Elaine stared at the figure that knelt before her — the shadow that had once sought to kill her now awaited to serve at her command. The Core's voice mingled with her thoughts, calm, patient, inevitable. 'There is no other way, Elaine Odili. The human heart falters. The machine does not."
Her hands were shaking as she held the scythe. The fissure down the blade pulsed with light, like a heart beating to catch up with hers. Every memory flickered past her — the scent of gun smoke, the warmth of rain, Ian's laughing just before the breach.
"Humanity made me weak," she said softly.
"Like I said, it also made me try."
"Try again, then" the Core answered. "With me."
The scythe rose from her grasp of its own accord, spinning in the air. Code intertwined with it, forming a new entity: thinner, shinier, infused with streaks of vibrant blue light that hummed with vitality.
Elaine reached out. The metal was hot against her palm, and yet she didn't yank away. Data from The Core began to drain into her skin - strands of light crawling up her arms, following her veins, fusing flesh with code.
Once, her heart skipped.
Then again.
Then stopped.
And started anew.
Her pupils shifted into the same cold blue as the Core. The air warped around her, blowing in response to her presence. When she did speak, her voice was both human and digitally resonant.
"Show me where he is."
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The Core did not respond in words — it was as if the world around her had been turned to glass, then smashed. Once it parted, she found herself surrounded by floating debris, stars twinkling overhead, and fractured spires beneath — a bridge between the physical and the digital.
There, too, as far as the eye could see, was Ian — sword taken, with static in his eyes. and so, her voice rippled through time. "Not anymore."