The central lab of the Iron Ark grew intensely quiet, save for the rhythmic, high-pressure thrum of the dual-stage cold air compressors and the soft, musical bubbling of distilled heavy water in the potion-made condensers.
In the center of the razor-sharp enclosure stood the custom hyperbaric full-body VR metal tube. Built from three-inch-thick sight-grade fused quartz and banded by forged silver-steel-hardened carbon-iron squeezing rings, the vessel had been engineered to withstand pressures exceeding one mountain-crushing pressure. A portable recreation of the crushing sea-floor trenches where life first crawled from world-size ancient rifts.
Arthur Vance washed down the stainless steel compounding surface with chlorhexidine antiseptic, drying it with sterile lint-free drapes. Beside him, Toby Mallow held the heavy agate mortar, chilled to minus twenty degrees in a padded dry-ice bath, while Dr. Morrigan Calder monitored the digital pressure-transducer array.
“Explain the physical requirement of the hyperbaric vector, Toby,” Arthur commanded, adjusting the fine-scale hair-width on his potion-made scale. “Why can we not administer this reversion compound via standard intravenous drip or topical bath at air pressure?”
Toby pushed his glasses up his nose, consulting his field notes. “Because the Kunpeng lineage is fundamentally a creature of extreme gravity and water-pressure compaction. In the deep ocean trenches, water molecules are tightly packed into a denser, tetrahedral crystal-clear lattice. At normal air pressure—one bar—Echo’s cell walls are swelled. His spatiotemporal folds remain slack and uncoiled. If we introduce the crushed hydro-spatial core at one air, the space-folding energy will expand outward along the…
