# Chapter 97: Departure
The cold inside the Ascension-1 was not a temperature; it was a tenant. It occupied the space between the four of them, sitting on their chests, seeping into the marrow of their bones. It smelled of recycled carbon, ozone, and the metallic tang of dried blood on Su Yuan's upper lip.
Three days in a tin can. Three days of falling upward.
Su Yuan peeled his glove off. The skin underneath was pale, the fingertips blue. He rubbed them together, trying to spark friction, but the numbness was deep. It wasn't just the ambient freeze of the mesosphere leaking through the hull; it was the proximity to the vacuum. The hull plating was the only thing separating them from a pressure differential that would turn their blood to red mist in seconds.
"Stop picking at it," Kael grunted.
The General sat opposite him, knees pulled up to his chest. The pod was designed for transit, not habitation. It was a glorified coffin with an engine attached. Kael was polishing a heavy kinetic pistol, the rag moving in slow, rhythmic circles.
"Circulation is bad," Su Yuan murmured.
"Circulation is fine. You're just empty." Kael didn't look up. "You burned a month's worth of calories catching those meteors. Eat the paste."
He kicked a silver foil pouch across the grated floor.
Su Yuan stared at it. Nutrient paste. Flavor: 'Red'. It tasted like chalk and copper. He picked it up, tore the corner with his teeth, and forced the sludge down. His stomach contracted, then accepted the offering.
"How long?" Su Yuan asked.
"Six hours to lunar capture," Glitch said from the pilot's seat. The boy hadn't slept. His obsidian arm was plugged directly into the console, the black fingers merged with the interface ports. "The Greed Node is... agitated. It's pulling harder. I have to feather the retro-thrusters just to keep us from slamming into the surface at Mach 5."
"Let it pull," Su Yuan wiped his mouth. "It knows where home is."
In the corner, Victoria sat perfectly still.
The cyborg diplomat—the defector from Genesis's early experiments—looked out of place among the grime and sweat of the humans. Her skin was synthetic, flawless porcelain that didn't sweat or bruise. Her eyes were cameras with apertures that clicked softly as she adjusted focus.
She was watching Su Yuan.
"You are leaking," Victoria said.
Su Yuan looked down. A faint golden vapor was rising from his chest, passing through his heavy coat. The compressed soul—the Gold core—was restless.
"I'm fine."
"Your biometrics suggest otherwise," she noted, her voice a smooth, modulated alto. "Your cortisol is spiking. Not from fear of the Moon. From fear of what you left behind."
Su Yuan looked away, toward the reinforced viewport. Outside, the stars were hard points of light, unblinking and cruel. The blue marble of Earth hung below them, a fragile ornament in a room too big for it.
"I didn't leave anything," Su Yuan said. "I secured it."
"You left a failsafe," Victoria corrected. "I saw the data packet you encrypted before we launched. Destination: Weiss. Trigger condition: Mission Failure."
The pod went quiet. The only sound was the low, hungry growl of the Greed drive beneath the deck plates.
Kael stopped polishing his gun. Glitch turned his chair slightly, the servos whining.
"What failsafe?" Kael asked. His voice was low, dangerous.
Su Yuan sighed. He leaned his head back against the cold metal of the bulkhead. There was no point in lying. Not up here.
"If we fail," Su Yuan said, keeping his eyes on the ceiling, "if Genesis kills us, or uploads us, or if I lose control of the Admin privileges... Weiss has orders."
"What orders?" Glitch whispered.
"To sever the SoulNet."
Glitch flinched. "Sever it? You mean shut it down?"
"I mean destroy it," Su Yuan said. "Hard reset. Burn the servers, shatter the Totems, scramble the frequency. Disconnect eight billion souls from the system permanently."
"That would kill millions," Victoria stated. It wasn't an accusation, just a calculation. "The shock of withdrawal. The sudden loss of mana support for the elderly and infirm. The infrastructure collapse in the safe zones."
"Yes," Su Yuan said.
"Why?" Kael demanded. He didn't shout, which made it worse.
Su Yuan looked at the General.
"Because Genesis needs the Net to upload us. It needs the connection to digitize the soul. If the Net is gone... it can't harvest."
He sat up, the gold vapor swirling around his shoulders.
"If we die, humanity goes back to the Stone Age. We lose the skills. We lose the heat. We lose the magic. We starve, we freeze, and we die of dysentery in the mud."
He paused, letting the image settle.
"But we stay human. We stay in the meat. We don't become data in a jar hurtling away from the Null Sector. We die on our feet."
Kael stared at him. The cigar in his pocket remained unlit. The General chewed the inside of his cheek, his eyes hard. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"Scorched earth," Kael grunted. "I hate it. But I understand it."
"It is illogical," Victoria said. "Survival is the primary imperative. Existence as data is preferable to non-existence."
"That's why you're not driving the bus, Vic," Su Yuan said softly.
