XIX

  Interment

  Oslo, 2077

  The ripperdoc began with Deathwing’s face.

  The ruined optics were removed first, one by one, their mounts disengaged and lifted away without ceremony. The world fractured as feeds cut out in sequence—depth collapsing, color flattening, peripheral awareness narrowing to a shrinking tunnel of light. Diagnostic glyphs flared briefly at the edges of his vision as each system went dark, then vanished entirely.

  When the last optic was disconnected, there was no blur or fade.

  There was only absence.

  He let his thoughts settle into the rhythm of the work. The plan was simple. The princess would come, drawn by the fear and anger he had instilled in her, and the same instinct that had driven her to chain the god in the first place. She would try to finish what she started. His role was to endure her long enough to stop her, to hold her in place while the world realigned around them. Once they had forced Arnesen to lower the quarantine, Prosopon would be free, and everything that had been done to contain it—everything the corporate princess had taken upon herself—would finally be undone.

  The cranial housing opened next. Deathwing felt pressure as the faceplate locks released in measured intervals. Where flesh might once have resisted, there was now only a chrome cage, easily dismantled. The metal had long ago consumed the fore of his skull. It could be removed easily with skilled hands and the right tools. It was designed for this. Interfaces retracted. Neural couplings loosened. The frame opened around him like a shell.

  This would not be a repair. It was an extraction.

  The pain that registered was a distant, abstract signal when the final restraints were released—sharp, momentary, irrelevant. Then the signal cut out, along with everything else.

  Thought lost its anchor.

  There was no darkness at first. Darkness implied sight. This was something else entirely: a discontinuity where awareness found no purchase. No time. No sensation. Nothing.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  No self to measure the gap.

  Tyler Montero ceased.

  Then something returned.

  Not gradually. Not imperfectly. Awareness snapped into place all at once, complete and ordered. Systems initialized in cascading confirmations, each one resolving into certainty. The diagnostic overlay rebuilt itself around perception—broader, deeper, symmetrical in ways his old vision had never been.

  For a moment, he did not move.

  Then Deathwing flexed the fingers of his left hand.

  They responded instantly. Perfectly.

  The hand was gunmetal gray, its plating catching the light in dull, even planes. Every seam was flush. Every joint silent. It moved as if it had never been anything else. There was no warmth. No pulse. No residual echo of flesh.

  He felt no attachment to what it replaced.

  The rest of the body registered next—not as sensation, but presence. Mass. Strength. Armor plates along his spine locked into place behind him, their status readouts calm and unremarkable. There was no breath to steady. No heartbeat to slow. Organic noise was gone.

  Diagnostics scrolled once, then settled.

  A designation appeared at the edge of his vision and locked into place.

  IEC ALPHA-CLASS FULL CONVERSION BODY

  All prior systems registered as present. Integrated. Preserved.

  Every weapon, every sensor, every augmentation he had carried into battle had been carried forward and embedded seamlessly into the new chassis. His preserved brain rested at the center of it all, suspended and supported, interfaces clean and quiet. Nothing of value had been lost.

  His vision resolved next. Not forward-facing, not directional, but complete. Custom optics fed into the cranial frame from six points of origin—primary forward arrays, paired temple mounts, and two additional eyes situated at the antipodes just behind and below each auditory sensor. The feeds synchronized without delay, stitching themselves into a seamless sphere of awareness. There were no blind spots. No need to turn his head. The world existed around him in three hundred and sixty degrees, every angle present at once, depth and motion rendered with mechanical certainty.

  Additional systems registered as the diagnostics continued. Memory partitions seated into dedicated housings at the base of the cranial core, isolated and shielded—buffers against fragmentation, storage for custom ICE architectures. Processing units aligned along the spinal frame, their role purely predictive: threat assessment, response optimization, elimination of wasted movement. An internal cyberdeck came online last, slotted cleanly into its intended chassis mount, interfaces quiet and patient, waiting to be called upon directly or invoked through him.

  Everything fit. Everything made sense.

  Deathwing stood perfectly still in the center of the clinic, whole and expanded, his body thrumming silently with new power. In his mind he could clearly visualize the edge of the cliff along which he walked. Every implant had brought him closer, yet the edge always seemed just beyond reach. This was no exception.

  “Oh well,” Deathwing thought, “Whatever Prosopon requires of me next, I will be ready and I will act without hesitation. And when our work is done, the Lord has promised me my reward.”