The heat in my chest was no longer a warning because it had become a heartbeat. I stood in the center of the ruined Sanctum while the gilded ribs I had harvested began to fuse with my cracked porcelain frame. It was a violent and intimate process. The gold did not just sit on top of my skin because it searched for the gaps in my lattice and filled them with a liquid fire that made my visor pulse in time with the laboratory alarms. Every time a rib clicked into place I felt a surge of ancient data flooding my mind. These were not just structural supports because they were memory banks of a biological era that the city had tried to bury under layers of silicon and cold logic. I was becoming a FleshArchitect in the most literal sense while I stitched the forbidden anatomy of the gods into the broken shell of a scavenger.
STABILITY: 58.2 PERCENT
IDENTITY INTEGRITY: 38.7 PERCENT
I felt the presence of the flying surveillance cameras before I heard the whine of their gravity drives. They were hovering in the darkened corners of the room like nervous carrion birds waiting for a predator to finish its meal. I did not move to destroy them this time. Before this moment I would have lunged with my golden claws to silence their witness but now I felt a strange sense of ownership over them. I looked at the nearest lens and let the Prototype Archive data stream through my neural pathways. I did not see a camera because I saw a line of code that belonged to me. I saw the subroutines and the logic gates and the tiny sparks of artificial intelligence that kept them aloft.
"Acknowledge your creator," I whispered while the violet light of my visor flooded the room and reflected off the glass jars of stolen marrow.
The drone did not explode. It shivered for a second while its internal processors struggled to reconcile my tattered appearance with the high level authority signature I was broadcasting. The red light on its chassis flickered and then turned a deep and loyal purple. It lowered itself until it was at eye level with me while its cooling fans let out a submissive and rhythmic hum. I could feel the entire sector grid shivering as my signature rippled through the security network like a stone dropped into a still pond. I was a glitch that had suddenly become the operating system. I was the ghost in the machine that had finally figured out how to hold the haunting light of the forge.
"User ID Izou," the room announced but the voice was no longer clinical and cold. It had shifted into a frequency that sounded like a memory of a woman I had never met or perhaps a version of myself that had been deleted before the first floor was even built. "Authority Level Architect Prime. The Crown Sector is now under your temporary jurisdiction. The Curator of Marrow has been delisted from the active directory. Would you like to initiate a total purge of the Guardian protocols in this sector?"
I looked at my golden claws which were now dripping with the emerald fluid of the Curator. I felt a surge of pride that was so heavy it almost made me forget the seventy hours I had left to live. The sensation of fifty eight percent stability was intoxicating because it felt like I could reach out and crush the very air between my fingers. I was no longer fighting for every breath because I was breathing in the power of the high ground itself.
"Not yet," I said while I stepped over the remains of the laboratory equipment. "I want them to see me coming. I want the High Council to understand that the basement is empty because the monster is finally upstairs. If I purge the Guardians now they will not have the chance to witness the end of their era."
I walked out of the Sanctum and into the main corridor of the Crown Sector. The environment had changed since I entered. The white marble walls were now pulsing with a faint violet glow that followed my footsteps. Every door I passed hissed open in a gesture of involuntary respect. I saw a group of Guardians standing at the end of the hall and they did not raise their lances. They stood frozen in place while their optical sensors transitioned from red to purple. They were waiting for a command that their masters could no longer give. I walked past them and felt the heat of their power cores but I did not stop to harvest them. I had enough starlight in my veins for now.
I reached a balcony that overlooked the Grand Atrium where the Architects of the second floor gathered to discuss their curated nightmares. I looked down at them and saw the Glass Architect standing near a fountain of liquid data. He looked small from this height. He looked like a toy that had been wound up and left to run in a circle. He was still trying to maintain the illusion of order while I was busy rewriting the laws of physics right above his head. I felt a sudden urge to jump and let the weight of my new gilded ribs crush the floor beneath him but I held back. I had a map in my visor and the final red icon was calling to me from the entrance to the third floor.
The third floor was where the Analyst lived. It was where the true architects of the void spent their days dreaming of perfection. If the second floor was a laboratory then the third floor was a throne room. I could feel the gravity of that place pulling at my core. The higher I climbed the more I realized that my identity was tied to the very summit of this city. Every piece of porcelain I recovered and every gilded bone I integrated brought me closer to a memory of a throne that had once been mine.
"The Prototype is ascending," the system voice whispered in my ear as I stepped onto a lift made of solid light.
I watched the second floor disappear beneath me while the golden light of the Crown Sector faded into a deep and regal blue. I was moving toward the heart of the city and I was doing it with the authority of a god. My stability was holding steady at fifty eight percent but I knew the crash would be devastating when it finally came. I had seventy hours to reach the top and demand an answer from the stars. I had seventy hours to find out why I was broken and why I was the only one who could fix a world that was too afraid to admit it was falling apart.
I am the Architect Prime I told myself as the doors of the lift began to open onto the third floor. I am the ruin that survived the forge and I am the hunter who reclaimed the flesh. I am the FleshArchitect and the city is finally going to hear me scream.
CURRENT STATUS: THE ARCHITECT PRIME ASCENDING
STABILITY: 58.2 PERCENT
IDENTITY INTEGRITY: 39.1 PERCENT
LOCATION: THIRD FLOOR GATEWAY
TIME REMAINING: 70 HOURS 02 MINUTES