The Cathedral was no longer a laboratory; it was a slaughterhouse bathed in strobe-light red.
Subject Zero was a force of nature. The massive, bio-engineered abomination roared, swinging its organic blade-arm with enough force to shatter the concrete pillars supporting the catwalks.
Saya dodged. She was a streak of black and red, moving faster than humanly possible, but she was on the defensive. Her katana sparked against Zero's armored hide, leaving shallow cuts that hissed and steamed as the regenerative properties of Diva's blood knit the flesh back together instantly.
"He's not slowing down!" Isolde shouted from her perch on a suspended gantry. She fired three rounds of high-explosive armor-piercing ammo. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The shots struck Zero in the head, snapping its neck back. But the monster just shook it off, the armor plates realigning like shifting tectonic plates.
"It's the frequency!" Ren yelled from the control console below, ducking as debris rained down. "The stasis tanks! They're still broadcasting the stabilization signal! He's immortal as long as those tanks are active!"
"Then kill the tanks!" David roared, firing his pistol at the glass cylinders lining the walls.
Saya landed in a crouch on the central platform, chest heaving. She was exhausted. The march through the snow, the lack of food, and the adrenaline crash were taking their toll. Her sword arm trembled.
Subject Zero turned its eyeless, armored face toward her. It raised its hydraulic tentacle arm.
WHIP.
The tentacles shot out like spears. Saya parried two of them, slicing the tips off, but a third one caught her in the ribs.
The impact launched her backward. She flew through the air and slammed into the heavy metal casing of the main generator. She slid down to the floor, gasping, tasting copper.
"Saya!" Kai's voice echoed in her memory, but it was David who was shouting now.
Saya struggled to stand. Her vision blurred. The red emergency lights seemed to smear into trails of blood.
She looked to her left.
The cello case was lying open on the floor, five feet away. The violence of the battle had knocked it over. The blue dust—Hagi's remains—had spilled out, spreading across the metal grating like spilled sugar.
"No," Saya wheezed, crawling toward it. "Not on the floor. Not in the dirt."
Subject Zero stomped forward, the ground shaking with each step. It raised its blade-arm for a vertical execution strike.
"Commander Vale to all units," the intercom crackled. "Evacuate. Seal the sector. Let the beast finish them."
High above, behind the blast glass of the observation deck, Vale and Dr. Aris were fleeing toward the elevator. They weren't staying to watch. They knew what happened when a reactor went critical.
Saya reached the dust. She didn't have her sword; she had dropped it when she hit the wall. She was unarmed. She was cornered.
Subject Zero towered over her. The heat radiating from its body was suffocating. It smelled of rot and antiseptic.
Saya didn't look at the monster. She looked at the blue dust shimmering in the red light.
"I can't do it," she whispered, tears cutting through the grime on her face. "I'm not strong enough alone. Hagi... I'm sorry."
She collapsed forward. Her hand, cut open from the earlier fight, landed directly in the center of the pile of dust.
Her blood—thick, red, and potent—soaked into the crystals.
Thrum.
It wasn't a sound. It was a sensation. A sudden, violent pressure change in the room.
The blue dust didn't dissolve. It drank. It absorbed the blood instantly, turning from pale sapphire to a deep, pulsing violet.
A shockwave of cold air blasted outward from Saya's hand, blowing the hair back from her face.
Time seemed to stutter.
Subject Zero's blade was descending. To David and Ren, it looked like the end.
But inside Saya's mind, the world had stopped.
A synapse fired in the base of her brainstem. A dormant pathway, forged over a century of blood-bond, suddenly slammed open. It was like plugging a live wire into a dead socket.
"Get up."
The voice wasn't a memory. It was loud. It was clear. It was resonant, vibrating in her teeth, in her marrow.
Saya's eyes snapped open. The brown iris was gone. The red was gone. Her eyes were a glowing, electric blue.
"Left. Forty-five degrees. Slide."
Saya didn't think. She surrendered.
Her body moved with a fluidity that was terrifying. She didn't scramble away; she slid flat against the floor, passing under the descending blade. The monster's weapon smashed into the metal grating where she had been a millisecond before, sparks showering the room.
Saya came up in a spin. She didn't look for her sword. She grabbed the nearest weapon—a severed hydraulic pipe leaking steam.
"The knee joint. Behind the plating. Strike."
She swung. The pipe crumpled against the back of Subject Zero's knee, jamming the hydraulics. The monster shrieked, its leg buckling. It fell to one knee.
Saya stood over the dust pile. She looked down at her hand. It was coated in the blue-violet mud of blood and crystal. The connection was roaring in her head, a torrent of tactical data and silent, overwhelming protectiveness.
She wasn't holding a ghost. She was channeling a consciousness.
"Hagi?" she breathed.
"Do not speak," the voice commanded, calm and icy. "Fight. The core is exposed. Use the sword."
Saya looked across the platform. Her katana was ten feet away, near the monster's foot.
Subject Zero swiped at her with its tentacles.
"Jump."
Saya leaped. She cleared the tentacles by inches. She landed on the monster's shoulder.
Subject Zero thrashed, trying to shake her off.
"Balance. Center of gravity. Hold."
Saya locked her legs around the monster's neck, riding the beast like a bronco. She reached down, ripped a sensory cable from its neck, and wrapped it around its throat, pulling back with all her strength.
Subject Zero choked, stumbling backward. It crashed into the console where the sword lay.
"Now. Disengage."
Saya backflipped off the monster, landing softly next to her sword. She grabbed the hilt.
