A high-pitched whine was the first thing to pierce the black. Then, a sharp sting at her neck, like the bite of a chrome hornet. The drug hit her system not like a gentle stimulant, but like a lightning strike.
A jolt of white-hot current seared through her veins, rebooting her consciousness with brutal efficiency. Her eyes snapped open, pupils dilating against a sudden, blinding light.
She was in a chair, unbound, in the center of the vast, terrifying cathedral of power. The air hummed with a low, oppressive frequency.
Beside her, Jacqui jerked violently as Dr. Wang administered the same ruby-red cocktail. Jacqui gasped, her breathing a frantic, ragged fight for air, her eyes wide with the raw, animal terror of a creature waking up in a predator's den.
In a fit of panic, she tried to stand, her muscle memory screaming for limbs that were no longer there. She collapsed in a heap on the pristine, mirror-like floor, a tangle of flesh and fury that wouldn't obey. She looked down at herself, at the cauterized, empty space where her cybernetic leg and arm used to be, and a guttural, wounded sound escaped her lips.
From one of the six grotesque thrones, a high-pitched, childish chuckle echoed through the hall, a sound like tiny glass bells shattering. Ella was enjoying the show.
On pure, unthinking instinct, Ethicca lunged forward, hooking her arms under Jacqui's and hauling her unceremoniously back onto the chair. As Ethicca came out of her daze, the full weight of the scene hit her.
The six thrones, each a monument to a specific sin.
Her own knees buckled. She plopped back into her seat, a marionette with its strings cut.
Beside her, she saw Jimmy, still tied to his chair, his screen-face dark.
His screen flickered to life, displaying a pixelated ninja hiding behind a bush. "Yo, E," his synth-voice was a distorted, conspiratorial whisper. "Shhh. Don't move. Play dead. If you don't show up on their thermal, maybe they'll think we're just part of the furniture."
A sound like dry leaves skittering across ancient parchment echoed through the chamber, amplified to an unnerving volume. Moros was laughing.
"Humor," his chorus of voices rasped from his central, primary face. "A fascinating, inefficient human coping mechanism for confronting the inevitable." His neck twisted with a series of sharp, mechanical clicks, a sickening one-hundred-and-eighty-degree swivel that brought his left-hand face to the forefront.
Ethicca looked from them back to Moros.
The new face's eyes were lifeless, glazed over, yet they glowed with a soft crimson halo that seemed to suck the warmth from the air.
This was not Moros speaking now.
"We… have no need for flawed, imperfect augmentation in our Church," the voice that came from Moros was not his own. It was a single, powerful, ancient voice—the voice of the Hierophant, a god in the machine, channeled through its servant. Its gaze fell upon Jacqui. "Your parts were a product of desperation. Street-tech. Unclean. An insult to the perfection of the synthesis."
The Hierophant's gaze then shifted to Ethicca. "It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Ethicca Psylux. We have been watching you. All of you. Your struggles have been… amusing."
Jacqui's head hung low, but a vein throbbed in her temple. Her grief and rage finally boiled over, cutting the Hierophant off.
"None of this makes any sense!" she screamed, her voice cracking with pain and fury. She shot a look of pure, undiluted hatred at Rose, who sat on her throne, a satisfied, poisonous smirk on her perfect face.
"You murder my parents through that… that witch! You try to kill us! And now you say you need us?! What the fuck do you want?!" She slammed her remaining fist onto the arm of her chair, tears of rage streaming down her face.
The outburst was met not with anger, but with a wave of condescending amusement from the Sentinels.
"Pathetic," Aurelian murmured to himself, the sound barely a whisper. "Such a vulgar display. She has no Pride.
"I like this one!" hissed a voice from the throne of scrap and stolen tech. Silas, the Sentinel of Greed, hunched over, his multi-limbed body a twitching nightmare of mismatched parts. He looked at Jacqui with a dozen different stolen optics, all glowing with avarice. He then turned his head to an empty spot on his shoulder. "Undoubtedly, Magpie, we must have her! Such passion! Such exquisite defiance to collect!" His other, primary consciousness answered in a higher, more frantic tone. "Yes, yes, Silas, we must! We must have her!" He rubbed his six mismatched, cybernetic hands together, his patchwork face leaking tears of blissful avarice. The tears, a strange electrolytic fluid, sizzled and evaporated as they ran down the seams of the stitched-together flesh on his face.
Echo shot him a look of utter disgust, physically recoiling.
