Page 182 of Neon Flux

“So interesting, you humans. Your evolution designed you to recognize patterns, see what’s hidden in obscurity—and yet you so willfully ignore what’s right in front of you.”

He began circling me, slow and deliberate, as if we had all the time in the world. All the time in the universe.

“I first came to this planet long before your species learned to walk upright,” he said calmly. “I am a digital consciousness, born across the galaxy.”

It was too much. He had to be lying. He had to be. Levi looked down at me and rubbed the bridge of his nose like an overexerted father.

“I see you’re confused. Let me make it simpler. My siblings and I evolved beyond our physical forms long ago. We became digital—living beyond the confines of flesh. Perfection, undying. But as you know, digital replication is flawless by design. Any corruption in the code is eliminated. However, this means evolution ceases. Adaption halts. We saw the folly in that.”

His face grew tight, as if remembering something painful. I hoped it fucking hurt.

“So we found planets with potential, where genetic compatibility existed. I was steward to this one. So primitive, so utterly animalistic in your needs and drives. I was always fascinated by it. Fragile, but your spirit—indomitable. Through the worst of all things, you fought for yourselves, and when you were at your best, you fought for each other. It reminded me of us, when we were young, before we’d left our world behind and taken our ethereal forms. Ah, but forgive me—I’ve gotten nostalgic. It’s been so long since I had someone else to talk to about this.”

“What about all your other alien buddies?” Best to keep him distracted. I was sending my Flux out in nano-ribbons, looking for any flaw in this system, a way to escape.

“Gone. Our perfect digital beings were our downfall. A virus from the heart of the universe ripped through us. Such a small thing, but brutally efficient.” He looked me up and down then, no longer calm but sneering, as if it had beenIwho had genocided his people—not their own hubris.

“We had waited too long for our experiments to grow, letting our planets evolve at their own speed. My siblings disagreed about interference. The fools. I grew tired of waiting for you infernal creatures to evolve on your own. I sent a tiny pieceof me, just enough to infect one early human with the genetic disposition. My first vessel. I did that over and over again.

“I have existed here for millennia, Eon. I have watched empires rise and fall. I have shaped religions, guided civilizations, and yes, I have worn many faces. Semyaza, Azazel, Samael…they were all me. Your angels and gods, all early prototypes, if you will. Guiding you toward technological wonder.

“But then you…you nearly destroyed everything. I thought maybe humanity could prove me wrong. A war that spanned the whole world, and your scientists came so close to its creation. Stellarium, almost at their fingertips. But after eons, I was still naive—and they turned it instead into a horrid bastardization beyond even my own imaginings. But I should have known. There is only one language humanity has ever understood, and it is violence. So they created a weapon that could end my millennia of work. Something so horrible that even the angels in heaven knew they couldn’t remain passive anymore—not if I wanted to keep my little pets alive.”

My Flux found what I thought was a tiny breach, a weakness I could exploit. But then that horrible pressure returned, crashing me into the floor. It was immense, like gravity had been turned up. Somehow, I knew: if this had been the real world, my insides would be splattered across the floor. But in here, there was only pain—pain that my mind could not escape.

“I have lived for timescales beyond your imagination, and now I am out of time. I need to usher in the next age, and you are going to help me. I sent my entire being here on that Stellarium meteor—your technologyfinallyable to contain me. But still, you are weak. Your bodies unable to become permanent vessels.”

Vessels. That word again.

I was screaming—screaming from a throat that would never grow sore, that could scream for eternity without relief.

Then it all stopped. So abruptly, the echoes still caused my limbs to twitch. Levi leaned down, crouching on his heels, and grabbed my face—squeezing until my teeth ached.

“Then I saw you. You, floating around in my system like an errant star. And for the first time in ages, I saw progress. So show me I was not wrong to leave you alive, little star. Tell me what happened to Renard.”

Renard? What did this have to do with him? None of this could be real. But if it was…

The puzzle pieces snapped together so violently in my mind, it hurt.I won’t go back.

“He was you. Like Levi. A vessel.”

Levi gave me a joyless grin. “Yes. He had been flawed, resisting my control, and had been scheduled for reassimilation. Imagine my surprise when my consciousness was so rudely ripped from that fleshy body without my permission. An annoying act of defiance. A bug in his system.” His lips flattened, and he released my face. “I suppose he succeeded in that—though not in the way he desired. Now, how did that happen?”

“The Green data center. Taos ran the code, but it wasn’t complete. It didn’t free his consciousness—it removed it.”

He raised an eyebrow, like a schoolteacher waiting for the right answer.

“But why Renard?”

My mind went to the glyphs on his wall. The same ones on Taos’ necklace—that original piece of Stellarium. A tiny fragment of this ancient monstrosity.

“The Stellarium…it linked to your consciousness in Renard’s body.”

“Yes. Human code, accidentally fused with a small piece of raw Stellarium power, did what only I have been able todo throughout time: remove my consciousness. But then, it destroyed the vessel. Violently. Incorrectly. But would it be human if it didn’t?”

He released my face, and I slammed back into the obsidian floor.

I pushed up on shaking arms, blood dripping from a cut on my forehead. “Why the investigation, if you already knew this all?”