried to hijack the fusion process, to overwrite the others—to become the Genesis Prime himself.

But it hadn't worked.

Five men and one woman, minds and egos crushed into a singularity—and still, she emerged.

She looked like Aviel, but she wasn't arrogant or narcissistic.

Given that mix, you'd think the result would've been male—yet she was unequivocally female.

Had Nazrek's meddling siphoned off the aggression? The volatility?

Was that why so many Eldan records dripped with malice—because he took all their worst traits with him?

He'd expected to possess the Genesis Prime's body.

And even now, he was still trying to steal it from Drusera.

He'd only ever appeared to me as a projection.

It made me wonder if he even had a body of his own.

That he'd stolen a piece of her power was obvious.

And he used it the way he used everything else—with violence, cruelty, and fear.

She wasn't weak. She was kind.

And he'd convinced her that kindness meant powerlessness.

But she'd imprisoned him.

For a thousand years, she'd held the line.

She wasn't weak.

She was bullied.

And I was going to be the last person who ever let that happen to her.

I glanced over to where Drusera was floating by the media unit—and immediately rolled my eyes.

She was watching my old treeporn videos again.

With all the gravity of an anthropologist studying ancient mating rituals.

I facepalmed silently.

"Drusera," I sighed, "that one was literally called 'Rootbound Desires.' It's not a cultural artifact."

She turned to look at me, utterly serious. "But the visual symbolism is quite striking. The intertwining branches clearly represent the unification of personal and communal identity."

I stared at her.

"...You're watching treeporn like it's a documentary of sacred mating rituals?"

She blinked. "Is it not?"

I groaned and flopped onto the couch. "Sweetheart, I was naked, not metaphorical."

She floated closer, holding the viewer like it was some ancient scroll.

"I especially liked the part where you balanced in the canopy. That seemed... difficult."

I had to strain really hard not to throw a pillow at her.

A knock came at the door of our tiny utility shelter, followed by Blok's gravelly voice.

"Yo, Val. Commander wants to see us."

I blinked. We'd wrapped the mission yesterday. As far as I knew, we were just waiting on our ride home.

I grumbled as I got up, digging my tunic out from under the bed—where it had mysteriously ended up last night. Gods, how I wished I could just materialize my clothes like Drusera.

Drusera floated nearby, still immaculate and serene, like she hadn't just spent the night doing thoroughly indecent things to my tail.

Blok was already waiting when I stepped outside, arms crossed, boots planted like the world might try to shift without his permission. Lucy stood nearby, sipping what looked like the camp's interpretation of coffee—so basically. caffeinated tar.

"You look like hell," Lucy said, raising an eyebrow.

"Blame Drusera," I muttered, tugging my tunic into something vaguely resembling military protocol. "And maybe the berry wine."

"She still watching your old vids?" Blok asked, sounding somewhere between amused and horrified.

"She thinks they're cultural documents." I sighed. "I'm gonna need a long talk with the Council about Aurin media preservation standards."

Drusera floated out a moment later, serene and radiant as ever, like she hadn't been caught dissecting my old treeporn with academic reverence.

Blok gave her a nod, clearly still unsure whether to salute or offer her a maintenance contract.

The commander was waiting for us near the comms tent, arms behind his back, expression pinched. He didn't waste time.

"We got problems people. Readings from inside The Grimvault just showed a spike in the technophage infection rate, and a massive increase in core activity. Something down below is waking up."

Drusera looked down towards the center of the vault. "Oh no, He has invaded the Technocore. If he corrupts it, he will control every mechanical on Nexus!"

Blok froze mid-scan. "Please tell me she's exaggerating."

Lucy didn't even look up from her datapad. "Nope. Core's humming like a Mordesh heart after five espressos and a lightning strike."

I leaned over the terminal, eyes narrowing at the pulsing red flare deep within Grimvault's map overlay. It was right at the Technocore's center—Nexus's deepest, most complex network of connected systems. Infrastructure, automation, security. Everything.

"If he gets full control of that…" I trailed off.

Drusera finished for me, her voice taut with dread. "He will be able to reshape the entire planetary system. Strain-infected constructs. Defense turrets turned against us. He could corrupt the very code that stabilizes Nexus's crust."

Blok grunted. "So, end-of-the-world again. Third time this month."

"Fourth," Lucy corrected. "Don't forget the bioresonance cascade in Whitevale."

