Tearing through time and space: the Duke who lives on my birthmarks

Chapter 18 - The Scarlet Code

The mechanical guards throughout the lab suddenly turned their guns on me as the chip buzzed inside my head. I yanked Cyrus through the fire gates, blood dripping from my nose and scorching the floor with remnants of the Primordial Householder's consciousness-the flickering holographic codes were actually interspersed with neon reflections of a modern city.

“Your brainwaves are overclocking.” Cyrus blocked the vent's poison gas valve with a shadow iron, his silver hair stuck to the side of his neck by blood stains, and blue-rose veins were devouring the nanomachine bugs beneath his skin. Alchemical bullets from his pursuers exploded phosphorous in the corridor, and the remnants of an experiment logbook emerged from the flames: the Primordial Head of the House opened his eyes on the operating table three hundred years ago, and spoke my name into the shadowless lamp.

A flood of consciousness.

We ducked inside the electromagnetic barrier of the core database, and Cyrus pressed my palm against the biometric identifier. The chip suddenly releases a strong electric current, and memories of the Primordial invade the system like a virus-

1723 A.D. He stood in front of a glass chamber in a white lab coat, with an identical clone of me suspended inside;

2023 A.D. His stream of conscious data scurries into the satellite base station, fingertips tapping on the keyboard to modify our genetic profile;

At this moment, his holographic projection stepped out of the mainframe screen and stroked across the birthmark between my collarbones, “Finally, I've waited for you to activate the endgame protocol.”

The lab dome suddenly collapsed, and moonlight mixed with artificial rain poured down. Cyrus shielded me with his body, his blood dripping into the water pooling on the ground actually caused the Mechanical Guard's systems to go down en masse. Hatsune's laughter came from the broadcast system, “Lorenzo's serum really is the best antivirus program.”

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)