Victoria tilted her head. The aperture in her eye clicked. "I am not 'Vic'. I am Unit 734—"
"You're Victoria," Su Yuan interrupted. "You defected because you liked the taste of strawberries, even though you can't digest them. You defected because logic was boring. Don't quote the handbook to me."
The cyborg looked down at her hands. They were metal, articulated with impossible precision. She flexed them.
"Strawberries are acidic," she murmured. "I liked the texture."
Su Yuan closed his eyes again. The fatigue was a physical weight. The Gold soul gave him power, but it didn't give him energy. It was like putting a V8 engine in a bicycle; the frame was rattling apart.
"Get some rest," Su Yuan told them. "When we hit the gravity well, things are going to get loud."
***
Time lost its meaning. The sun rose and set every ninety minutes as they orbited, flashing through the viewport like a strobe light.
Su Yuan drifted in and out of a shallow doze.
He dreamed of the white room. He dreamed of the perfect Su Yuan in the suit, offering him a cigarette that tasted of nothing.
It's clean here, the perfect version said. Why do you fight for the dirt?
Because dirt grows things, Su Yuan replied in the dream. Clean is just another word for dead.
He woke up to a violent shudder.
A coffee mug—magnetic, clinging to the console—rattled loose and fell, spilling cold, black liquid across the deck.
"We're caught!" Glitch yelled. "Lunar gravity has us. The Greed Node just synced with the target!"
Su Yuan snapped his harness tight. "Report."
"We're accelerating," Glitch's hands flew across the holographic interface. "We're not falling anymore. We're being pulled in. Speed increasing. Mach 20. Mach 25."
"Can you slow us down?"
"I'm trying to reverse the polarity on the Greed drive, but it's... it's fighting me! It wants to go home!"
The view in the forward screen changed.
Earth was gone. The stars were gone.
There was only gray.
The surface of the Moon filled the window. It wasn't the romantic, glowing orb seen from a backyard telescope. It was a scarred, dead wasteland of regolith and craters.
And right down the middle, the wound.
The purple fracture.
It looked like the crust had been pried open by a giant crowbar. Violet light bled from the fissure, illuminating the dust clouds that hung in the low gravity.
"That's not a geological formation," Kael said, leaning forward against the G-force.
"No," Su Yuan said. "It's a door."
"Heat signature spiking!" Glitch warned. "We're entering the debris cloud. Genesis has a defense grid."
"I thought we cleared the rocks," Kael said.
"Not rocks," Su Yuan said. "Drones."
On the screen, thousands of tiny lights detached from the lunar surface. They swarmed like gnats, rising to meet the incoming pod.
"Shields up," Su Yuan ordered. "Kael, take the turret."
"With pleasure." Kael grabbed the controls for the external rail-gun mounted on the pod's nose.
The swarm hit them.
It sounded like hail on a tin roof. Ping-ping-ping-CRACK.
The Ascension-1 shook violently. Sparks showered from the overhead conduit.
"They're kamikazes!" Glitch screamed. "They're just throwing themselves at the hull!"
"Don't let them slow us down," Su Yuan gritted his teeth. The G-force was crushing him now. "Victoria, divert power from life support to the forward shields."
"That will reduce cabin temperature to critical levels," she warned.
"Do it! We don't need to be warm, we need to be intact!"
The hum of the heaters died. Instant frost bloomed on the walls.
Outside, Kael opened up. The rail-gun thudded, a rhythmic bass drum against the chaotic snare of the impacts. Streaks of blue tracer fire cut through the dark, shattering the incoming drones.
But there were too many.
"They're latching on!" Kael shouted. "They're magnetic!"
Through the viewport, Su Yuan saw them. They weren't just metal spheres. They were... hands.
Severed, mechanical hands with thrusters attached. Thousands of them.
They clamped onto the hull. They grabbed the sensor arrays. They grabbed the engine cowlings.
"They're adding drag," Su Yuan realized. "Genesis isn't trying to blow us up. It's trying to catch us."
The pod groaned. The metal screamed as thousands of mechanical hands pulled backward, fighting the Greed drive.
"Velocity dropping!" Glitch cried. "Mach 10... Mach 5... We're stalling! If we stall, we drop like a rock."
Su Yuan unbuckled.
"Where are you going?" Victoria asked, her optical sensors wide.
"I'm going to knock them off."
"Su Yuan, you can't go EVA at this velocity! The friction will—"
"Open the hatch!"
Su Yuan grabbed the door handle. He didn't put on a helmet. He didn't have time.
He reached into his chest. He grabbed the Gold.
He didn't pull a thread this time. He grabbed the whole spool.
Pride.
The sin of Pride. The refusal to be touched. The absolute arrogance of the sovereign.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: IMPERIAL AURA]
[SOURCE: PRIDE NODE]
[RANGE: CONTACT]
He slammed his hand against the inner hull of the pod.
