Chapter 68 Sixty eight
We didn't hit metal. We hit a silence so absolute it felt like a physical blow to the chest.
The impact of the Sovereign breaching the hull of the Nullity Command Ship wasn't an explosion of sparks and twisted steel. It was a plunge into a viscous, freezing heavy water. The void-shield didn't break; it swallowed us. The screaming white light of our thrusters was instantly snuffed out, replaced by a suffocating, velvety darkness that seemed to press against the very lenses of our eyes.
Then, gravity reasserted itself wrong, heavy, and sickening.
The Sovereign slammed onto a surface that felt like obsidian glass. The tires skidded on friction-less terrain, sending the bike into a violent spin. Dax locked his arms around my waist, his grip bruising even through the void-armor, as the bike tipped. We slid for what felt like miles, the sound of the crash muted, as if the air itself was too thin to carry the vibration of violence.
When we finally came to a halt, the silence returned, heavier than before.
"Mia?" Dax’s voice crackled in my ear, the comms link full of static hiss. "Status?"
I blinked, trying to clear the HUD on my visor. It was glitching frantically, scrolling through error messages in red text: EXTERNAL SENSORS OFFLINE. ATMOSPHERE: NULL. GRAVITY: ARTIFICIAL. LOCATION: ERROR.
"I'm here," I gasped, pushing the heavy bike off my leg. The Sovereign was dead. The iridescent blue light of the engine core was dark, drained by the transition through the void-shield. "The bike is fried. The core is empty."
Dax stood up, his boots making no sound on the black floor. He reached down and pulled me to my feet. In the darkness, the only light came from the faint bioluminescent strips on our suits two tiny, flickering candles in an endless cavern of night.
"Where the hell are we?" Dax whispered, turning in a slow circle.
I looked around. The interior of the Nullity ship didn't make sense. There were no walls, no corridors, no bulkheads. We were standing on a flat, black plane that stretched into infinity. Above us, instead of a ceiling, there were geometric shapes shifting and rotating cubes, pyramids, spheres all made of a material that wasn't black, but the absence of light. It was like looking into a deep cut in the fabric of the universe.
"It's not a ship," I realized, the hacker in me recoiling from the lack of data. "It’s a formatted drive. A blank slate. There’s no architecture because they don't need it. They don't live here; they just exist."
"Well, they have visitors now," Dax growled. He reached for the kinetic rifle strapped to his back a weapon Tank had modified with explosive rounds. He racked the slide. The sound was flat, deadened.
"Dax, wait," I warned, stepping closer to him. My skin was crawling, the Origin-Code in my blood vibrating with a high-pitched warning. "My sensors aren't picking up heat signatures, but I can feel... pressure. Like the air is getting heavier."
"I see them," Dax said, raising the rifle.
I followed his aim.
Emerging from the shifting geometry above us, figures were descending. They didn't walk; they dripped. They looked like silhouettes cut from the Vantablack background tall, slender, and featureless. They had no faces, no limbs, just fluid edges that blurred into the darkness.
Null-Sentinels.
They didn't carry weapons. Their hands ended in points that sharpened into needles of pure void.
"Contact!" Dax shouted.
He fired. The muzzle flash was blinding in the dark. The explosive round struck the lead Sentinel directly in the center of its mass.
But there was no explosion. No spray of debris.
The bullet simply vanished. It didn't pass through; it was unmade. The moment it touched the Sentinel’s form, the matter of the bullet was deleted from existence.
"What?" Dax breathed, firing again. Three shots. Three deletions.
The Sentinels didn't flinch. They glided toward us, moving with a terrifying, silent speed. The lead Sentinel reached out a needle-arm toward Dax.
"Dax, move!" I screamed, shoving him.
He stumbled back, but he wasn't fast enough. The Sentinel’s limb brushed the barrel of his rifle.
The metal didn't melt. It didn't break. The front half of the rifle just ceased to exist. The cut was perfectly smooth, atomic-level precision. Dax stared at the half-gun in his hands, then threw it aside as if it were burning.
"They're anti-matter!" Dax yelled, backing up and drawing a combat knife made of high-carbon steel. "Don't let them touch you, Mia! Anything they touch gets wiped!"
"Physical weapons won't work!" I shouted, panic rising in my throat. We were trapped in a void with things that ate matter for breakfast. "They aren't fighting us; they're editing us out!"
A Sentinel lunged at me. I ducked, feeling the cold vacuum of its passing near my helmet. If that touch had landed, I would be headless.
Dax roared, his protective instinct overriding the logic of the situation. He charged the Sentinel that had attacked me, swinging the combat knife in a desperate arc.
"No, Dax!"
He slashed at the Sentinel’s torso. The knife blade vanished upon contact. Dax’s momentum carried him forward, and his gloved fist was inches away from the Sentinel’s chest.
He was going to lose his hand.
"Phase!" I screamed.