The familiarity of the weapon, combined with the presence in her mind, sent a surge of power through her. She felt his hands over hers on the hilt. She felt his stance correcting her footing.
Subject Zero recovered. It stood up, roaring, its chest cavity opening to reveal a glowing red core—the artificial heart pumping Diva's corrupted blood.
It began to charge a beam weapon in its chest.
"Saya! Move!" Ren screamed.
"Wait," Hagi's voice echoed in her mind.
Saya stood still. She sheathed the sword. She crouched low, hand on the hilt. Iaijutsu stance.
"He's charging!" Isolde yelled. "What is she doing?"
"Wait," the voice repeated. "Let him breathe."
The red light in the monster's chest intensified. The air rippled with heat.
"Wait..."
Subject Zero fired. A beam of concentrated plasma erupted from its chest.
"NOW."
Saya drew.
She didn't cut the beam. She cut the air. She slashed upward in a vertical arc, releasing a shockwave of blood-crystallized energy.
The shockwave collided with the plasma beam, splitting it in two. The energy washed harmlessly around her, scorching the walls on either side.
In the split second that followed, while the monster's chest was still open and cooling, Saya moved.
"The heart. Pierce it."
She lunged. She drove the katana straight into the glowing red core.
She didn't stop there. She twisted the blade.
"For the Chevalier," Hagi's voice whispered, sounding sad and distant.
"For the Chevalier," Saya screamed.
She poured her own blood down the blade.
The reaction was catastrophic. Her Queen's blood mixed with the corrupted blood of the monster.
Subject Zero went rigid. The red light in its chest turned purple, then blue, then gray.
The crystallization started at the heart and exploded outward. In the span of a single heartbeat, the twelve-foot-tall biological nightmare turned into a statue of fragile glass.
Saya pulled her sword out.
Crack.
The statue fractured. It collapsed into a mountain of gray dust, burying the platform.
Silence fell over the Cathedral.
Saya stood there, panting. The blue glow in her eyes faded, returning to brown. The presence in her mind—the cool, tactical voice—receded like a tide going out, leaving her feeling hollow and incredibly dizzy.
She swayed.
"Saya!" Ren scrambled down the ladder, running toward her.
Saya dropped her sword. She fell to her knees, not from injury, but from the sudden absence of him.
She looked at the pile of blue blood-mud on the floor. The dust she had bled on.
She frantically began to scoop it up. It was wet, sticky, and gross, but she didn't care. She shoveled it back into the cello case.
"You came back," she sobbed, smearing the blue paste over her face as she wiped her tears. "I heard you. I heard you."
Ren reached her. He looked at the dead monster, then at Saya talking to the mud.
"Saya, we have to go," Ren said, grabbing her shoulder. "The reactor is melting down. The whole place is going to cave in."
"Help me!" Saya yelled at him. "Help me put him back!"
Ren didn't argue. He knelt down and helped her scoop the wet, crystallized remains back into the velvet lining. They got most of it. It was messy, desperate work.
"That's it," David said, arriving with Isolde. "That's enough. Seal the case."
Saya slammed the lid shut and locked it. She tried to stand, but her legs gave out. The blood loss from the fight, combined with the "fuel" she had given the dust, had drained her.
Isolde didn't hesitate. She slung her rifle, walked over, and grabbed Saya's arm. She hauled the girl up.
"You did good, Princess," Isolde said gruffly. "Now walk."
Isolde looked at David. "Grab the case."
David, leaning on his cane, looked at the heavy cello case. He was seventy-five years old.
"I got it," Ren said. He grabbed the handle. It dragged his arm down, but he gritted his teeth and lifted it with two hands.
"Move!" David ordered.
They ran.
The facility was dying around them. Pipes burst, spraying steam. The walls groaned as the mountain pressed in on the compromised structure.
They reached the service elevator. Ren hacked the panel. The doors slid open.
They rode it up to the surface level, the shaft shaking violently.
When the doors opened, the cold Siberian air hit them like a hammer. They sprinted out of the hidden hangar bay and into the snow.
Behind them, the ground collapsed.
With a sound like the earth cracking open, the Citadel imploded. The ventilation tower sank into the crater, swallowed by the mountain. A plume of snow and dust shot hundreds of feet into the air.
They didn't stop running until they reached the tree line.
They collapsed in the snow, gasping for air. The adrenaline was fading, replaced by the biting cold.
Saya lay on her back, looking up at the aurora borealis shimmering green above them. She was shivering uncontrollably.
Ren placed the cello case next to her.
Saya reached out, resting her blood-stained hand on the leather.
"He spoke to me," Saya whispered to the sky. "He told me when to strike."
David sat nearby, catching his breath. He looked at Isolde.
"You saw her eyes?" David asked quietly.
"I saw," Isolde said, lighting a cigarette with trembling hands. "They turned blue. Chevalier blue."
"It's the resonance," Ren said, shivering. "She used her blood as a conductor. She essentially downloaded his consciousness for the duration of the fight."
"At what cost?" David asked, looking at Saya's pale face. "She looks like she lost a pint of blood in ten seconds."
"It's an addiction," Isolde murmured. "She's going to do it again. Next time she fights... she's going to bleed herself dry just to hear his voice."
Ren looked at Saya. She was smiling—a weak, delirious smile—as she patted the case.
"We have to stop her," Ren said.
"We can't," David said grimly. "That voice just saved our lives. If we want to survive what comes next... we might need the ghost."
Saya closed her eyes. The cold didn't bother her anymore. For the first time in months, the silence in her head wasn't empty. It was waiting.
I am here, the echo whispered in her memory.
"I know," Saya whispered back.