The roof of the Citadel was a graveyard of our previous victories, littered with the slag of the Aegis Destroyer and the melted durasteel of the makeshift mass driver. The wind howling through the hundred-story drop carried the scent of the glowing jungle below.
I knelt beside the base of the ruined Transmission Spire. The physical dish was gone, vaporized when I fired the Void-Drive, but the subterranean fiber-optic trunk lines were still buried deep in the concrete.
I spliced the thick, braided cables directly into my data-deck, bypassing the Citadel's fried hardware.
"Routing power from Level Sub-Zero," I muttered, my fingers flying across the cracked glass interface. The sapphire Origin-Code in my blood flared, syncing my heartbeat with the deep, rhythmic pulse of the Red-Queen wait
