The assimilation does not feel like pain. It feels like erasure.
I am on my knees in the freezing, lightless silt of the Mariana Trench, my heavy assault rifle slipping from my numb fingers. The geometric lattice of the Prime Node’s counter-attack has wrapped around my legs, creeping up my torso, sinking into my skin like dry ice.
It is cold. Absolute, mathematical, unyielding cold.
Through the mate bond, I feel Kade’s consciousness fracturing. The network is not just attacking our physical bodies; it is attacking our minds. It is trying to "optimize" us. It is trying to erase the messy, inefficient, chaotic variables of our humanity to make us perfect, logical nodes for its network.
Isla, Kade projects, his mental voice a ragged, distorted whisper, stripped of its usual warmth. It’s t
