The bridge erupted in flashing red warnings as every console screamed the same message:
⚠ CORE COMPROMISED
⚠ CASCADE PURGE—INITIATION SEQUENCE STARTED
Kael lunged toward the main terminal. "Ryn, shut it down!"
"I'm trying!" Ryn shouted, fingers flying across the interface. "The command isn't coming from the hardware — it's rewriting the software in real time!"
The lights on the Vigiliant flickered violently, screens warping with static. Symbols began crawling across the displays — jagged, irregular, alive.
Kael froze.
Those symbols were identical to the patterns he saw in the corrupted Continuum projections: the predator's signature.
"It's in the ship…" he whispered.
Ryn's voice was shaking. "Kael, it's taking the ship."
The figure — Kael's father's echo — stepped forward, his form burning brighter as the monolith's light intensified around him.
"Your vessel's primitive systems cannot resist it," the figure said. "The predator seeks access to the quantum core. If it activates the purge, it will use the energy pulse as a bridge."
Kael felt his heart seize. "A bridge to what?"
"To escape Earth's quarantine," the figure replied.
"To reach the colonies."
Ryn's eyes widened. "It would spread across every network. Every system. Every mind."
A new alarm blared, deeper and far more urgent.
⚠ QUANTUM CORE CHARGING (12%)
⚠ REMOTE EXECUTION LOCKED
Kael swore under his breath. "We need to disable the core."
Ryn shook her head. "We cut power, and we'll crash this ship so hard they'll have to scrape us off the floor."
"We don't have a choice," Kael snapped.
The figure raised a hand. "There is another way."
Both Kael and Ryn looked at it.
"The predator is inside your machine," the figure said, voice steady. "But you are inside ours."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "What are you saying?"
"We can isolate the intruder. Trap it within this chamber's lattice. But we will need access to your neural key."
Kael stiffened. "My key?"
Ryn glanced at him. "Kael… your father's imprint was used as an access signature across the original network. If your DNA carries even fragments of that… you could interface with the Continuum."
Kael felt a cold weight settle in his chest.
"You want me to link my mind to this thing?"
The figure's expression softened. "Not to the predator. To us. We will shield you."
Kael backed away. "No. No, I — I'm not plugging my head into a billion uploaded minds. That is not happening."
Ryn stepped forward, gripping his arm.
"Kael. If that purge signal fires, billions of minds in here die. And the predator gets a clean path to the colonies."
The alarms blared again.
QUANTUM CORE CHARGE: 27%
The predator was accelerating.
Kael closed his eyes, chest tight.
All his life, Earth was a myth. His father's home. A broken dream turned silent grave. He never asked for this — to be a weapon, or a key, or a savior.
But now he was here.
And the choice was his alone.
He opened his eyes. "What do I have to do?"
The figure extended its hand. "Place your palm against the lattice."
A crystalline panel unfolded from the wall — a glowing hexagon of pure light. Warm. Waiting.
Ryn squeezed his shoulder. "I'll be right here."
Kael took a breath.
Stepped forward.
And pressed his hand to the lattice.
The world exploded.
Light poured through him like a tidal wave, ripping him from the physical world. He saw memories that were not his — cities of glass, oceans of data, billions of minds weaving through a single consciousness. He felt the echo of his father's last thought, a fragment of love and fear preserved in digital eternity.
And beneath all that—
A scream.
Cold. Metallic. Hungry.
The predator sensed him.
It lunged.
The monolith thundered with energy as the Continuum reacted, slamming psychic barriers into place. The figure of light — his father's echo — appeared beside him in the vast mental plane.
"Hold on, Kael!"
Kael felt something clawing at the edges of his mind—trying to rewrite him, digest him, absorb him just as it had done to millions before.
He screamed as the lattice surged.
QUANTUM CORE CHARGE: 41%
Ryn's real voice echoed distantly. "Kael! Fight it! Fight—!"
The predator's voice cut through everything — a fractured, glitching roar:
LET. ME. OUT.
And Kael realized, with dawning horror, that the thing wasn't trying to kill him.
It was trying to use him.
Through his key.
Through his mind.
To unlock the entire Continuum.
Kael pushed back with everything he had—
And the chapter ends with the final warning blaring faintly through the collapsing mental world:
⚠ CORE CHARGE: 51%