The Collective's leader was a gaunt man, his eyes glowing with neural implants, his voice a fanatic's hymn. "The Core is our god," he intoned, zealots chanting behind him. "You defile it, Vren. Surrender, and be cleansed."Sylas kept his pulse-knife ready, shielding Veyra as she slumped against the interface.
"Your god's a machine," he said. "And I'm its new owner." He triggered a data-spike, frying the zealots' implants, but the leader was unaffected, his robe shimmering with anti-tech shielding.Veyra coughed, her link to the Core weakening. "They want to merge with it," she whispered. "A ritual to upload their minds. It'll destroy the Nexus."Sylas's lenses scanned the leader's tech: a quantum uplink, designed to sync with the Core.
If they succeeded, the Nexus's systems would collapse. He needed Veyra alive to access the kill-switch, but the Collective was closing in. He made a snap decision, jacking into the interface himself. The Core's voice flooded his mind, offering godhood, but he rewrote its code, redirecting the Collective's uplink to a dummy node.The leader screamed as his implants fried, his zealots collapsing in a neural cascade. Sylas unplugged, his vision swimming. Veyra was barely conscious, the data-core glowing in her hand. The vault's alarms blared—Syndicate and Colony forces were converging, drawn by the chaos.Sylas dragged Veyra toward an exit, the Core's whispers fading but not gone. He had the kill-switch's location, but the Nexus was fracturing, and every faction wanted his head. For the first time, Sylas wondered if power was worth the price.