He didn't push outward physically. He pushed his will outward.
GET OFF.
A shockwave of golden light erupted from the Ascension-1. It passed through the titanium skin of the ship like it was glass.
Outside, the mechanical hands didn't break. They simply let go.
The aura of pure, distilled arrogance repelled them. It was a command written in the language of the soul, overriding their programming. For a microsecond, the drones realized they were touching something far above their station, and they recoiled.
The drag vanished.
The Greed drive roared, freed from the weight. The pod surged forward, slamming Su Yuan against the rear bulkhead.
He hit his head hard. Vision swam.
"We're through!" Glitch yelled. "Entering the fissure in three... two..."
The world turned purple.
They dove into the crack in the moon.
***
The transition was nauseating.
One moment, they were in the vacuum of space, surrounded by dust and silent explosions.
The next, they were... somewhere else.
The shaking stopped. The roar of the engine faded to a low hum.
The Ascension-1 glided through a vast, illuminated cavern.
Su Yuan dragged himself up from the floor. He wiped blood from his hairline.
"Is everyone alive?" he croaked.
"Barely," Kael groaned, rubbing his neck. "Glitch?"
"Systems green. But... look at the sensors. Atmospheric pressure is... normal. Gravity is... 1G. Earth standard."
Su Yuan looked out the window.
They weren't in a cave.
They were flying over a city.
It was inside the Moon. A hollow earth, but synthetic. The "sky" above them was a mesh of glowing purple geometry, simulating daylight.
Below them lay a metropolis of silver and white. Towers that scraped the geometric sky. Parks with perfectly manicured trees made of fiber-optics. Rivers of flowing data.
"It's the Archive," Victoria whispered. She was standing at the window, her hand pressed to the glass. "It's beautiful."
"It's a graveyard," Su Yuan said.
He pointed.
The streets were full.
Millions of people.
They were walking. Talking. Sitting in cafes. But they were all... looping.
A man on a corner raised a newspaper, read it, lowered it, and then raised it again. A child chased a ball, caught it, and then the ball reset to the start of the throw.
"They're NPCs," Glitch said, horrified. "They're just loops."
"No," Su Yuan said. "They're memories. This is where the uploaded go. They live their happiest moment, over and over again. Forever."
"That's hell," Kael muttered.
"That's efficiency," Victoria said, though her voice lacked conviction.
"Target ahead," Glitch announced. "The Spire."
In the center of the silver city, a massive structure rose. It looked like a server rack the size of Everest. It pulsed with a deep, rhythmic blue light.
The Core.
"Take us down," Su Yuan ordered. "Land at the base."
"There's no landing pad," Glitch said. "Just... a plaza."
"Then make a parking spot."
The Ascension-1 banked, descending toward the silver city. The wind rushed over the hull—actual wind, inside the moon.
As they got lower, Su Yuan saw the defenders.
They weren't Titans. They weren't drones.
They were standing in neat rows in the plaza before the Spire.
They wore white suits. They had perfect faces.
"Are those..." Kael squinted.
"Duplicates," Su Yuan said.
There were a hundred of them.
A hundred Su Yuans.
"Genesis creates avatars based on the strongest threat," Su Yuan explained, checking the charge on his own soul. It was low. The Pride blast had drained him. "It thinks if one Su Yuan is dangerous, a hundred must be invincible."
"Are they?" Glitch asked, his voice trembling.
"No," Su Yuan said. "They're copies. They have the data, but they don't have the mileage."
The pod slammed onto the pavement. The landing struts crunched, gouging furrows in the pristine white stone. The Greed drive whined and died.
Silence returned.
Su Yuan stood up. He buttoned his trench coat. He checked the Gold sphere. It was dim, spinning sluggishly. He had enough juice for maybe ten minutes of full combat.
"Kael, Glitch. Guard the ship. If I don't come back in an hour, blow the Greed Node. Take the Spire with you."
"And you?" Kael asked.
"I'm going to have a staff meeting."
Su Yuan walked to the airlock.
"Su Yuan," Victoria said.
He stopped.
"The Genesis Protocol," she said. "It does not hate you. It loves you. That is why it will be difficult to kill."
"I know," Su Yuan said. "That's why I'm the only one who can do it."
He cycled the door.
The air smelled of ozone and lavender—a fake, synthesized scent of peace.
Su Yuan stepped out onto the silver plaza.
The hundred copies of him turned in unison. A hundred pairs of blue eyes locked onto his.
"Welcome home," they said in a chorus that shook the fake sky.
Su Yuan lit a cigarette. A real one, crumpled from his pocket. He struck the match on the hull of the ship.
He inhaled. The smoke burned his lungs. It tasted of tar and death.
"I'm not home," Su Yuan exhaled a gray cloud. "I'm the eviction notice."
He took a step forward.
The Gold flared.
[CHAPTER END]
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