The eight-inch meteoritic alloy needle slid through the skin of Edward Vance’s forehead with the terrifying, silent smoothness of a blade cutting through dark water.
I did not see the strobing red emergency lights. I did not feel the oppressive, rapidly climbing heat of the sabotaged Titan server room, nor did I hear the frantic, panicked breathing of the medical team behind me. My consciousness had completely detached from the physical environment, narrowing down to the microscopic, bio-electric topography of the patriarch’s skull.
The needle bypassed the frontal bone, slipping effortlessly through the microscopic suture lines of the cranium—a pathway that medical science deemed non-existent, but which ancient anatomical masters had mapped centuries ago.
The sensation traveling up the
