The Strider died screaming.
It had breached the great oak doors of the narthex, splintering wood that had cured for three centuries, before the Resonance Core finally suffocated under the weight of Kaelen's presence. The machine gave a shuddering, metallic cough and slumped forward. The blue light in the cockpit died, leaving them in the gloom of the vestibule.
Vesper kicked the hatch open.
Her boots hit the stone floor with a heavy, uncoordinated clatter. She scrambled up, slipped on the polished slate, and went down to one knee, her breath hissing through the grille of her helmet.
Kaelen dropped down beside her. He landed lightly, though the impact sent a fresh jolt of nausea through his irradiated gut. He grabbed the hatch frame to steady himself, his vision swimming with gray spots.
He looked around.
The Cathedral of Saint Harrow was not built for men. It was a cavern of quarried shadow, the ceiling lost in a haze of incense and height. Columns the width of redwoods rose into the dark, etched with the names of martyrs. The air was cool and still, smelling of beeswax, old paper, and the copper tang of a silence so deep it felt like pressure.
The Static was gone.
The oppressive, drilling noise of the Consensus that had plagued Kaelen since birth simply vanished. The walls were lined with lead and basalt—Pre-Somatic shielding disguised as architecture. For the first time in twenty years, Kaelen's head was empty.
He took a deep breath. It felt like drinking ice water.
"Move," Vesper rasped.
Kaelen looked down. The Anvil was trembling. She gripped the edge of a holy water font to pull herself up. The stone cracked under her gauntlet. She wasn't injured from the crash. She was convulsing.
"The field," Kaelen said.
"Inside... it is concentrated," Vesper gritted out. She stood, swaying like a drunkard. "The air demands honesty. My physiology... resists."
She took a step. Her leg jerked, as if a nerve had been severed. She forced the foot down, the metal of her greave scraping sparks against the stone.
"We have five minutes before the Choir recovers the harmony," she said. "The Vault is in the apse. Behind the altar."
She began to walk. It was a grotesque parody of her usual stride. Every step looked like she was wading through waist deep mercury. Kaelen followed. He felt nothing but the dull ache of his own dying cells. To the Truth-Field, he was a non-entity. A zero. You cannot force the truth out of a vacuum.
The Nave
They moved into the nave. The space opened up, a canyon of gray stone. The floor was tiled in black and white marble, arranged in a spiraling geometric pattern that drew the eye toward the distant altar.
"Stay on the white," Vesper warned. Her voice was thin. "The black tiles are... memory."
She stepped onto a white slab. Then another. She was sweating now; condensation dripped from the chin of her helmet. Kaelen looked at the floor. It wasn't magic. It was a conductible lattice. The black tiles were likely laced with mnemo-quartz, tuned to the neural frequency of the faithful. A feedback loop for guilt.
"It's a circuit," Kaelen said. "Don't complete it."
"Shut up," Vesper hissed.
She lunged for the next white tile. She missed. Her heel clipped the edge of a black slab.
Vesper froze.
She didn't stumble. She went rigid, as if struck by lightning. Her back arched, the hydraulic pistons in her armor whining as her muscles locked against them.
"No," she whispered. It was a small, broken sound.
Kaelen stopped. He looked at her. Vesper wasn't seeing the church. She was staring at the empty air, her hand reaching out to grab something that wasn't there.
"I didn't know," she pleaded to the silence. "He was... he was just a boy."
Kaelen stepped closer. He felt nothing. The tile was just cold stone under his boot.
"Vesper," he said.
"The bone," she murmured, her voice rising in panic. "I can hear the bone."
She fell to her knees on the black tile. She began to claw at her helmet, trying to tear it off. The trap was frying her amygdala. She was reliving her worst sin, amplified by the ambient energy of the building.
Kaelen looked at the distant altar. Then back at the door. Logic dictated he leave her. She was compromised. She was heavy. She was the enemy. He looked at her hands. They were scraping against the ceramic composite of her helm, desperate to let the noise out.
"Inefficient," Kaelen muttered.
He stepped onto the black tile. He grabbed the handle of the hydraulic rig on her back.
"Get up."
She didn't move. She was dead weight, six feet of armor and muscle locked in a nightmare. Kaelen gritted his teeth. He planted his feet. He didn't have the strength to lift her. The radiation sickness had eaten his reserves. He jammed his shoulder under her armpit and drove upward.
"Physics, Vesper!" he shouted, his voice echoing in the vast emptiness. "Mass moves when force is applied! Move!"
Vesper screamed—a raw, tearing sound. Kaelen heaved. His boots slipped on the marble. He felt a stitch tear in his side, a hot line of pain that nearly doubled him over. She shifted. Just an inch. He pulled again, dragging her backward.
They tumbled off the black tile and onto the white.
Vesper gasped, sucking in air as if she had just surfaced from deep water. She slumped against Kaelen, her weight driving him into the floor. For a moment, there was only the sound of their breathing and the distant, confused shouting of monks outside.
