Chapter 26 Twenty Six

Chapter 26 Twenty Six
CHAPTER 26
Kaito

Kaito slammed his hand onto the Heart-Sync, and for a second, it felt like he’d won. The jagged, terrifying resonance from the tank died down instantly. The violet glare faded into a calm, steady blue that matched his own pulse. He could feel Himari’s mind through the wire, her fear cooling off like a fever breaking.

"I’ve got you," Kaito gasped, his lungs burning. "I’ve got you, Himari. Stay with me."

But the victory lasted about three seconds.

The blue light from the Heart-Sync didn't just settle into the tank. Instead, it started to bleed out. Kaito watched in horror as the glowing energy crawled down the sides of the glass and soaked into the floor. The bone-white tiles under his feet began to pulse with a sickly, rhythmic light.

"What’s happening?" Shinnosuke yelled, his saber humming as he stepped back. "Why isn't it rebooting?"

"The Palace!" Kaito shouted, his teeth gritting so hard they ached. "The damn building is hijacking the signal!"

He could feel it through his Apex-Wire. The Heart-Sync was trying to stabilize Himari, but the Palace’s fiber-optic network was acting like a sponge. It was siphoning the reboot signal away before it could finish the job. The energy was being diverted, flowing through the bone-veins of the walls and heading straight up.

"He's pulling her," Kaito realized, his eyes widening. "Shinnosuke, the Emperor is using the sync as a leash! He’s manipulating the frequency to draw the tank toward the throne room!"

The old man didn't even have to touch them. Because Kaito and Himari were perfectly synchronized, the Emperor just had to tug on the network to move the whole unit. It was like they were hooked on a fishing line.

Suddenly, the corridor let out a sound like a ship’s hull snapping. The bone walls, which had slowed down for a moment, suddenly surged inward with a vengeance. They weren't just creeping anymore; they were slamming shut.

"Ugh!"

Three of the Glitch-Wires at the perimeter let out choked screams. The sheer pressure of the Palace’s immune system was too much for their bootleg grafts. Their wires flared white-hot, and they collapsed into heaps on the floor, their brains fried by the feedback.

"Hold the line!" the leader with the duplicate graft roared.

He was the only one left standing at the rear. He planted his feet, his illegal Apex-Wire screaming as he unleashed a wall of jagged sparks to hold back the closing bone-plates. He was fighting a building with nothing but a sword and a lot of attitude.

"Kaito, we have to move!" Shinnosuke said, his face pale. "The siphon is too strong! If we don't break the connection to the Palace, he’s going to drag her right into his lap!"

"I can't break it!" Kaito yelled, his hands still fused to the tank by the energy. "If I let go now, the Heart-Sync will fail completely and the glass will pop! I’m the only thing keeping her core from redlining!"

Kaito was trapped. He was the anchor, but the anchor was being dragged by a leviathan. He looked at the tank, seeing Himari’s eyes fluttering. She was still stable, but she was drifting. The Emperor was whispering to her through the bone-veins, calling her home.

Shinnosuke looked at Kaito, then at the tank, and then at the pulsing fiber-optic threads woven into the wall. His expression went from terrified to deathly calm in the span of a second. He didn't say a word. He didn't even look back at Kaito.

"Shinnosuke? What are you doing?"

Shinnosuke ignored him. He stepped toward the nearest bone-pillar, his military-grade saber glowing with a fierce, steady light. He reversed his grip on the hilt, bracing himself like he was about to jump into a fire.

"Wait! Don't touch that!" Kaito screamed.

Shinnosuke ignored the warning and slammed his saber deep into the bone wall, right into the center of the glowing fiber-optic relay.

The sound was deafening. It wasn't an explosion; it was a digital shriek. A massive arc of raw Empire frequency erupted from the wall, hitting Shinnosuke’s blade and traveling straight up his arm. The swordsman’s body went rigid. His eyes flew open, glowing with a flat, terrifying white light that mirrored the Emperor’s.

"Shinnosuke!" Kaito cried out.

"Go!" Shinnosuke choked out, the words sounding like they were being dragged through broken glass. "I’ve severed the siphon! You have... thirty seconds! Move the tank now!"

By stabbing the relay, Shinnosuke had created a short circuit. He was acting as a human lightning rod, absorbing the Palace’s raw network frequency to keep it away from the tank. The siphon on the Heart-Sync died instantly, and the blue light finally flooded into Himari’s core, initiating the reboot.

"I’m not leaving you!" Kaito yelled, trying to reach out with one hand.

"Move, you idiot!" Shinnosuke roared.

His skin was beginning to crack, thin lines of white light appearing on his neck and face. He looked like he was being overwritten from the inside out. He didn't show it—his face remained a mask of soldierly determination—but Kaito could feel it through the network. Something ancient and cold was penetrating Shinnosuke through that connection. It wasn't just electricity; it was data. It was the Emperor’s will, pouring into the swordsman like black ink into a glass of water.

"Thirty seconds, Kaito! Move!" the Glitch-Wire leader yelled from the back, his voice strained as he fought off the closing walls.

Kaito didn't have a choice. He grabbed the handles of the tank and shoved it forward with every bit of voltage he had left. With the siphon cut, the tank felt lighter, moving away from the throne room’s pull. He sprinted down the closing corridor, the bone-plates snapping shut just inches behind him.

He looked back one last time. Shinnosuke was still there, his hand fused to the saber, his body vibrating with the power of a thousand dead Reapers. He looked like a statue of a hero, standing in the middle of a collapsing world.

And then the light became too bright to look at.

Kaito turned the corner, pushing the tank toward the maintenance hatch. His heart was a lead weight in his chest. He had the girl, he had the sync, and he had his life. But as he heard the final, agonizing groan of the relay station exploding behind them, he knew that Shinnosuke wasn't coming back—at least, not as the man he used to be.