Chapter 88: Warbody

Pain did not arrive in one place. It arrived everywhere.

Nate’s back arched against the Field Unit as the connectors locked across his spine, ribs and shoulders. Something cold entered his third Node, then heat followed it. His Core reacted. The first route opened by instinct, and the second tried to follow, but the null field stopped both. Current struck the blockage and rebounded through him.

Nate screamed. He heard Seris shout his name. The machine ignored her.

RECONSTRUCTION IN PROGRESS

HOST CIRCUIT: SECOND

AVAILABLE NODE: CONFIRMED

PATTERN: WB-17

Black light spread beneath Nate’s skin. It did not follow his Circuits. It drew something new around them, rules rather than another route. His shoulder contracted hard enough to wrench against the restraint. His left leg followed, then his jaw. The Field Unit was teaching his body something it had never known, or forcing it to remember something that had never belonged to humans.

Images broke through the pain. This wasn’t an Echo, no dead person behind it, just fragments embedded in the Skill itself. A battlefield under a white sky. Shapes running on four limbs before rising onto two. Armor grown close to narrow bodies. A hand with too many joints closing around a weapon. Then human laboratories, a man strapped into an earlier frame, blood beneath his knees, technicians watching output numbers rise.

The image vanished. Nate gasped.

PATTERN RECONSTRUCTION: 61%

Across the room, the attacker had Tarin against the floor. She had one arm locked around his weapon wrist. He was stronger, and without her Circuit, that difference was becoming obvious. Mara Jex dropped through the shaft. The attacker kicked Tarin away and reached for his gun.

Darek fired first. The shot hit the black floor beside the man’s hand. "Move again."

The attacker stopped. Darek’s vest had a deep dent high on his chest, and he was breathing carefully. Probably cracked ribs.

Seris remained near Nate. "Can you stop it?"

Nate tried to answer. Another pulse hit his third Node, and his teeth closed hard enough to hurt.

"No."

The medic reached toward the Field Unit. Seris caught her wrist. "Don’t."

The medic looked at her. "We disconnect him."

"The machine warned about interruption."

"And letting it finish is safer?"

"No." Seris looked at Nate. "But we know what happens if it finishes."

The medic stared at her. "We absolutely do not."

"More than we know what happens if we tear the pattern out at seventy percent."

That ended the argument, for now.

Nate dragged air into his lungs.

79%

The null field above flickered. He felt it, a tiny opening. His Core pushed current through his first Circuit, and it vanished again, then returned. The suppressor was weakening. Whether that was good or terrible, Nate wasn’t sure yet.

At ninety-three percent, Warbody touched his nervous system. That was the only way Nate could understand it. Something reached every place his body normally said stop, every hesitation before a tendon tore, every reflex that protected a damaged joint, every limit that kept muscle from using everything it could produce. Warbody found those limits and placed its hands around them. The Skill did not remove them. It gave Nate permission to.

RECONSTRUCTION COMPLETE

SKILL INTEGRATED

WARBODY

His third Node closed around the pattern. The change was immediate. Nate felt the empty place inside his architecture disappear. Three Nodes, filled: Posthumous Disciple, Body Memory, Warbody.

Then the Field Unit displayed one final notice.

HOST SELECTION ARCHITECTURE ALTERED

FUTURE NATURAL SKILL PROPOSALS: DISABLED

The words remained for several seconds. Darek read them. So did Seris. Neither spoke.

Nate was surprised by how little he felt. He had just lost every Skill the Array might have offered him for the rest of his life. For a normal Awakened, it would have been catastrophic. Nate mostly wondered how long it would take before somebody asked why he wasn’t more upset.

The restraints released. His knees hit the floor. Seris caught his shoulder. "Stay down."

Nate tried to stand. His legs worked. That seemed promising.

"Medical first."

"The attacker."

"Contained."

Behind her, Darek had the man facedown while Mara secured his wrists. Tarin sat against the wall rubbing her throat. She saw Nate looking.

"I’m fine."

Her voice sounded terrible.

"Very convincing."

"You look worse."

He couldn’t argue with that either.

The null field flickered again. This time it failed completely. Nate’s Circuits came back, current rushing through both routes. Warbody woke, not activated but aware. The sensation stopped him. It was like discovering another hand attached to his body, one he’d never moved but knew how to close.

A prompt appeared.

WARBODY

ACTIVATE?

Nate stared at it. Seris followed his gaze without being able to see the words. "No."

"I haven’t done anything."

"Your face changed."

"My face does that."

