Chương 118: 117: No Chance Of Saving

Butter's hand dropped. Melody ignited around her forearms. The black bandages blazed with impossible light, screaming a frequency that denied reality itself. No. This force is not here. This force is somewhere else. Butter drove her fist forward. The muscles beneath the bandages swelled as Melody answered. KRAAAASH! The air fractured like glass. Sylvia's declaration shattered. Korhess drew her first breath. Air flooded her lungs in a violent gasp.

Her ribs snapped back into place as cracks racing through her skull sealed shut. Her spine straightened with a chorus of grinding pops while shattered bone knitted together beneath flesh. She pushed herself upright. Every limb trembled. Her hands shook. Her arms shook. Her entire body quivered like something still deciding whether it wished to remain alive. Sylvia watched quietly, her head tilting ever so slightly.

She regarded Korhess the way a curious child might study an insect that had somehow survived being crushed beneath a boot.

"You are stronger than I expected... Korhess Alabanti." Korhess steadied herself against her spear.

"I know not what thou hast become," she said softly.

"Nor what the Nonagon hath wrought of thee." Her grip tightened.

"But I know what power fashioned of me."

"It forged a sword. It forged a prison. It fashioned a creature no hand could truly wound, for she had already been broken until no fracture remained to claim." Pain crept into her voice.

"It made me... alone." She stepped forward, her spear still raised. It was not held in threat. It was held in resolve.

"But thou art not alone." Her gaze drifted toward Butter, then to the Commander, who still hadn't moved. He stood with patient stillness, his hands resting at his sides, watching with the quiet endurance of a man who had waited fifteen long years for this single moment.

"Souls remain who cherish thee. Souls who refuse to abandon thee... though thou hast become a thing beyond mortal reckoning." Korhess lowered her spear. The blade of crystallised absence hummed softly between them. It was an offer of hope.

"I know not whether thou canst yet be saved. I know not whether any amongst us can."

"But I know this. Thou deservest the chance. The same chance that was once granted unto me."

"The same chance I had never earned." Something flickered beneath Sylvia's blindfold. The cobalt radiance dimmed. Only for a heartbeat. Korhess saw her. The girl who had clung to Clock's hand. The girl who had shouted at a deer for daring to be an animal...... before apologising to it moments later. The glimpse disappeared. The smile returned. Almost mournful.

"That was... very pretty," Sylvia said.

"But you are still mistaken."

"There is no saving."

"There is only becoming." She laid a hand over her own heart.

"And I have become..." A slow breath escaped her.

"... what I was always meant to be." She raised her hand. Cobalt light gathered above her palm. The air grew heavy. The room grew still. Even the dust seemed to wait.

"Please..." Butter whispered. Her voice broke.

"Honeycakes... just stop." She shook her head.

"I can't..."

"I can't fight you." Her eyes glistened.

"You're my friend. Please don't do this to me. Don't make me become someone who has to hurt you."

"I know you're still in there. I know you're scared. I know you don't even understand what you're becoming."

"You don't have to carry this alone."

"You don't have to become this."

"You can—""I am not afraid." Katherine's reply came without hesitation.

"I am not lost. I am not confused." She smiled.

"I am awake. And I shall not permit you to prevent what must be done." The light in her hand brightened, subtly warping the room around it. Straight lines bent. Corners softened. Space itself seemed uncertain where it wished to exist.

"I will build a new world." Her expression remained serene.

"I have grown weary of explaining myself. I shall do as I please, regardless of whether you understand." Her gaze settled upon Butter.

"We once spoke of the giant... and the flea." A pause.

"I am the giant now. And I shall act like one."

"They will finally learn..."

"That actions have consequences." Butter's voice trembled.

"Why everyone?" Katherine almost laughed.

"One glance across your internet renders that question meaningless. You may claim the internet is not reality. It changes nothing."

