Chapter 40 Forty

Chapter 40 Forty


The giant pillar of blue light stayed anchored in the sky just long enough for Himari to sprint across the muddy flatlands.

Her legs were moving entirely on their own, running way ahead of any actual thoughts or plans running through her brain.

The small crystal fragment in her hand felt like a powerful magnet, pulling her weight forward with a heavy force she couldn't fight.

"Himari, slow down!" Shinnosuke shouted, his boots splattering wet mud right behind her. "The ground is completely unstable!"

"I can't slow down!" she screamed back over the terrifying roar of the cracking earth. "It's right here! I know it's right here!"

She didn't care if the earth swallowed her whole or if the mud took her under.

The column of light was already starting to flicker, the edges turning into pale silver sparks that dissolved into the rain.

Shinnosuke kept pace with her, his breathing loud and ragged as he pushed through the wet grass.

He threw himself forward, positioning his heavy frame protectively in front of her as they neared the edge of the blast zone.

As a massive chunk of soil caved in, his dead Wire arm instinctively extended straight out to shield her from the flying debris.

It was a total reflex embedded deep in his bones, a soldier's instinct triggering despite his conscious mind no longer having access to the old impulse.

"Are you hit?" he asked, his arm still locked in that defensive stance even though the skin remained dark and cold.

Himari shook her head, her eyes wide as she stared at the ground. "No, I'm fine. Look at the trench, Shinnosuke."

The deep split in the earth revealed a large, hollow chamber beneath the surface, about the exact size of a human body.

The inside of the pit was lined with thick, crystallized Apex-Wire formations that looked like glowing tree roots.

They had clearly grown inward over the last few months, pressing tightly against each other due to some intense biological pressure from the inside.

At the very bottom of the smooth hollow lay an unmoving figure, completely still under the falling rain.

The skin along the edges of the form looked deeply charred, and the body was partially fused directly into the blue crystal matrix.

It looked exactly like a piece of old wood that had been slowly melded into sticky resin over a long period of time.

The few remaining fibers of whatever clothing the person had been wearing had completely disintegrated into gray ash.

"Is that a person?" Shinnosuke whispered, leaning his head over the dark lip of the pit.

Himari dropped to her knees, her hands sliding in the slick mud as she tried to get a closer look at the face. "It's him. I know it's him."

"There are no identifiers," Shinnosuke noted, his voice flat but his eyes scanning the body with intense speed. "Look closer at the chest."

The figure completely lacked any visible Wire ports, any corporate collar scars, or any known Reaper markings.

The strange transformation had completely removed every single external identifier that the city used to track its citizens.

Instead of scars, faint geometric patterns were etched directly onto the pale skin, glowing with a very dim light.

They looked exactly like Kaito's old Voltage burns, but they were arranged in a precise manner that suggested actual intent rather than a messy accident.

"The patterns match the layout of the valley," Himari said, her voice dropping to a ragged whisper.

"They match the architecture of the Palace too," Shinnosuke added, his hand hovering over the edge of the pit.

"He didn't just break the machine," she said, her chest tightening as she looked at the quiet face. "He took it with him."

"If he took the network inside his own skin, then he is no longer entirely human," Shinnosuke stated calmly.

Himari turned her head to glare at him, her eyes flashing with anger. "I don't care what he is. He's my brother."

"I am simply stating the structural facts, Himari," he replied, though he didn't move away from her side.

"Keep your facts to yourself right now," she muttered, leaning further over the opening of the hollow.

She knelt right at the very edge of the deep hole, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps as she held out her right hand.

The small crystal fragment in her grasp suddenly flared so fiercely it felt like she was holding a piece of burning coal.

The intense heat scorched her fingers, the skin bubbling slightly against the rock, but the physical pain felt totally inconsequential.

"Himari, your hand is burning," Shinnosuke said, reaching down to grab her wrist to pull her back.

"Leave me alone!" she yelled, shaking him off as she leaned closer to the unmoving figure below. "Look at his chest! Just look!"

The figure's chest reacted to the sudden glare of the crystal light with a single, highly visible contraction.

It was a stiff, jerking movement, looking way more mechanical than a regular human breath.

It felt like a lost biological function was trying to reemerge from the dark before any actual identity or memory could be recalled by the brain.

"The lungs are functioning," Shinnosuke whispered, his level voice finally wavering a bit as he watched the skin move.

"Come on, Kaito," Himari pleaded, her tears mixing with the rainwater running down her face. "Wake up. Please just wake up."

The geometric lines on the figure's neck began to pulse a fraction brighter, answering the heat of the stone in her hand.

The whole valley seemed to hold its breath around them, the thousands of bowed Vex remaining perfectly still in the mud.

"He is trying to find the connection," Shinnosuke said, his eyes fixed on the precise patterns on the figure's arms.

"He knows we're here," she said, her voice cracking under the weight of the silence. "I can feel him pushing through the wire."

"The internal voltage is rising," Shinnosuke noted, his scannerless eyes still tracking the tiny shifts in the blue light.

"I don't care about the voltage," Himari sobbed, her entire body shaking as the rain soaked through her jacket. "I just want him back."

"If he wakes up, the network might activate again," Shinnosuke warned, though he didn't make any move to step back from the pit.

"Let it activate," she said, her gaze locked onto the quiet face of the boy who had spent his whole life protecting her. "I don't care about the city anymore."

The figure's chest rose a second time, the movement slightly smoother than the first, less like a machine clicking into place.

The blue light under his skin began to settle into a steady, rhythmic cycle that matched the hum of the earth beneath them.

"Kaito, can you hear me?" she called out into the dark hollow.

There was no answer, just the sound of the rain hitting the crystalline walls of the pit.

The silence felt long and heavy, stretching out between them like the months they had spent apart in the ruins.

"He is not responding to verbal data," Shinnosuke said, his hand resting firmly back on his forearm.

"He's in there," she insisted, her fingers bleeding as she gripped the muddy edge of the split earth. "He's just far away."

"The consciousness has to relearn the physical parameters of a body," Shinnosuke explained, his eyes softening just a fraction. "It takes time to return from the grid."

"We don't have time," she whispered, looking up at the sky as the last of the light column vanished.

The valley was plunged back into a dim, gray twilight, the only light coming from the branching patterns in the dirt.

Suddenly, the figure's fingers twitched for the first time since the ground had split open.

The pale digits curled deliberately against the smooth, crystalline floor of the hollow, scratching against the blue rock.

It was the clear, unmistakable movement of a consciousness that had spent months adapting to operate a body encased inside a giant machine.

Himari, who had maintained her perfect composure through the total fall of an empire and the terrifying silence of a desolate city, completely fractured inside.

Her mind threw out every ounce of caution as she instinctively reached her burning hand down into the dark hole to catch him.