I slammed the console shut. "Enough chatter. We're going in."

Drusera nodded, her eyes glowing with grim resolve. "We must descend to the Core. I can guide us… but the deeper we go, the stronger His influence will be."

Blok powered up his launcher. "Good. I've been meaning to punch something existential."

Lucy tapped a new stim into her arm. "And I've got experimental meds for resisting mind warping. Side effects include dizziness, sarcasm, and spontaneous honesty."

I spun my pistols, chambering live rounds. "Then let's get moving. Before he rewrites the entire planet into his personal horror show."

Drusera raised her hand, and a swirling field of pure logic and light wrapped around us— protection, guidance, and warning all at once.

"He is afraid," she whispered.

"Then let's give him a damn good reason to be," I growled.

And with that, Team Dumb Bunny, Chaos Goddess, and Friends plunged into the heart of the machine.

I knew what he was doing. He hadn't listened when I'd told him that disliking and fearing were not the same thing.

He thought I'd be scared of some robots.

Time to show him how wrong he was.

I twirled my pistols, letting them hum with just enough charge to crackle. The sharp scent of ozone filled the air as I stepped forward—boots clicking with the kind of confidence you only earn after fighting apex predators, murdering your own clone, and causing an interspecies scandal at a diplomatic event.

"I don't fear machines," I said, voice low and sweet as poison. "I've dated worse."

Drusera hovered behind me, circuits flaring like starlight. "He underestimates you. Again."

"Good," I said. "Let him. Makes the look on his face so much better when I win."

Blok's voice held a hint of exasperation as he noted. "Uh, not to interrupt the mood, but we've got security constructs booting up all over the lower tiers."

"Good," I purred, stepping through the door into the darkened corridor. "Let them come."

My tail flicked. My pistols glowed.

Let the Entity see exactly what happens when he tries to scare a dumb bunny.

As we reached the bottom of the long twisting maze, we came out into a vast complex. In front of us, six columns of Eldan technology spat lightning at a glowing globe. I motioned to it with my gun. "That the Technocore?"

Drusera shook her head. "It is merely a routing device. The technocore is much harder to get to. It exist in a dimension of pure data. It both exists and does not exist at the same time. It is a paradox created by Vorion. A virtual singularity able to store and process all the data flowing through Nexus's network."

As we stepped past the crackling columns, the air changed.

It wasn't just colder—it was wrong. Reality hiccuped. My ears twitched, trying to process sounds that didn't exist. My eyes kept trying to focus on shapes that weren't quite there. Every step forward felt like wading through someone else's dream.

Drusera floated beside me, circuits dimmed but steady. "We are near the threshold."

"Of what?" Lucy asked, frowning as her scanner glitched for the third time.

"The interface node," Drusera said. "The border of the paradox."

I blinked. "You mean we're about to enter… the not-real-real-place?"

"Yes," Drusera said seriously. "That is a surprisingly accurate way of phrasing it."

Blok grunted. "Well, shit."

The room around us shimmered—columns of code bleeding into stone, metal turning to glass, and back again. At the center, the globe pulsed with violet light, like it was breathing. Every pulse made my skin crawl.

Drusera extended her hand. "I can guide you inside. But only mentally. The Technocore cannot be physically entered. Our bodies will remain here… inert."

"Wait," I said, ears flicking. "We're jacking into a data singularity while our meat suits just lie around, hoping no one stabs them?"

"Correct."

Blok loaded a round into his biggest gun. "Okay. Now I'm scared."

"Good," I muttered. "Means you're finally paying attention."

Blok's bots glanced at each other, then at us. The flirty one let out a defiant series of beeps and immediately switched into auto-turret mode. A moment later, the other followed suit with a resolute chirp.

"They say," Blok said dryly, "they'll let no one lay a finger on us."

I stared at them, amused. I'd seen entire platoons less committed to duty than those two.

"Best damn pair of autoturrets on Nexus," I murmured.

Then Drusera reached out—touching my forehead, then Lucy's, then Blok's.

And the world disappeared.

[Inside the Technocore]

We landed in a space made of pure contradiction.

A sky of hexagons. A ground of rotating logic gates. Mountains composed of glitching architectural blueprints. Data flowed like rivers, except it moved upward, vanishing into vanishing points that blinked in and out of existence.