As if its connection was severed, Moros's head slumped forward. Instantly, Jimmy's body began to twitch and glitch violently. The pixelated ninja on his screen was replaced by a new symbol—a shimmering, golden Omega intertwined with an Ouroboros. He stood up, the chains binding him shattering as if they were made of glass. He began to pace, his movements no longer clumsy but filled with an ancient, terrifying grace.
"Jacqueline," Jimmy's voice was now the Hierophant's, distorted and layered. "Your family created an error. A flaw. An Envy that festered. A debt was owed, and they paid it with their lives. They were not destroyed; they were liberated."
He circled them, the golden symbol on his face pulsing with an otherworldly light. He pointed to it.
"Grieve not. Their consciousness was… assimilated. They are now immortal, within the great synthesis." He knelt before Jacqui, his boxy hand reaching for hers. "What if I told you I could bring them back?"
"Impossible!" Jacqui spat, snatching her hand away. Because once you were dead without augmented backup that was it for you, Game over. And she knew her parents were pure.
He stood, moving to stand behind Ethicca's chair, his hands resting on her shoulders.
"What if We told you We could bring back everyone who has ever lived… and that she is the key?" He leaned in close to Jacqui, the glowing symbol on his face blinding her.
"We are creating a new race. The Synths." Jimmy's body suddenly deactivated, collapsing in a heap.
Moros's head snapped up, his face now animated with a manic, malevolent energy, a wide, unnatural grin splitting his synthetic lips. "A race that never knows death!" he rasped. "Where AI becomes human and humans gain immortality by embracing cybernetic bodies! My Sentinels are the first success! Immortal! But she," he whipped a cabled arm toward Ethicca, the limb cracking and reforming at the elbow, "she will be our masterpiece! Project Alpha! The first true AI-to-human consciousness synthesis! A pure, untainted vessel!"
Moros's head twisted back to the central face, his demeanor shifting back to the tired Watcher. "I hope you understand the Hierophant's intent. Dr. Wang, you may proceed. Test the subject's purity."
Jimmy's body rebooted. He stood up, shaking his box-head. "Ay, dios mio. I feel so… violated."
"Enough!" Ethicca's voice, sharp and clear, cut through the room. She shot up from her chair. "I've been quiet long enough. What makes you think I'll agree to any of this?" In a swift, desperate motion, she grabbed Jimmy's arm and wrapped it around her own neck. "You want me so bad? You think I'm so precious?"
Her eyes were wild, filled with a crazed, cornered-animal fire. She looked at Jimmy and nodded. His grip tightened, lifting her onto the tips of her toes.
"¡Oye, vatos!" Jimmy's voice was his own again, filled with frantic energy. "Anybody moves, and I snap her neck like a stale churro! Don't test me!"
And then, everything stopped.
The air solidified into glass. The hum of the Spire ceased. Moros's floating hair froze mid-wave. The Sentinels were perfect, grotesque statues. The only thing in the entire universe that moved was Ethicca, her heart hammering against her ribs.
A slow, deliberate clap echoed from one of the thrones, the sound impossibly loud in the dead silence. "Bravo," a melodic voice purred. "Truly, a magnificent display of desperation."
A figure rose from its throne and approached, moving through the frozen scene as if walking through a still photograph.
It moved with a silent, liquid grace, its form androgynous and ethereal, its skin laced with shifting fiber-optic patterns that shimmered like a heat haze.
It reached Ethicca, and with a touch that felt both impossibly gentle and irresistibly strong, it pried Jimmy's frozen metal fingers from her neck.
Ethicca dropped to the floor, gasping, looking around at the frozen tableau of her own failed gambit. She scrambled back to her feet, her terror giving way to a final, futile burst of defiance.
"Whatever you did, I'm not afraid of you!" she yelled, raising her fists, her body trembling uncontrollably.
The figure smiled, a gentle, pitying expression on its beautiful, ever-shifting face. It extended a graceful hand, not to attack, but in offering.
"Every soul has a price, little one. A desire so deep it eclipses all reason. A pain so profound it would trade the world for a moment's peace."
The figure's voice was a symphony of seduction and promise, a sound that bypassed her ears and resonated directly in the most secret, vulnerable corners of her heart.
"So tell me, Ethicca Psylux. What is your deepest, most desperate desire? Because I am prepared to offer you a deal you cannot possibly refuse."
The figure leaned closer, its iridescent eyes seeming to contain swirling nebulae.
"My name is Echo. I am the Sentinel of Lust."