The view from the top of the Serra das Araras used to be a postcard. Now, it looked like the X-ray of a terminal patient.

  The Carcass Continent—our island of petrified bone and flesh—was under heavy siege. Silent beams of antimatter tore through the night sky, fired from the Exodus Fleet. Where the black light touched, Leviathania's barricades simply ceased to exist. There was no explosion, only erasure.

  The Black Crystal bridge was now a glacial highway linking the cruiser The Last Breath directly to "Rib Beach." Thousands of Hollows marched across it in perfect synchrony, an artery injecting cold poison straight into the heart of our home.

  "Defense status," my voice echoed in the Dreadnought's cabin. The sound was metallic, cut by static. My left eye blinked fluorescent green, projecting a vector tactical map directly into my brain.

  "The front lines crumbled," Valéria gripped the yoke, her knuckles white. "The Tank-Crabs are falling back to the Leviathan's teeth. Petrópolis's steam cannons don't have the range to hit the ships."

  "They are the disease. We are the clot," I said, the logic of the Babel Code anesthetizing my fear, turning it into pure martial mathematics. "Valéria. Direct route to the ice bridge. Maximum intercept speed."

  "Arthur, the bridge is infested with soldiers and covered by antimatter towers!" Luna interjected, terrified by my coldness. "The truck will be vaporized before we reach halfway!"

  "It won't. I see the pattern."

  I wasn't lying. The virus in my liver was killing me, but it also gave me access to the frequency of The Piper's hive mind. I could see the aiming lines of the antimatter towers forming seconds before they fired. They were threads of red laser crossing my augmented vision.

  [CALCULATING ENEMY FIRE TRAJECTORIES.]

  [MARGIN OF ERROR: 2%.]

  "Follow my steering commands, Valéria. To the millisecond." I touched the truck's dashboard. The Parasite, in a desperate truce with the virus, connected my corrupted nerves to the Dreadnought's systems.

  The truck descended the mountain like a black steel meteor, jumped the debris ramp of Avenida Brasil, and landed directly at the base of the Black Crystal bridge.

  The ice cracked beneath our treads.

  "Gristle. Clear the infantry," I ordered.

  "With pleasure, Dr. Blue-Screen!" Gristle kicked the top hatch open, manning the modified harpoon cannon turret. She wasn't firing armor-piercing projectiles; she was firing cylinders of superheated Ether.

  We advanced across the bridge.

  The Hollows turned in unison. Hundreds of magnetic containment rifles pointed at us.

  "Right, thirty degrees! Two seconds!" I shouted.

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  Valéria yanked the yoke. The Dreadnought skidded on the ice. A millisecond later, three antimatter beams erased the space where we had been, cutting the cold air with a hollow hum.

  "Left! Accelerate!"

  We wove through the sea of black glass. Gristle fired, exploding rows of crystal soldiers into blue shards and frozen meat. Luna used her baton through the armor slits, emitting short sonic pulses that shattered the ice floor beneath the enemy's feet, dropping dozens into the dark waters of the bay.

  We were in the middle of the ocean, driving over a magic bridge, dodging rays that erased matter. It was the most insane surgery of my life.

  "Heavy tower at two hundred meters!" My digital vision flashed critical red. The Piper had noticed our pattern. The cruiser's main tower was locking its aim directly onto our engine block.

  "Can't dodge that one, Arthur! The scatter radius is too wide!" Valéria shouted, panic finally breaking her engineer persona.

  "Luna." I turned my partially cybernetic face to her. Black veins throbbed on my neck. "Crystal resonance frequency. Break the bridge in front of us. Now."

  "But we'll fall into the sea!"

  "Do it."

  Luna didn't hesitate. She pointed the baton at the ice floor directly in our path and let out a devastating sonic scream.

  CRACK!

  The Black Crystal bridge shattered into a ten-meter-wide abyss.

  The Dreadnought plummeted into the hole.

  The exact moment we fell, the massive antimatter beam passed over us, vaporizing the space we occupied a second ago.

  We hit the freezing water.

  The thermal shock was brutal. The suspension groaned, and water began to leak through the armor gaps.

  "Hydrodynamic thrusters! Asphalt Submarine, active mode!" I activated the controls on the panel.

  The treads stopped. The Ether engines in the rear spun underwater. The truck leaped like a mechanical shark, emerging from the hole in the ice just ahead, already less than fifty meters from the hull of the lead ship, The Last Breath.

  "We passed the defense line!" Gristle cheered, wet and laughing hysterically.

  But the ship was a vertical wall of impenetrable steel and ice. There was no way to "park."

  "Valéria, maximum power! Throw us against the hull!" My hands were shaking. The Babel Code infection level was at 92%. My biological vision (the right eye) was blurring. I was losing my humanity minute by minute.

  The Dreadnought flew over the last stretch of water and collided head-on with the side of the cruiser.

  The Blood-Steel ram penetrated the old metal and black ice, driving the truck into the ship's fuselage like a ten-ton tick.

  The engine died with a metallic groan.

  The cabin lights flickered and went out.

  "Access granted," I said, unbuckling my seatbelt. I pulled the Mithril scalpel from my lab coat.

  "Arthur, we're coming with you!" Luna grabbed my arm. Her hand was warm. Mine felt like a corpse's.

  "No. The Babel Code is an area-of-effect virus. If you enter the detonation zone when I download this into the core, Valéria's brain implants and Luna's baton might suffer a complete wipe." I looked at them. I tried to smile, but only the human side of my face obeyed. "Defend the truck. Hold the rear. If I don't return in ten minutes... use the cannon to cut the ram and drop into the sea."

  "You're coming back, you crazy doctor," Gristle patted my shoulder carefully. "Or I'll go in there to get you and beat you with a pan."

  I turned the handle of the front hatch (which now opened into a torn hole inside the enemy ship).

  I stepped onto the frozen metal of The Last Breath's main corridor.

  The atmosphere changed immediately. The noise of war vanished, muffled by the thick walls of lead and ice.

  Inside, The Piper's digital silence reigned.

  But it wasn't empty.

  Blocking the corridor leading to the central server room, was him.

  Admiral Sterling.

  Half man, half crystal. He held a ceremonial Navy sword, its blade not steel, but condensed dark energy.

  "Your firewall has fallen, Arthur Veras," his voice echoed directly in my brain, transmitted by the very virus I carried. "Assimilation is inevitable. Hand over the Trojan Horse and we will give you the peace of the absence of pain."

  The Parasite roared in response, creating black chitin claws on my free hand.

  My digital eye locked onto the antimatter sword.

  "I am the system error, Sterling," I replied, taking a combat stance, the scalpel on one side, the claw on the other. "And I came to corrupt your files."