"Oh, hell no," Blok muttered, floating beside me in full armor. "This is why I hate Eldan tech. It looks like someone crashed a server into a hallucination."

Lucy winced, holding her head. "The quantum logic here is recursive. It's running on a language that doesn't exist—it's inventing one in real time."

I looked over at Drusera. Her glow was fierce now, golden filigree burning through the blue.

"That's the Avatus security protocol. Vorion created it to secure the Eldan's data. In the normal world, you know it as the Red Caretaker."

Lucy muttered "Oh, shit."

"Do not worry. He is incapable of operating on this level of the datasphere. It is the Entity we must deal with."

"He's here, isn't he?"

A low chuckle echoed from everywhere and nowhere.

"Yes."

The voice coiled through the air, oily and smug. A familiar cadence now—Nazrek's voice, but twisted. Wound tight with a thousand egos screaming for control.

"She was meant to be me, you know."

A figure emerged from the code fog—an abstract silhouette of shifting Eldan forms. Glimpses of Nazrek. Flashes of Joriel. Fragments of Ionis. Faces blurred and flickering. A fractured god trying to become whole. The one constant feature, the arc of glowing purple eyes.

"You are intruding on my ascension. But no matter. You will join the code soon enough."

"Oh, I've got code for you," I snarled, drawing my pistols.

Drusera's voice was steel. "You do not belong here. This is my network."

He lunged—and the fight began not with fists, but with logic. Weapons formed out of data. Thought. Memory.

I'd never fought using willpower before.

But for Drusera?

I'd burn the whole damn simulation to the ground.

As I dodged and whirled through glowing streams of data. I didn't have a clue what my guns were actually shooting, but they were able to deflect the never ending series of attacks. Beside me, Blok cycled through his arsenal looking for what was most effective.. Lucy danced around the edges of the fight using her scanners to try and comprehend the datascape and find a weakness.

And Drusera. She cowered behind me, utterly terrified.

It broke something in me to see her like that.

Not because I blamed her. No—never that.

But because I'd never seen her afraid before.

Not like this.

Not the Goddess. Not the Genesis Prime.

Just Drusera. Alone and shivering in the shadow of her own stolen mind.

She clung to the edge of the dataspace, curled in on herself, her glow flickering erratically.

Her circuits pulsed like a heartbeat gone wrong—glitching, stuttering, frantic. Every time the Entity's laugh echoed through this impossible world, she flinched like it physically hurt her.

"Drusera!" I shouted, even as I spun, twin pistols blazing—pure intuition firing bolts of something that bent code around me like glass.

She didn't respond. Her eyes were wide and glassy, staring straight through the chaos.

"She remembers," the Entity cooed from nowhere. From everywhere.

"This is where I was born. This is where I grew strong. This place loves me, Drusera. It was never yours."

I could feel him pressing against the edges of my thoughts, trying to snake his way in. My fingers clenched on the grips of my pistols.

"Back the fuck off," I hissed. "She's not yours."

Blok lobbed some kind of data grenade—it exploded into a geometric storm of collapsing hexes and green light. "Bunny, we need a weakness, yesterday!"

"I'm working on it!" Lucy called, one eye on her scanner, the other on the Entity's shifting form. "He's not just code. He's recursive, just like the Caretaker!. His defenses adapt every time we change tactics—"

"English, Lucy!" I ducked a pulse of razor-edged code that sliced through a floating construct behind me.

"WE'RE SCREWED!"

Got it.

I backflipped off a platform that hadn't been there a second ago, landing hard and rolling up beside Drusera. Her light dimmed as the next wave of the Entity's presence rolled over us.

"Sweetheart," I said, crouching beside her, "you gotta breathe. I know you don't need to, but pretend."

Her eyes flicked to me, flickering between blue and violet.

"I can't," she whispered. "He's everywhere. I feel him in the walls. In the memory threads. He's inside me, Valya."

I grabbed her face, made her look at me. "And I am right here." Her circuits sparked under my fingers.

"He hurt you. He broke you. But you're not alone anymore. I've got you."

She trembled. "He's stronger here."

"Then we take that strength and make it his goddamn funeral pyre."

I leaned in, my forehead against hers, voice steady despite the storm around us.

"You're not his. You're not a mistake. You are Drusera—and you taught me what it means to matter. Now it's your turn. Show him what you are." Her glow pulsed.

Once.

Twice.