"The people who write those words still walk among humanity. They breathe. They vote. They raise children. They celebrate ignorance. They nurture hatred. They reward stupidity. They mistake cruelty for wit." Her smile slowly faded.

"I shall not wait for them to become better. I will uproot the garden."

"And plant new seeds."

"Yes..."

"I believe that is what I shall do." Silence swallowed the room. Far below, Custard roared as the facility groaned around them. Butter remained rooted where she stood. Korhess did not. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. She stepped forward until her spear reached Katherine's throat. The blade of crystallised absence hummed softly against luminous skin.

"I did say..." Korhess's voice remained gentle.

"... that thou deservest the chance to choose." Her grip tightened.

"I never promised I would allow thee to destroy the world whilst deciding." Katherine regarded the spear. Then Butter. Then Korhess once more.

"Very well. Allow me to demonstrate." Her gaze settled upon Korhess.

"Margin." The word settled into reality. A margin was the place where stories discarded what they no longer wished to acknowledge. Not destroyed. Simply... pushed beyond the page, forgotten by the narrative while continuing to exist somewhere just outside it.

"Apis." Korhess's body shimmered. Brilliant rivers of emerald and gold burst from beneath her skin, flowing out of her like ink drawn from parchment. The streams curved sideways into empty space, into nowhere, into the invisible edge of reality itself. The air filled with luminous threads stretching beyond sight, disappearing into an unseen boundary as though the universe possessed borders only Katherine could touch. Korhess staggered. Her antlers dimmed. The impossible vitality saturating her body...... was gone.

Butter's eyes widened.

"No..." Kiri instinctively stepped backward. The Commander's visor whirred violently as sensor readouts flooded across hidden displays. Even Korhess stared at her own trembling hands in bewilderment.

"My... Apis..."

"It has been moved," Katherine said softly.

"Not removed. Merely... placed in the margin." Before anyone could react, she raised a finger.

"Expurgation." A razor-thin beam of revision burst forward. It wasn't light. It was censorship. Wherever the beam passed, existence rewrote itself, excising what it touched from the story without violence, as though it had simply never belonged in the approved edition. It struck Korhess. She disappeared. Reality treated Korhess as a passage no longer fit to remain in the manuscript. One moment she occupied space. The next...... the story behaved as though she had never entered the room. Butter screamed.

"NO!" Her palm shot forward.

"Katherine!" Her entire body shook.

"For the love of everything..."

"If you don't bring her back..." Her voice cracked.

"I will Glissando you out of existence..."

"Right..."

"This..."

"Instant..." Katherine smiled.

"Relax."

"It was only a demonstration." She tilted her head.

"You once argued perspective. That perhaps God's actions differ because He exists beyond flesh." A faint shrug.

"I merely wished to illustrate the point." Butter's hand trembled violently.

"Glissa—" The word refused to leave her throat. She couldn't do it. She couldn't bring herself to erase Katherine. Tears blurred her vision. Katherine's expression softened.

"Sugarbear. I am bringing her back." She lifted a finger.

"Facsimile." Reality rippled. Emerald light burst from the unseen margin. Korhess reassembled as though an invisible author had simply rewritten her onto the page. Her Apis rushed back into her body in brilliant streams. Colour returned to her antlers, and strength returned to her limbs. Korhess blinked once. She hadn't perceived her own absence. To her...... no time had passed. Her spear remained steady. Her breathing remained calm. Yet something inside her had changed. Hope. She still carried it.

Whether she survived another minute, another hour, or another day... whether the girl before her could still be saved... whether humanity itself deserved saving... None of those answers mattered anymore. She would continue fighting until the last breath. Until the last heartbeat. Until the story itself reached its final page. And so...... the battle for the fate of the world began. — None of those answers mattered anymore. Korhess would fight until her final breath. Until her heart refused another beat.

Until the story itself reached its final page. And so… … the battle for the fate of the world began.

"So…" Kiri said flatly.

