The fetid sewage in the sewer crystallized into blue glass beneath Leon's boots, each step cracking with the brittle sound of ice shattering. Alicia's mechanical heart burned a gear-shaped scar into his back through his clothes, and the pain reminded him of the time, at ten years old, when he touched his father's photon furnace—an electric, skin-tingling sensation, as if blood and energy were creating quantum entanglements. Now, that feeling surged violently along his spine.
"Turn right... three hundred meters..." Alicia's voice crackled with electronic noise from her breathing mask. "Your father's lab... in Colvin's blind spot..."
Leon kicked aside the mutated rat swarm blocking their path. The creatures' eyeballs were fully glassified, refracting rainbow-colored spots in the dark. When he pushed open the rusted maintenance door, his gas mask instantly fogged with frost—the door led to the abandoned energy shaft at the base of the floating city. Bundles of photon cables coiled like massive tree roots, while the walls were studded with human-shaped glass sculptures.
"The first victims of the photon plague." Alicia's mechanical eye scanned the nearest sculpture. "Look at the base of the sculpture."
Leon wiped away the frost, and the inscription made his stomach twist: "In memory of Skyward Maintenance Worker, Keith Stone, died on Stellar Calendar 237.7.19 due to honorable energy overload." This was the official death date from his father's records. But the face on the sculpture was contorted in terror, with the right hand frozen in a grip around a control lever, black crystals leaking between the fingers.
"Colvin altered all the records." Alicia suddenly coughed up crystalline blood. "The real cause of death was…"
The energy shaft trembled violently. As Leon rolled with her into a gap between the cables, shards of the glass dome fell, smashing the sculptures into dust. Through the shattered walls of the shaft, they saw the first completely glassified section of the floating city beginning to fall. Crystal buildings burned into green fireballs as they scraped through the atmosphere, and the shockwaves from their impact with the surface tore apart the clouds into concentric circles.
"Sixty-eight hours remaining." Alicia pointed to the countdown projected on her retina. "When the quantum annihilation starts, Colvin's clone network will…"
A sudden screech of metal scraping cut off the warning. Twelve knights clad in prismatic battle armor slid down the cables. The spiraling emblem on their masks leaked liquid photons—these were the Prismatic Knight Order's execution squad. The leader of the knights raised a polyhedral war hammer, its head containing an amber crystal that encased a brain-like substance.
"Fugitive product E-739," the knight leader's voice was distorted by a voice modulator. "And the living energy conduit, just what we need to fuel the Ark's reactor…"
Alicia's mantis blade pierced a cable junction, and arcs of electricity shot out, weaving a web of light on the walls. The knights' armor overloaded from the high-voltage current, causing some of their masks to explode, revealing fully glassified skulls. These so-called knights had long since been infected by the photon plague.
Seizing the opportunity, Leon smashed open the airtight door to the lab. The stale air was thick with the smell of his father's rosin flux, but amid the dust on the control panel, fresh handprints were visible. The holographic log activated automatically, projecting Colvin's image from yesterday:
"Dear Leon, if you're seeing this video, it means my transplant failed again." Colvin in the video was injecting silver liquid into himself. "The gene lock your father created still rejects my consciousness, but soon, Alicia's quantum resonance will…"
Alicia suddenly let out an inhuman shriek. Her mechanical heart exploded from its casing, revealing an amber core—the same material embedded in the knight leader's war hammer. Countless photon fibers extended from the core, piercing into the lab's mainframe.
"He hid the key in my… heart…" Alicia's iris turned into streams of data. "Beneath the lab… lies the first generation…"
A thunderous rumble drowned out her words. Leon peered through the observation window and saw three floating city blocks disintegrating in midair. One scraped past the energy shaft, exposing its cross-section, which was filled with blood vessel-like photon conduits. What was even more terrifying was the liquid flowing through these conduits—it was crystallizing, spreading like a plague along the energy network.
Rushing back to the control panel, Leon's father's biometric authentication suddenly passed. The hidden chamber slid open, revealing a glass coffin sealed within the wall. Inside lay a woman who was identical to Alicia, except that her abdomen was swollen, and beneath her skin, galaxy-like light spots moved.
"The original body…" Alicia's mechanical voice wailed, "So I'm the… clone…"
The holographic screen suddenly switched to real-time monitoring: Colvin's original body was walking through the wreckage of a fallen floating city. Everywhere he passed, the glassification process in the plague victims reversed. But when he removed his damaged mask, Leon saw his father's face.
The piercing sound of alarms erupted. The lab's protective shields began to break down, and Alicia's amber core projected a holographic star map—the coordinates of the interstellar ark buried deep within the Earth's core. At the same time, the mechanical structure in her abdomen began to mutate, the outline of a crystal embryo emerging beneath her skin.
"Go… quickly…" Alicia tore open her chest, ripping out the glowing core and tossing it to Leon. "Take this to…"
The Prismatic Knight's war hammer smashed through the wall, and the amber brain crystal in its head suddenly opened its eyes. As Leon dodged and rolled, he saw the fallen floating city wreckage on the surface forming a massive spiral totem—this was the holographic projection of Alicia's heart core.
As he leapt out of the ventilation shaft in the explosion, the last thing he saw was Alicia being cocooned in amber material, while the monitor displayed "Father-version" Colvin smiling at the camera, with what appeared to be a hundred thousand floating clone incubation tanks behind him.