The pain was a nova, exploding behind Alex's eyes, ripping through every nerve. His absorbed powers, once distinct tools, were now warring factions within him.
The Enforcer's Strength felt like tearing muscles, the Lieutenant's plasma a scorching fever, the raw electricity an uncontrolled convulsion. The Echoes were a screaming chorus, threatening to obliterate his sense of self.
He was a ship breaking apart in a storm.
"Hold him down!" Voss yelled, her voice strained. Kai and another Crow pinned Alex's thrashing limbs. His skin was hot to the touch, arcing with miniature lightning strikes.
"I can't get a stable reading!" Voss exclaimed, her med-scanner's display a blur of critical warnings. "The energy fluctuations are too chaotic! It's like his Absorber Gene is trying to reconcile fundamentally incompatible energy states without proper integration protocols!"
Lena rushed over, her Mind Core pulsing wildly, her face etched with distress. "His mental signature… it's fracturing! The Echoes are overwhelming his consciousness!" She reached out, tentatively, towards Alex's head. "Maybe… maybe I can help ground him. Create a psychic anchor…"
"Be careful, Lena!" Kai warned. "If his mind shatters, it could take yours with it!"
But Lena was already closing her eyes, concentrating fiercely. She placed her fingertips gently on Alex's temples. "Alex," she murmured, her voice a lifeline in the storm. "Alex, can you hear me? Focus on my voice. Just my voice. You are Alex Ren. You are not them. You are Alex."
Through the agony, through the cacophony of alien wills, Lena's mental touch was a sliver of cool calm. He clung to it, a drowning man grasping a rescue line.
The alien vision intruded again, not as a flash, but with a strange persistence. The glyph, the crystalline city, the robed figures. The resonant chime. This time, it wasn't just a sound; it was a frequency, a vibration that seemed to resonate deep within his bones, harmonizing with something ancient in his mutated DNA. It was almost… soothing.
Control isn't suppression, a thought, not an Echo, but something new, something emerging from the depths of the vision, whispered in his mind. It is… balance. Resonance.
Balance. How could there be balance in this internal war?
"He needs to discharge the excess, unstable energy," Voss said urgently. "But a raw dump like before could kill him in this state, or level this entire section of the hub!" She looked around frantically. "Is there anything here… anything that can safely absorb a massive, uncontrolled energy release?"
Kai scanned their dilapidated surroundings. "Old power conduits, maybe? But they're probably fried or shielded."
Alex, writhing, his consciousness flickering, focused on that resonant chime from his vision, on Lena's anchoring presence. Balance. Resonance. Discharge… safely.
He thought of the Null-Field, its principle of energy negation. He thought of the raw electricity he'd pulled from the junction box, so wild and untamed.
What if he didn't just release the unstable energy, but tried to… convert it? Neutralize its harmful aspects using the phantom imprint of the Null-Field logic?
It was a monumental gamble, a desperate leap of faith based on fragmented understanding and alien whispers.
"The… the first mech I took down…" Alex gasped, his voice a tortured rasp. "Its core… it's still there. Damaged… but…"
Everyone stared at the inert Stalker Mech lying nearby, the one he'd disabled with a chaotic energy pulse.
"You want to discharge into that?" Kai asked, incredulous. "It could reactivate it, or worse, make it explode!"
"He's trying to find a compatible… or at least sacrificial… energy sink," Voss realized, her eyes widening. "The mech's systems are already scrambled. It might be able to absorb the chaotic frequencies without… catastrophic failure."
With a monumental effort, Alex, guided by Lena's mental support and that strange, alien resonance, tried to focus the warring energies within him. He didn't try to control each power individually.
Instead, he focused on their chaotic interplay, and then, using the faint, almost instinctive understanding of the Null-Field's dampening properties he'd brushed from the UGF officer, he tried to… filter the discharge. To guide the most volatile, unstable elements towards the downed mech.
It was like trying to aim a lightning bolt with sheer willpower.
A torrent of multicolored energy, shot through with black static, erupted from Alex's body, not in a concussive blast, but in a directed, sizzling stream towards the disabled Stalker. The air crackled, the smell of ozone overwhelming.
The downed mech convulsed violently. Its lights flickered. Its limbs twitched. For a terrifying moment, Alex thought it was going to explode.
But then, with a final, shuddering groan, the mech went still, truly inert this time. A wisp of acrid smoke curled from its joints. The violent energy Alex had unleashed seemed to have been… grounded. Neutralized by the mech's already ruined systems, which acted like a massive, chaotic resistor.
Alex collapsed, limp but no longer convulsing. The terrible pressure in his head receded, the screaming Echoes subdued to a dull, manageable murmur. The wild electrical energy was gone, or at least, greatly diminished. He felt utterly, completely scoured, but… whole. His own.
Lena swayed, pulling her hands back, her face pale but relieved. "He's… he's stable. His mind is… quieter."
Voss's scanner beeped with more regular, though still weak, readings. "The cascade has stopped. He… he channeled it. He actually channeled an active systemic energy rebellion into a controlled discharge." She looked at Alex with utter astonishment. "I've never seen anything like it. The Absorber Gene didn't just let him take in power; it let him manage a catastrophic overload by instinct and… something else."
Kai let out a shaky breath. "Kid, you have the worst luck and the most insane solutions I've ever seen."
Alex lay there, breathing raggedly. He felt weak, but the internal war had ceased. The alien chime still echoed faintly in his mind, a comforting hum. He'd survived. And in doing so, he'd learned something profound about his abilities. It wasn't just about absorbing and combining; it was about balance, about understanding the fundamental nature of the energies he wielded.
"The UGF drones," he rasped, his first coherent thought. "Are they…?"
"Still out there," Lena confirmed, checking her datapad. "But they haven't advanced. They're likely waiting for reinforcements or a clearer signal, especially after your… fireworks."
Alex knew they were living on borrowed time. But now, there was a sliver of hope. If he could achieve that balance, that resonance… maybe his idea for a stealth field wasn't so impossible.
"Voss," he said, his voice stronger than he expected. "That research you mentioned… Project Echo-Five. The alien artifacts. The UGF didn't just suppress it because the Absorber Gene was dangerous, did they?"
Voss looked down, a shadow crossing her face. "No," she admitted softly. "They suppressed it because we were on the verge of proving that the Absorber Gene wasn't just linked to alien tech. We believed it was the key to it. The human component in a symbiotic bio-technology far beyond our comprehension. They feared what it could unlock. What we might unlock."
A key. The glyph from his vision. The resonant chime.
His destiny, it seemed, was far bigger, and far more alien, than just surviving the UGF.