"Not often."

The attacker laughed from the floor. Everyone looked at him. Blood ran from his nose.

"You already lost."

Darek pressed a knee harder between his shoulders. "Explain."

The man smiled against the stone. "Pattern’s gone."

Nate looked at Field Unit 07. The WB-17 slot was empty. The capsule remained physically present, but its interior had gone dark. Consumed. One pattern, one use.

The attacker started laughing again. "All that work."

Darek said, "You came here to steal it."

The man turned his head enough to look at Nate. "No." That got everyone’s attention. He smiled. "We came to make sure Command didn’t."

Nate felt Warbody waiting inside him.

Dorn dropped through the shaft at that moment. The Third Circuit pressure of her presence returned with her. She looked at the restrained attacker, then Nate, then the empty WB-17 slot.

"What happened?"

Darek answered. "Calder happened."

Dorn closed her eyes briefly. Nate suspected that was becoming a professional category.

They moved the prisoner upstairs. Nate was supposed to follow the medic. He made it as far as the maintenance level. Then the wall moved.

Not metaphorically. The concrete beside the old platform folded inward, and a white line opened from floor to ceiling. Everyone stopped.

Tessa came over the channel. "East Transit just spiked."

Seris grabbed her scanner. "Function?"

"Unknown."

The white line widened. Something struck the other side, once. Concrete cracked. Dorn moved everyone back.

"Perimeter."

Another impact. The wall split, and a pale hand came through, too long, four thick fingers, the same plated anatomy Nate had seen in other Rejection events, but larger. The arm forced the opening wider, and a creature pulled itself through, crouching beneath the station ceiling. Nearly three metres tall. Six limbs, two heavy rear legs, four arms arranged along a narrow chest. Pale plates overlapped its torso like armor hammered directly over muscle. Its head had no visible eyes. The mouth opened vertically.

Tarin looked at Nate. "Do your walls always do this?"

"Recently."

The creature moved. Dorn intercepted it, and Third Circuit current hit the station like pressure before a storm. She drove one strike into its upper body. The creature crossed two arms, and the impact lifted it from the ground. It hit a pillar. The pillar broke.

The creature stood again. Its plates had already begun closing over the damage. Nate knew that part. Restoration. So did Dorn.

"Same family."

The creature lunged. Dorn met it, fast, too fast for Nate to join cleanly.

Then a second white line opened behind them. Darek swore. Another creature pushed through, smaller, still larger than a man. Darek opened his Second Circuit, and his damaged ribs made him hesitate. Nate saw it. So did the creature. It charged Darek.

Nate moved. His Second Circuit filled. Killing Step, the familiar timing coming easily now. He reached the creature’s side and struck Graveshare into the gap beneath its lower arm. The blade entered, but not enough. The creature twisted, and one arm caught Nate across the chest.

He flew. His back hit an old ticket machine, metal folding around him. Air left his lungs, pain spreading across his ribs.

The creature turned back toward Darek.

Nate pushed himself upright. Warbody waited. He knew the medical reports. He knew the warnings. He had promised nothing, and that helped.

He activated it.

The world did not slow. Nate accelerated. Current tore through both Circuits, his throughput jumping so violently that his vision sharpened at the edges. His heart struck once, hard. His muscles tightened. Then something inside Warbody released, and his body stopped asking permission.

Nate crossed the platform. He had intended three steps. He reached the creature in two. Too fast, his right foot landed badly, and his ankle screamed. Warbody ignored it. Nate nearly did too.

The creature swung. He went beneath the arm, his spine bending farther than he would normally risk at that speed, no hesitation, no protective correction. He came up inside its reach.

Killing Step. Current changed halfway through the movement, and the imperfect timing Rovan had made him practice suddenly had room to breathe. Warbody did not replace it. It made the consequences enormous.

Nate’s second half-step changed direction so sharply that his knee almost failed. He appeared at the creature’s back, nothing like teleportation, but Darek’s face told him what it looked like from outside.

Nate drove Graveshare between two plates. The creature tried to turn. He pushed deeper, more current, more force. His shoulder gave a warning. Warbody lowered it. Nate felt the exact moment something tore, and he kept pushing.

Graveshare entered the creature’s chest. The restoring plates tightened around the blade. Nate remembered the breach. Don’t let it close. He twisted, pulled, then stepped through with his entire body. The internal structure broke. The creature convulsed. Nate ripped Graveshare sideways, and it collapsed.

Three seconds. Maybe four.