"Are we engaging, or are we waiting for extinction?" The words carried no urgency. No fear. She sounded like a child asking whether breakfast had been delayed. Butter blinked.

"Kiri…" The little girl never looked away from Katherine.

"If we keep talking," she said in the same emotionless tone, "she accumulates more information. That is tactically unsound." Korhess tightened her grip upon her spear.

"She speaks truly." Katherine's gaze drifted across the chamber before finally settling upon the child. A faint smile returned to her lips.

"Perhaps," she murmured, "I should demonstrate first… why resistance has become so terribly obsolete." Something landed against her back. A tiny weight. A curious squeak. Katherine turned her head. A small brown-and-white weasel clung to the back of her coat, staring up at her with bright black eyes. Coconut. He squeaked once. ZZZT. Dark static swallowed him as a Syndicate teleporter activated, whisking him away before Katherine's fingers could even twitch. Her attention returned to Kiri. Too late.

The muzzle of a compact machine pistol already rested against the cobalt eye embedded within her navel. The girl had crossed the distance in a single impossible flash.

"I won't permit your objective." The words came without anger. Merely a statement of operational fact. The weapon's receiver bore a tiny engraving. MP-17 Lark. BRRRRRT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT! The machine pistol erupted. Hypervelocity rounds detonated point-blank into Katherine's abdomen. The impacts hammered the navel eye in a deafening metallic chorus, every strike carrying absurd momentum until the barrage finally forced her backwards. The eye screamed. Several rounds punched through.

Azure fluid burst from the ruptured iris, splashing across the chamber in shimmering streams while the pupil convulsed violently, momentarily blinded. Butter gasped.

"Oh my—" Korhess's ears flicked forward.

"It bleeds…" Katherine staggered. Pain barely registered within her transformed body, yet her expression still tightened.

"How…" She looked down at the damaged eye.

"… did you pierce me at all?" A low mechanical hum answered. Green light spread across the chamber walls. A triangular device scarcely larger than the cap of a pen clung to the middle of Katherine's back. Delicate emerald rings pulsed outward from it, expanding and collapsing with precise rhythm. The disruptor. Coconut had placed it there. It lacked the strength to suppress Katherine. Nothing inside the Nest possessed that capability anymore. Its purpose was subtler. It disturbed concentration.

The intricate rivers of Apis flowing through Katherine's body rippled ever so slightly, just enough to introduce microscopic instability into impossible calculations, the same way the prick of a needle could still make someone flinch despite knowing it posed no genuine threat. Herculean. Understatement. Every passive defence. All of them had quietly disengaged for a fraction of a second.

Only Katherine's Apis-forged body remained, impossibly durable everywhere except the exposed eye, which could still be overwhelmed by sufficient force. Butter stared at Kiri.

"You… planned that?" Kiri didn't acknowledge the praise.

"My job was to create an opening." Her empty black eyes remained fixed upon Katherine.

"I have done so." Katherine exhaled through clenched teeth. Darkness consumed her world. The ruined navel eye had been her only true sight. Heartbeats, vibrations, shifting air, and currents of Apis now painted the chamber in its place.

"… By the one who bore the lamb." Her senses reached for Kiri. She could feel everyone else. Butter's anxious heartbeat. Korhess' steady breathing. The Commander standing motionless near the wall. Even Coconut's teleport signature fading into the distance. But Kiri… Nothing. Why? Another eye slowly unfolded in the centre of Katherine's palm. It blinked once. Twice. Searching. It found Kiri immediately. …

She was standing with one foot planted upon each of Katherine's shoulders, balanced effortlessly above her like a bird perched upon the highest branch. Looking down from her elevated position, Kiri rested the muzzle of the newly upgraded PBM-9 Singularity against the crown of Katherine's head. Its concentric emitter rings glowed a brilliant cyan as the weapon charged, releasing a deep harmonic hum that vibrated through the chamber.

"Do not move." Butter's mouth fell open.

