Chapter 181: The Ghost in the Machine
The blaring red alarm seemed to fade into a dull, throbbing hum in Lisa's ears. All she could focus on was Dr. Voss's face—the face of a man whose carefully constructed world had just shattered around him for the second time. The air in the smoke-hazed room was thick with the smell of ozone, spent energy, and the coppery tang of blood from the wounded technician.
"Actually, Ms. Mingrui..." Dr. Voss began, his voice a cracked whisper, heavy with a regret so profound it seemed to physically weigh him down. "There is something I... failed to disclose..."
He looked from Lisa's furious, confused face to the empty pedestal where the crown had been, then back to the injured man whose life he had just barely saved. His shoulders slumped in utter defeat.
"This story... it begins almost fifteen years ago," he said, his eyes losing focus, gazing into a painful past. "My daughter... she decided she wanted to be a Hunter. I forbade it, of course. I begged her. I am a man of science, of controlled environments. The chaos of the Shifting Expanse? It was my greatest nightmare for her." A sad, proud smile touched his lips. "But she was so stubborn. So brilliantly, infuriatingly stubborn. And she did well. So very well. She made me proud, even through my fear."
He took a shaky breath, the memory a fresh wound. "Then, ten years ago, she contacted me. She was so excited. Her team had found a hidden dungeon, untouched by any other soul. The last message she sent me was a data-burst... coordinates, and a single image." He pointed a trembling finger at the empty space above the pedestal. "The Red Diamond Crown."
Lisa, Moon, and Kai stood frozen, the mission, the bank, the politics of it all momentarily forgotten. They were now witnessing a father's confession.
"She told me they had retrieved it. But something went wrong. They encountered a creature there... a six-limbed baboon, she called it. But it was no ordinary beast. It was a curse given form. When she touched the crown, a link was forged. Not a bond of control, but a parasitic chain. The crown began to siphon her life force, drinking her essence to sustain its own malevolent power."
The pain on his face was raw, unbearable. "She came back to me, Ms. Mingrui, but she was a ghost. Fading. Every day, a little more of her light was extinguished. I am a renowned scientist! I have built biospheres and tamed alien worlds! But I could do nothing. Nothing!" His voice broke, and he slammed a fist against his own thigh in frustration.
"So, I built this," he gestured wildly around the underground facility. "I built this entire planet as a life-support system, as the most powerful containment cell i could ever made . I locked her away in a stasis capsule, and I locked the crown in a vault lined with null-field generators. And it was working! The link was weakening, becoming thinner and more fragile with every passing year."
A desperate, manic hope lit his eyes. "There was just one last, tiny thread of connection that refused to break. A single, unbreakable strand of energy tying her soul to that cursed artifact. And I... I had a theory. If I could physically separate them by a vast distance—if I could send the crown so far away that not even this residual link could survive the void—then the chain would snap. My daughter would be free."
He looked at Lisa, his expression one of utter, pathetic apology. "That is why I sold it to the Mountbatten Bank. Not for credit. Not for profit. I sold it to you as a desperate cure. You, Ms. Mingrui, were not just a debt collector. You were her ambulance. Your bodyguards were meant to be her escorts to safety."
Then, his face fell, the hope dying as quickly as it had appeared. "But I was a fool. I underestimated the crown. It is not a mere object; it is a predatory, conscious hunger. I believe it sensed my plan. It felt the finality of its impending separation. And like a human, in the last moments before dying from cold—feeling a sudden, deceptive rush of warmth as the body makes one final, catastrophic effort to save itself—the crown used every last ounce of its stolen power."
He looked toward the door, in the direction the thief had fled. "It reinforced the link. It didn't just defend itself; it launched a counter-attack. It reached out through that fragile thread... and it used my daughter's body to reclaim what it believes is its property."
The truth landed in the room with the weight of a collapsing star.
The thief wasn't some random intruder.
The ghost in the machine was Dr. Voss's own daughter.
The horrifying truth of the crown's parasitic nature left Lisa and the two brothers stunned into a heavy, sickened silence. The artifact wasn't just a treasure; it was a predator that had been feeding on a young woman's life for a decade.
The tense silence was shattered by the frantic voice of the security guard monitoring the feeds. "Sir! All our defensive technology is failing against her! She's moving at an impossible speed, heading deeper into the violet jungles! We can track her on the cameras, but we can't stop her! What are your orders?!"
Before the terrified Dr. Voss could form a coherent thought, Kai's voice cut through the chaos, calm yet absolute, brooking no argument.
"New plan," Kai declared, his eyes locked on the main exit. "All of you, evacuate. Get to the spaceship and get off this planet." He then turned his gaze to Dr. Voss, his meaning clear. "Doctor, you're with me. We are going to get your daughter." He finally looked at Moon. "Moon. Your only mission is to protect Lisa."
In the blink of an eye, before anyone could protest or even process the command, Kai vanished. It wasn't a blur of speed; it was a complete and utter disappearance from the spot where he stood, leaving behind a faint ripple in the air.
"Where did he—?!" Lisa gasped, whirling around.
But Moon's eyes were fixed on the massive, sealed gate leading to the surface. He had seen the subtle shift in the air, the direction of his brother's intent. "He's already gone," Moon stated, his voice low and tense.
Suddenly, the same guard monitoring the cameras let out a strangled cry. "Doctor! Look! On the surface feed! What in the name of the void is THAT?!"
Everyone's eyes snapped to the security hologram. The screen showed a view from a high-altitude drone, tracking the figure of Anne Voss as she sprinted through the violet forests with uncanny grace. And right behind her, moving with a silent, powerful lethality that dwarfed the alien trees, was a massive beast.
It was a tiger, its fur a pristine, glacial white, marked with stripes of the deepest, most vibrant sapphire blue. It was larger than any polar bear, a living engine of muscle and primal power. Its eyes glowed with an ancient, intelligent light.
Dr. Voss stared, his scientific mind short-circuiting. "By the stars... what fauna is that? We never documented anything like it! How did we miss this?!"
Moon answered, a note of grim pride in his voice. "That is Snow. Kai's bonded beast."
As they watched, a figure dropped from the canopy above, landing perfectly on the great tiger's back. It was Kai, having covered a distance that should have taken minutes in mere seconds. He pointed forward, and the colossal tiger, Snow, surged forward, a blue-and-white bolt of lightning closing the distance with Anne.
The sight was both awe-inspiring and terrifying.
Moon turned to the group, his expression dead serious. "We need to get to the spaceship. Now. And we need to initiate launch sequences."
Dr. Voss, still reeling, stammered, "W-Why the urgency all of a sudden?"
Moon met his gaze, his eyes deadly serious. "Because, Doctor, I don't think this planet's ecosystem will survive a full-scale fight between two entities of King-Level, Planetary Tier."
The color drained from Dr. Voss's face. The scale of the power he had just invited into his personal tragedy finally dawned on him. He simply nodded, his voice a whisper. "Yes... yes, of course. Ready the ship!"
As alarms switched from intruder alerts to full evacuation protocols, the group rushed towards the hangar bay. But every screen they passed was tuned to the live feed, their eyes glued to the spectacle unfolding on the surface.
They watched as Kai, riding the magnificent and terrifying Snow, pursued the corrupted form of Anne, a lone hunter racing to confront a tragedy that was now threatening to consume an entire world.
To be continued…