Page 79 of The Brotherhood

“What?” Quantum’s voice snapped as he turned his focus to the data.

“The sequence is compensating,” Harlow called out. “His adaptive evolution is finding alternatives. He’s not just using the Neuromancer, he’s rewriting its process. Look—” He gestured at the screen. “It’s feeding on the stored energy reserves, repurposing them as raw material. No external components needed.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Spook demanded.

Quantum’s gaze flicked to him. “It means his adaptive evolution is driving the reconstruction itself. The Neuromancer is merely a tool in his hands now.”

Inside the pod, Bishop’s body arched sharply, his muscles taut as the metal surface shimmered, the lights dimming for a moment before pulsing in rhythmic waves.

“Ah shit,” Harlow muttered. “Quantum, the process is accelerating. We’re seeing multiple phases merging into one.”

****

Silence.

Not the kind that came with emptiness. The kind that came before something huge went down.

A breath. His own. Sharp yet dragging through lungs that felt strange. Too strong. And heat. Beneath him, inside him, like fire threading through his bones.

His mind sped too fast. He sensed his brothers. Quantum. Harlow. His body struggled to catch up.

He inhaled, filling his lungs again, slower this time. Something was off. Not wrong—different.

Beth.

The thought hit so hard it burned him. He clenched his jaw and aimed all his focus on moving. His muscles coiled then his fingers flexed. The pod opened and cold air rushed in along with a wave of audible relief and shock. He moved his hand and touched a metal edge as someone breathed his name in a way that drove him to move. Samuel, he thought.

Bishop’s eyes were the last to cooperate and he immediately noticed the right one taking in more light than the left. Too much. He blinked and the pulsing glow refracted against glass and metal around him. Information flickered in the edges of his vision, instinctive, almost a blur and unreadable.

“He’s trying to get up,” 8-Bit worried.

“It’s okay,” Quantum urged. “Let him.”

He sat up and his sight vanished entirely as he detected the sound of surf at the back of loud machines. He lowered his head and focused, making out heartbeats. Breaths moving in and out of lungs. It was all… too loud, too much.

He blinked once and picked up blurry images. The second blink brought full clarity and sparks of numbers and symbols in the eye with too much light. Formulas, he realized.

He moved to stand and his vision and auditory cut out with the buckle of his body. 8-Bit cursed as strong hands gripped both his arms, holding him up. His breath suddenly caught with the lock of his muscles.

“What are we seeing?” Harlow wondered, a mix of awe and worry. “This a malfunction?”

Not a malfunction. A misalignment.

Bishop focused, shutting out the noise. Listening. Feeling.

“I’m overclocked,” he forced out, his voice sounding striated. The hands on him held steady, but he didn’t need them now. His body wasn’t weak—it was processing. He could feel it in every fiber of muscle, every nerve firing at hyperspeed.

“His vitals are… I think normalizing,” Quantum reported.

They were, but they weren’t normal. His pulse was slower than average, his lungs expanding deeper than before. And his blood felt like liquid steel with a lazy flow. As he took in all the changes, a sharp panic rose in the back of his mind at what was done. What he’d done. What he’d made himself into in that unforgettable hour of pain, death and the terror of never seeing his wife and son again, of being unable to protect them. What had it cost?

He wasn’t ready to see those receipts and focused instead on his recalibration. “My cells took over,” he explained. “They rewrote limits, but the wiring didn’t recalibrate fast enough. I’m running at max output, but my motor control is still syncing.”

Harlow let out a slow breath. “Did you just—feel that data?”

Bishop tilted his head, flexing his fingers. “No,” he said, his voice leveled now. But it sounded lower. Deeper. “I already knew it. I remembered it.”

“How do you feel?” Quantum asked.

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