Nate stood over it breathing hard. Nobody spoke. Then his right knee buckled, and pain arrived all at once. Shoulder. Ankle. Knee. Lower back. Two fingers. His chest.

Warbody was still active. He shut it off. The difference was horrible. His body immediately reported everything he’d done to it.

Nate dropped to one hand. Seris reached him first. "What did you do?"

"Used it."

"I can see that."

His shoulder was already swelling. The medic knelt beside him. "Don’t move."

"Wasn’t planning to." That was almost true.

Dorn was still fighting the larger creature twenty metres away. She didn’t need help. One final strike broke through its chest, and it stopped restoring.

Dorn turned. Her gaze went from the dead creature beside Nate to the distance he’d crossed, then to his leg.

"How long?"

Nate looked at Seris. "How long what?"

"Activation."

Seris checked the scanner. "Nine seconds."

Nobody said anything for a moment. Nine seconds.

Nate looked at the creature he’d killed. A strong restoring anomaly that would have forced a real fight yesterday. Nine seconds.

Then the medic touched his shoulder. Nate nearly blacked out.

The other half of the bargain. Medical found two partial tendon tears, a strained knee ligament, microfractures in his right foot, muscle damage across his back. The shoulder was the worst, not destroyed but bad enough that normal recovery would take weeks.

Nate sat on the edge of a field cot while the medic finished listing injuries. Darek stood nearby with his vest off and his ribs wrapped.

"Nine seconds."

Nate looked at him. "You keep saying that."

"You injured six separate structures in nine seconds."

"Five."

The medic looked up. "Six."

Nate stopped arguing.

Seris sat across from him. She hadn’t said much. That worried him more than shouting would have.

The medic prepared an immobilizer. Nate looked at his shoulder. Body Memory waited. He had never tried restoring this much fresh damage at once, not after a Skill had deliberately driven his body past its own safeguards. There was one way to find out if the theory was right.

Seris saw his attention shift. "What now?"

"I need to test something."

The medic frowned. "No."

Nate activated Body Memory.

Pain changed direction rather than vanishing. His Core dropped, fast, and hunger hit him almost immediately. The torn tissue in his shoulder pulled toward what it had been less than ten minutes earlier. Healthy. Used. Conditioned. His.

The swelling began to recede. The medic froze. Seris stood.

Nate continued. The ankle next, then the knee. Core kept falling. His stomach cramped. He stopped before exhaustion could take the rest.

Silence filled the medical room. The medic scanned him again, then again. "Shoulder tear reduced by seventy percent."

Darek looked at Nate. The medic moved to his knee. "Inflammation dropping." Another scan. "The microfractures—" She stopped.

Nate waited.

"Mostly closed."

Seris was staring at him now, not at the scanner. At him.

Nate felt exhausted, hungry enough to eat whatever existed within reach. But his shoulder moved. His ankle held weight. His knee hurt instead of failing. Warbody had damaged him in seconds. Body Memory had repaired much of it in minutes. The Core he’d spent stayed spent, and the strain through his Circuits still burned. But the body itself, the combination worked.

Nate looked down at his hands. For the first time since Awakening, he started to see what his build might become. Warbody could force a human body beyond what it was designed to survive. Body Memory could bring that body back. And Rovan had spent his entire life teaching efficiency to a man who had once needed to protect every movement.

Nate smiled.

Seris saw it. "You look pleased."

"I am."

"You just tore yourself apart."

"Less than before."

"Nate."

He looked at her. She pointed toward his empty food tray. "Your Core is nearly drained, your pathways are irritated, and you’ve eaten three emergency meals in twelve minutes."

"Four."

The medic silently placed another container beside him. Nate opened it.

Seris stared at him. Then, despite herself, she laughed once. It didn’t last.

She sat beside him. "This doesn’t make Warbody safe."

"I know."

"It doesn’t make the cost fake."

"I know."

"You cannot repair Circuit damage the same way."

"I know."

She watched him for a moment. "You’re going to use it again."

Nate ate another mouthful. "Yes."

Seris rubbed her forehead.

Darek looked toward the dead creature outside the medical partition. Nine seconds. His expression had changed. He still thought Nate had made a reckless decision, and that hadn’t gone away. But now he had seen what the decision bought.

Across the room, Field Command carried the captured attacker toward Operations. Alive. Someone had tried to keep Warbody out of Imperial hands, and Nate had put it somewhere they hadn’t planned for. Inside himself.

And judging by the way the prisoner kept looking back at him, that was not an outcome anyone had prepared for.