Page 117 of Stars in Umbra
A few more moments of silence passed before Mirage murmured, ‘The neural controller is free.’
Mirage extracted it through Mo’s nasal cavity and caught it in a confinement field, guiding it with trembling hands into a small Faraday cage built for handling dangerous micro-technology.
She slammed the case shut and locked it.
‘It’s done,’ Mirage murmured as the lattice and shield went down.
Everyone exhaled.
Mo suddenly woke and then slumped back into the hover bed, breathing hard, but alive.
Rina surged forward and reached for her man’s hand.
Mo’s fingers curled around hers, firm and tight, his eyes glistening with emotion.
With effort, he propped himself up on one elbow to study his found family gazing back at him.
‘Sante, Rina, Mirage, Ki’Remi, Issa, Zane, and Selene,’ he growled. ‘I owe you my life.’
‘Oh, we intend to make you pay,’ Zane drawled with a gleam in his eye.
‘Thank goodness,’ Selene breathed, locking eyes for a moment with her best friend, who raised her chin.
‘Sante sana,’ Rina mouthed back.
Kainan huffed in relief. ‘Mirage, Rina, take care of him, and Mo, we’ll speak when this freakin’ mission is over. I assume you’re strategizing how to take thekinaisdown who tried to snuff us?’
‘We are,’ Rina confirmed. ‘Mo and I will work with Mirage on it.’
‘You have carte blanche. Given ‘em hell,’ Kainan growled.
MOLAN
Mo sat still, the light inside the Faraday cage dimming aroundhim, though it couldn’t hide the storm crackling beneath his skin.
His physique now betrayed flashes of an older, more vast force.
The removal of the node had somehow unleashed more of his inner force. A thin gold current flickered up his forearms, radiant like liquid lightning.
It spread, his body rejecting the restraints of mortality.
Mirage circled him, tablet in hand, her brow furrowed as layers of real-time cellular data streamed across her screen.
Issa, via holo stream, floated behind her, her eyes shadowed with dawning awe.
‘There’s no doubt now,’ Mirage murmured. ‘His cells are riddled with fragments of divine code. This isn’t enhanced physiology, it’s Sacran in origin.’
‘What does that make me? Mo rasped.
Issa stepped forward in the projection. ‘Your cellular makeup and the sigils on your chest prove one thing. You’re a god-scion. A direct descendant.’
Mo blinked, tension bristling in every inch of him. ‘What thefokkdoes that even mean?’
‘It means,’ Issa said with care, ‘that you are the child of a Sacran high deity.’
He flinched. The room tilted.
Heat spread across his back and under his skin.
