Irene's remaining consciousness was like a rusty steel nail, twisting repeatedly in Ryan's reverse scale scar. As soon as he touched the entrance to the core of the abyss, the floating quantum light spots condensed into the shape of mechanical fingers, one by one inserted into his gill slits to draw blood samples.
"Don't resist... Mom's memories... are more dangerous than dragoons..." Irene's electronic voice was filled with snowflake noise, as if it was squeezed out of a tape from twenty years ago.
The right arm of Ryan's symbiote suddenly folded in the opposite direction, and the gears bit the rock wall to drag himself into the core. The scene in front of him made his throat tighten - this was not a data space at all, but a giant beehive made up of 299 operating tables. Elena of different ages lay on each operating table, nailed to the table by mechanical arms, and the star chip was growing wildly from the spine.
(Black mucus spurts out of the gill slits——Gray, in his 299th reincarnation, is pressed against the wall——The cry of the Liria embryo is mixed with the sound of an electric drill——)
"Warning...Memory retrieval protocol invasion..." Irene's chip was hot in the scar, but Ryan's foot had already stepped onto the nearest operating table.
The younger version of Elena suddenly opened her eyes, her pupils were the gear shape of the Holy Seal of the Church: "Container No. 001...Gene calibration progress 97%..." The mechanical fingers suddenly pinched Ryan's ankle, and the nails ejected the drill of the "III" type brand.
"Fuck!" Ryan's symbiote gears crushed the mechanical fingers, and when the mucus splashed on Elena's face, her skin suddenly quantum pixelated, revealing the mechanical skeleton of the first generation judge underneath, "What the hell are you?"
All the Elanas on the operating tables turned their heads synchronously, and 299 voices overlapped to form the electronic voice of the chief judge: "Mother's Agreement... requires a perfect carrier..."
The top of the hive suddenly collapsed, and the mechanical tentacles of the Church stabbed down like a rainstorm. The tips of those tentacles carried the crying face of the Lyria embryo, and every time they waved, they released a sonic bomb with the frequency of a lullaby. Ryan's left eardrum ruptured on the spot, and blood flowed down his neck into the reverse scale scar, activating Irene's emergency protocol.
"Go...to the deep memory area..." Irene's chip forcibly took over the symbiote's right arm, and the mechanical tendons burst into an unnatural red light.
They crashed through the barrier of three operating tables and fell into the black pool at the bottom of the core. The liquid here was not water, but solidified time. Twenty-year-old Elaina was soaking in the pool, and the mechanical arm was carving the star code on her spine. At her feet floated the embryo of Liria, with the broken "III" chain wrapped around its tail.
"Mom..." Ryan's symbiote gears suddenly jammed. Erin's warning was drowned out by the roar of the boiling water.
Quantum sparks burst from Elena's spine, and the look in her eyes when she turned around suffocated Ryan - that was not the look a mother should have, but the meticulous scrutiny of the Chief Inquisitor when adjusting his weapon.
"Container 001, you are late." She stabbed the bone chisel in Ryan's brow, and the genetic sequence of Gray Ice Claw appeared on the tip of the chisel. "It's time for the final calibration..."
Ryan tilted his head to dodge, and when the bone chisel scraped past his ear, Misha's cloud wave was released: "Brother... don't believe in lullabies..." The black pool of water suddenly materialized into mechanical guards of the Church, their chests were embedded with the cultivation chambers of Lyria embryos, and the "III" brand on their foreheads resonated with Ryan's scars.
(Young Irene is welded on the operating table—the smell of burning when the star chip pierces the spine—Elena's tears drip on the data board—)
"Wake up the fucking hell!" Irene's chip screamed in overload, forcibly detonating the Star Abyss core fluid in the symbiote's body.
In the quantum storm of the explosion, Ryan saw the real memory - Elena from 20 years ago was covered in blood, holding the Lyria embryo and breaking the laboratory glass. Her mechanical spine was torn out in half, and "Project Lyria-Ω" was engraved on the star chip. The mask of the first generation judge floated behind her, shooting 299 gene chains through her body.
"Mom...?" Ryan's symbiote's right arm suddenly stretched out uncontrollably towards the phantom.
The black pool of water then turned into a giant hand and dragged him into the depths. Lyria's embryo suddenly opened its eyes, and the "III" chain of the fish tail disintegrated into the Holy Light Cannon of the Church. Her first cry shattered the structure of space and time, and Ryan saw the cruelest truth in the quantum turbulence -
All the Elanas on the operating table were clones. The real mothers were transformed into gene carriers when they were pregnant. The broken chain in the hands of the Liria embryo was the star chip extracted from her spine.
"The agreement is complete... The Matrix is awakening..." The Judge's mask rose from the bottom of the pool and embedded itself on the face of Elena's clone.
The right arm of Ryan's symbiote suddenly grew in the opposite direction, and the gears bit Lyria's barrel. At this time, Irene's chip released the last data stream: "Mom's heartbeat... is hidden in the barrel..."
In the bright light of the explosion, Ryan saw Elena's true last words - she pierced her heart with the broken chain and engraved Liria's genetic code on the ventricular wall. And this memory was encrypted into a data fragment of Misha's cloud consciousness.
Branch Undercurrent:
Selina intercepted the Vatican transport team outside Xingyuan and found a culture chamber full of Lyria cloned embryos in the cargo hold. The remains of Gray's Ice Claw suddenly appeared in the transport team's navigation system, with the interstellar coordinates engraved with "Don't Trust the Memory Corridor"...