Then gold, brighter than ever before, rippled out from her in a perfect sphere of light that bent the data reality around us.

The Entity screamed.

Blok blinked. "Well. Shit. She just rebooted the firewall, with feelings."

Lucy's scanner flatlined. "She just hit his vulnerability. Valya, whatever you did—do it again!"

I held onto Drusera's hand like it was the last anchor in the world.

"You've got this. You've always had this."

She stood, floating upward, expression hardening into something divine.

And this time, she didn't cower.

She glowed.

Her blue shifted entirely to gold as a pulse of pure power broke away from her. It expanded outwards and the madness stilled.

"Leave me alone!"

Her cry was plaintive, half a sob, half a wail, a scream born of her emotional turmoil, but it worked. As the wave of power washed over The Entity, he vanished.

Peace returned to the dataspace.

And Drusera fainted.

I caught her before she hit the ground—or, whatever passed for ground in a world made of light and memory.

She was weightless in my arms, circuits dimmed to a gentle amber flicker, like the last candle after a storm.

"Drusera?" I whispered, gently stroking her head through the cowl. "Hey. C'mon. Say something." Nothing.

Her breathing was slow. Peaceful. Her form stable—but so still. Whatever that pulse was, it came from somewhere deep. Somewhere raw. She'd held it back for so long… and when it finally came out, it shattered everything in its path—including her strength.

Blok knelt beside me, visor scanning her. "Vitals look steady. Whatever that was, it knocked her out cold."

Lucy double-checked the scanner readings with a frown. "She's not injured, but her neural pathways are cycling through recovery mode. She overloaded herself emotionally and psychically."

"She saved us," I murmured. "And it broke her heart to do it."

All around us, the dataspace shimmered in stillness. The noise was gone. The chaos silenced. The Entity had recoiled—been driven out.

Not destroyed. Not yet. But denied.

I looked down at her sleeping face, serene now, lips parted in exhausted peace.

"She did it," I said. "She finally said no."

Blok grunted softly. "Then let's make damn sure it sticks."

Lucy nodded. "We've got what we came for. Time to get her home."

I wrapped my arms tighter around Drusera, feeling the soft pulse of her light slowly syncing to my own breath.

He thought she'd always cower before him.

He didn't count on the dumb bunny who taught a goddess how to scream.

Several minutes later,Drusera jolted upright in my arms like she'd been struck by lightning. Her circuits flared bright gold for a second before fading into a panicked blue.

"Oh no!"

"Hey—hey, it's okay, sweetie." I held her tighter, bracing her. "You did it. He's gone."

She shook her head, wide-eyed. "No… no, he's not. He's released a World Destroyer on the surface!"

The words hit me like a punch to the gut.

"Oh, shit."

Blok was already moving, voice grim. "Please tell me that's just a dramatic name."

"It's not," I said, hauling Drusera to her feet as gently as I could. "That's one of those hundred-foot nightmare bots. Exanite chassis. Primal warhead payloads. Built to make entire continents shut up and stay down."

Lucy paled. "Damn near indestructible."

"Not indestructible," I corrected. "Just... extremely opinionated about it. I helped take one down in Algoroc."

"And I had to patch you up after, you reckless rabbit," Lucy grumbled.

Drusera leaned against me, still shaken but focused. "He released it out of spite. For you."

"Then it's our job to stop it," I said, jaw set. "We've got your back, remember?"

Lucy cracked her knuckles, resigned. "This day just keeps getting better."

I looked at Drusera. "Can you travel?"

She straightened, circuits flaring just a little stronger.

"I can fight."

That was all I needed to hear.

I checked my pistols.

"Alright, Bunny Squad. Time to put down a walking apocalypse."

Blok grunted. "You say that like we've done it before."

I grinned. "Just another day in paradise."

Returning to our bodies felt like waking up from a vivid dream—disoriented, breathless, and more than a little sore. Thankfully, nothing had dropped by while we'd been busy fighting for the soul of Nexus in Dataspace. The little turrets had done good.

But one thing was definitely different from when we'd entered.

The ground shook.

A deep, rhythmic thud… thud… thud echoed through the facility, like some colossal heartbeat approaching.

Drusera's eyes snapped upward, tracking something at an angle none of us could see.

"The release silo has malfunctioned," she said. "It's stuck halfway open."

I blinked. "Just like the one in Algoroc."

