The Isolation Sector of the Spire felt like a tomb, but it sounded like a factory. Deep in the bowels of the structure, where the gray stone met the ancient machinery of Earth-6, Xin stood inside a glass cylinder.
He wasn't alone.
The Architect’s Daughter—or the holographic ghost of her—floated on the other side of the reinforced glass. In her hand, she held a vial of swirling, iridescent mercury. It shifted from silver to violet to a deep, bruised crimson.
"The Null-Cage Mei is building will only kill you, Xin," the hologram whispered, her voice bouncing off the cold walls. "My father didn't design it to save you. He designed it to delete a failed experiment. But this..." she held up the vial. "This is the Evolution Liquid. The pure essence of the 99 Earths."
"I don't want more po
