The aftershocks of quantum resonance etched totemic afterimages onto Leon's retina. As his palm emerged from the viscous photon fluid, he found his fingertips piercing through Alicia's semi-transparent chest— their bodies had become like ink soaked in water, bleeding into floating silhouettes in the liquid mine.
"Maintaining quantum states requires absolute concentration," Alicia's voice buzzed with electronic static, three prism cores rotating in reverse at the location of her heart. "Any emotional fluctuation will cause…"
Suddenly, a burst of blue light erupted from the bottom of the mine, swallowing the rest of her sentence. Leon's throat froze, as though sealed by icy crystals: in the photon sea a kilometer below, thousands of glass coffins floated with the waves. Inside each one curled a woman identical to Alicia, her silver eyelashes adorned with ice crystals, the phoenix tattoo on the back of her neck flickering with each breath, as though they were a slumbering flock of firebirds.
"The clone graveyard." Alicia's phantom image began to distort. "The guild processes twenty defective clones every month, but Colvin always secretly…"
The entire mine spasmed violently. Leon watched in horror as his left hand solidified, the photon fluid it touched instantly crystallizing into a jungle of sharp spikes. Alicia yanked him toward the wall, and a broken glass beam scraped their backs as it fell into the abyss, crashing at the bottom with the sound of shattered chimes.
"Hunter drones are tracking the quantum trail," Alicia's quantum core on her back heated to a crimson hue, melting the protective layers of her combat suit. "Pull out the third core on the left, quickly!"
As Leon's fingers sank into her semi-transparent shoulder, he felt the bite of mechanical gears. When the teardrop-shaped crystal was pulled out, the entire photon sea boiled. Amid Alicia's scream, they shot upward toward the mine's opening, countless clones' coffins exploding beneath them into a crystalline downpour.
The instant they broke through the mine's dome, Leon's iris turned amber. They floated in a starry ring made of memory prisms, each floating glass encapsulating fragmented histories: knights in photon armor frozen into statues in wheat fields, astronauts eternally falling in a glassed-in space station, twelve upside-down pyramids devouring an entire oasis—this was the forbidden fruit of time-space, sealed by the First Council.
Alicia suddenly coughed out crystal dust. Golden, molten veins appeared beneath her skin, and her right eye split into a kaleidoscopic structure. "Colvin implanted tracking beacons in all the clones. We have only…"
The rumble from the depths of the mine shattered the rest of her words. Twelve mirror-finished ghost fighters of the Guild tore through the memory veil, their photon cannon muzzles lighting up with god-killing eyes. What was more horrifying were the awakening clones—climbing the frozen light paths, their fingertips elongating into crystalline ice claws.
Leon felt his temples throb like a drumbeat, the alarm from his father's lab echoing in his mind. When the first photon torpedo came crashing toward them, his pupils suddenly turned into mirror-like silver, and photon streams erupted from his fingertips, weaving into a honeycomb-shaped shield. The explosive wind hurled them deep into the memory labyrinth, shattering countless time-space prisms along the way.
"You're truly a living energy hub," Alicia screamed amid the flying glass snow, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth and crystallizing into garnets, "Grab that golden light stream!"
The moment Leon's hand passed through the hologram, Colvin from forty years ago suddenly turned to look at him. The scientist in the memory projection wore a venomous smile, etching a coordinate into Leon's visual nerve. The pain almost made Leon release his grip, but Alicia's warning pierced his eardrums: "Don't look into the ghost's eyes!"
They plunged into an unexpected vacuum zone. Leon found that his shield was absorbing the glass dust, creating an ever-expanding crystal armor. But Alicia's body began to disintegrate, the overload of her quantum core turning her into a wind-worn fresco.
"The beacon… in my left ventricle…" She grabbed Leon's hand and pressed it against her chest, where a mechanical heartbeat pulsed rhythmically. "Take it out… or the entire memory vault…"
The screeching of the fighter jets was almost deafening. When Leon's fingertips pierced her chest, what he felt wasn't flesh but a woven structure of gears and fiber optics. When the chip, engraved with Colvin's name, was removed, all the clones suddenly froze, turning to powder and dissipating into the quantum storm.
The mine began to implode. Leon held Alicia, now growing colder, as they plummeted into the abyss. The surrounding memory prisms collapsed one after another, releasing the screams of sealed histories. Just before hitting the bottom, Leon saw the most terrifying vision—Colvin during the Blood Purge, standing atop a pile of dead council members, injecting a silver needle into his carotid artery.
The vision froze, transforming into a blood-red totem. The mine's bottom erupted. In the last moment before plunging into the blinding light, Leon saw the ice crystals on Alicia's eyelashes and the phoenix-shaped quantum entanglement forming between the chip she gripped tightly in her hand.