I chambered a fresh power cell and grinned. "That'll make things a little easier."

Drusera nodded. "I… I will assist you."

"Don't push yourself, hun."

She gave me a soft smile—and then, without warning, she simply melted into me.

I will lend you my power, Beloved.

A portal opened before us, blazing with golden light—and beyond it, sunlight.

I stepped through and froze.

The massive robot loomed above us, one colossal leg still trapped in the half-open silo door, steam hissing from ruptured joints.

"Oh, shit."

Purple light pulsed through its conduits like a heartbeat. Twisted. Wrong.

It wasn't just active.

It was infected.

Technophage.

The mechanical version of the Strain.

I dodged aside just as its eye-beams scorched the spot where I'd been standing a second before, the ground hissing from the impact.

Blok and Lucy scrambled into position behind a crumbled barrier, setting up a makeshift mini-fort with cover and automated turrets. Meanwhile, I kept the damn thing's attention on me.

So long as I stayed out of arm's reach, I could manage its attacks—barely.

It was fast for something that big.

And pissed.

Then a beam arced up from its back, curving like a scythe over its head—and came crashing down on me.

It never landed.

A shimmering blue bubble flared to life around me, catching the blast with a resonant hum.

Thanks, hun.

I could feel Drusera's smile like a whisper against my mind—warm, proud, and just a little smug.

The giant mech and I played a deadly game of tag, each thunderous step shaking the ground beneath us. I ducked and rolled, its beam weapons missing me by inches as Blok's bots converted to turret mode, launching swarms of micro-missiles that hammered its joints with sharp, explosive rhythm.

Then Drusera's voice brushed my thoughts—steady, urgent.

Now.

I raised my arm, and blue lightning arced from my fingertips, dancing across the mech's surface like vengeful fire. The machine screamed—an awful, grinding metallic wail—as the energy tore through its corrupted systems.

Lucy, cool as ever under fire, honed in on exposed sensors with her resonators, pulsing precise bursts of interference into its targeting suite.

Then, with a wrenching groan, the mech tore its legs free—heedless of the shriek of rending metal as it ripped its own armor plating apart. Broken wires sparked, sizzling with exposed energy as it rose to its full height. Wounded. Furious. Mobile.

I swallowed hard as it braced to charge.

A golden field flashed across my mind—her memory, not mine—and I raised my hands, channeling the surge flowing through me.

She was lending me her power.

And this? This was one of the things she was best at.

A dozen exanite spears erupted from the earth, slamming into the mech's face and torso with brutal precision. It reeled but held, somehow managing a garbled, grinding laugh. "Joke's on you, motherfucker."

I snapped my fingers.

The spears detonated.

The mech staggered. Paused. Then its balance failed, and it crashed forward like a collapsing tower. Its shattered head rolled to a stop at my feet, hissing steam.

I grinned, cocky as ever. "Ya know, I could get used to this."

Drusera giggled in my mind, I am going to need that back, you know.

Then she was in my arms, weightless and warm, kissing me like the world hadn't just nearly ended.

Like I was the only thing that mattered.

And for a moment, maybe I was.

My head spun—not from the battle, not from the adrenaline—but from her. From the way her circuits glowed brighter against me, from the way her fingers tangled in my hair like she never wanted to let go.

When we finally broke apart, I was breathless.

"Wow," I said, blinking. "Was that a 'thanks for saving the world' kiss, or a 'nice explosion' kiss?"

She smiled, eyes aglow. "Yes."

Blok thudded to the ground cross-legged, his armor creaking as he sighed. "We don't get paid enough for this."

Lucy handed him a flask without looking. "Which? Giant robots or lovesick bunnies?"

"Both."

He took a long swig, grimaced, and passed it back. "You're lucky I like you, Lazarian."

"I'm lucky I haven't had to amputate you. Yet."

Behind them, one of Blok's bots beeped in protest, clearly offended it hadn't gotten a drink, too.

I leaned against Drusera, still feeling the faint echo of her power thrumming under my skin like a second heartbeat. "So. We good?"

"For now," she said, nuzzling against me with a smile that could have lit the moons.

"Until the next apocalyptic horror," Lucy muttered.

Blok raised the flask in mock salute. "Long live the bunny and the goddess. May their weirdness continue to haunt our paychecks."

I grinned. "Damn right. Now let's get the hell out of here before the next nightmare decides to spawn."