"... When did she—?" Korhess' grip tightened around her spear. Even she had failed to perceive the child's approach.

"Silent..." Korhess breathed.

"No... subtler than silence." Katherine almost smiled.

"I never sensed you." Kiri didn't answer. The explanation belonged to the armour. Its greatest strength had never been invisibility. It was omission. The suit continuously absorbed stray kinetic disturbances from its surroundings. Vibrations. Microscopic pressure changes. Even the faint energetic ripples that gifted beings unconsciously relied upon to perceive the world disappeared into its layered systems without announcement, leaving almost nothing for supernatural senses to notice. It did not hide.

It simply refused to introduce itself. Butter stared at the little girl.

"Oh my..." Kiri's voice emerged flat and emotionless.

"I am not your girlfriend." A beat passed.

"I am not sentimental." Another.

"You threatened the Commander." Her finger settled more firmly against the trigger.

"You threatened me."

"I do not care if you consume universes." Her expression never changed.

"I will discover a method to kill you." The cyan rings brightened.

"And I will make it hurt."

"Kiri." The Commander's voice crackled calmly through her helmet.

"Fall back." She remained perfectly still.

"Leave this fight…" A brief pause followed.

"…to the adults." Silence lingered for several seconds.

"…Understood, Commander." The Singularity disengaged with a soft mechanical whine. Its concentric rings dimmed as the barrel folded neatly back into its compact frame. Kiri clicked both wrists. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. Tiny metallic devices no thicker than coins suddenly slid free from Katherine's throat, wrists, spine, ribs, and the base of her skull. They arced through the air as though answering an invisible summons, each neurospike returning with perfect precision into Kiri's open palms. Butter stared.

"... W-What?" Korhess's ears flattened.

"When...?" Even Katherine looked down at herself for the first time. She had never felt them. Kiri calmly slotted each Neurospike back into her utility belt without taking her eyes off Katherine.

"Contingencies," she said flatly.

"Installed during initial contact." Butter blinked repeatedly.

"You... planted all of those... when you first jumped onto her?"

"Affirmative." Korhess exhaled slowly.

"... I never saw your hands move."

"That was intentional." Without another word, Kiri stepped backwards into empty air. She disappeared before she began to fall, her wings unfurling in a blur to catch the air as she drifted backward across the chamber. Warning glyphs immediately flooded her visor. APIS CORE REPLENISHMENT DETECTED FOREIGN ENERGY SUCCESSFUL ASSIMILATION COMPLETE The exchange had lasted only moments. It had been enough.

Her suit had quietly siphoned away a portion of the immense Apis radiating from Katherine's body, replacing much of its depleted reserves without either of them noticing until now. Kiri glanced at the readings.

"…Thanks for the refill." ZZZT. Dark static crackled across her shoulder as Coconut appeared, wearing a fitted black utility belt snug around his tiny waist. He steadied himself with a small squeak, whiskers twitching. Kiri inclined her head slightly toward him, lowering her voice.

"Why didn't you use a Restructurer?" Coconut squeaked once.

"…Or a Shaker?" He chittered again, gesturing rapidly with both tiny paws before tapping the side of his head. Kiri watched him for a moment.

"…I understand." Her eyes drifted back toward Katherine.

"She is no longer governed by conventional biology." A brief pause followed.

"…Those devices would likely have been ineffective." Coconut nodded emphatically.

"Quite unfortunate." Her wings folded against her back. The next instant, they blurred. She accelerated from the chamber so quickly that the air had not yet rushed in to fill the space she'd vacated. Silence followed. Behind her, the ruptured eye embedded within Katherine's navel slowly knitted itself back together. Azure fluid receded beneath luminous flesh as torn tissue flowed seamlessly into place. The iris regained its colour. The pupil contracted once… then focused with perfect clarity. Katherine laughed.

Softly. Genuinely.

"How peculiar…" Her smile widened as she watched the empty space where Kiri had disappeared.

"You truly are delightful."