Vesper lay still. The tremors slowly faded. She turned her head. The visor was opaque, but Kaelen could feel the stare.
"You saw nothing," she whispered. The threat was weak, trembling.
"I saw a floor," Kaelen said. He pushed her off him and stood up, wiping dust from his coat. His hands were shaking. He hid them in his pockets. "We're wasting time."
The Vault
The altar was a slab of meteorite iron, rough and pitted. Behind it, the wall of the apse was dominated by a circular door. It was three meters wide, made of seamless Marrow-Glass. It glowed with a faint, violet luminescence.
There was no keyhole. Only a hand scanner set into a pedestal of gold. Vesper limped to the pedestal. She stripped off her gauntlet. Her hand was pale, covered in old scars. She pressed her palm to the glass.
BZZZT.
The light in the door turned angry red.
[ ACCESS REVOKED. PURGE PROTOCOL ACTIVE. ]
Vesper stared at the text. She didn't look surprised. She looked resigned.
"They cut me off," she said softly. "I'm excommunicated."
"Try the hammer," Kaelen suggested. He leaned against the altar, fighting the urge to vomit.
Vesper looked at the glass. She put her gauntlet back on. She unslung the hammer. She didn't hesitate. She swung with everything she had left.
CLANG.
The sound was deafening. But the door didn't crack. It didn't even scratch. The violet light pulsed brighter. The kinetic energy of the blow rippled through the glass like a stone dropped in a pond, then vanished.
"Absorption," Kaelen noted. "It converts kinetic output into light. You can't hit it hard enough. You're just charging the battery."
Vesper lowered the hammer. She leaned against the wall, sliding down until she was sitting. "Then we are dead. The Choir will be here in two minutes."
Kaelen stepped up to the door. He placed his ear against the cold glass.
Hummmmm.
It was faint, but it was there. A standing wave. The glass was vibrating at a specific frequency to maintain its molecular lattice.
"It's not magic," Kaelen whispered. "It's a tuning fork."
He pulled out his wrist-terminal. He pulled the wire lead from the side.
"What are you doing?" Vesper asked.
"Singing," Kaelen said.
He jammed the wire lead into the seam between the glass and the stone frame. He tapped the keys on his terminal, searching for the tone. He found it. Screech. The glass shivered.
"Hit it," Kaelen ordered. "Rhythmically. Create a bass line. I'll take the treble."
Vesper stood up. She swung the hammer. Thud. The glass pulsed violet. Kaelen adjusted the dial on his terminal. He found the new frequency.
Thud.
Screech.
Thud.
Screech.
The door began to groan. The violet light turned erratic. The harmony was breaking. The molecular lattice couldn't decide if it was solid or energy. The terminal in Kaelen's hand began to smoke.
"Keep going!" Kaelen shouted.
Vesper roared, swinging the hammer in a brutal cadence.
CRACK.
A spiderweb fracture appeared in the center of the door.
"Now!"
Vesper swung one last time. CRASH. The glass gave up. It turned into a cloud of violet dust that smelled of ozone.
The Revelation
The vault was small. It wasn't a treasury. It was a library.
Rows of metal shelves lined the walls, packed with books bound in synthetic polymer. Kaelen walked in. He scanned the spines. Thermodynamics. Orbital Mechanics. Cellular Biology.
"Pre-Deity Physics," he whispered.
He found it on a central podium. It was a thick manual, bound in blue plastic. The title was stamped in silver foil: COLONY SHIP 'AEGIS' – MAINTENANCE LOG & OPERATING MANUAL.
Kaelen's hands shook as he reached for it. This was the instruction book for God. He grabbed it. It was heavy. Real.
"We have it," he said, turning to Vesper.
Vesper wasn't looking at the book. She was looking at the shelf behind the podium.
"Rat," she said. Her voice was hollow.
Kaelen followed her gaze. On the shelf, sitting in a dust-free display case, was a row of cylinders. They looked exactly like the Key in his pocket. But these were broken. Fused lumps of metal. One was filled with a dark, dried sludge that looked like old blood.
And below them, etched into the steel of the shelf, was a label.
PROJECT: NULL
BATCH 1–12: DISCARDED (BIOLOGICAL FAILURE)
BATCH 13: ASSET UNSECURED
Kaelen stopped breathing. He looked at the label. Batch 13.
He reached into his pocket and touched his own cylinder. The cold metal felt suddenly like a brand.
"I'm not a mutation," Kaelen whispered. The words tasted like ash.
He looked at Vesper. She was staring at him with horror.
"You weren't born," Vesper said. "You were made. You're a spare part, Kaelen."
A heavy boom echoed from the nave. The doors had been breached. The Choir was coming. Kaelen shoved the manual into his coat. He didn't look at the broken cylinders again.
"We leave," he said. His voice was dead flat.
He turned and walked out of the vault, clutching the book that explained the world, and trying to forget the shelf that explained him.