Chapter 68: The Severance Protocol
The chamber was a cathedral built for machines, its towering arches and vaults echoing with the ghostly hum of dying servers. Once, light had streamed down through crystalline conduits, refracting into a thousand gleaming patterns across the obsidian floor. Now, those beams were little more than fading embers, suffocated by the encroaching shadow that pooled in every corner. In the center, Carter hung suspended—his body made small by the scale of the place, yet immense in the gravity of what he bore. Silver filaments, impossibly thin yet unbreakable, snaked around his arms, chest, even his throat, their touch both surgical and predatory. They hissed and tightened, siphoning away the last reserves of his warmth, until his skin was pale as frost and his br
