Pinned beneath Grimm’s sixty-ton gravity paw against the shattered altar wall, Grand Flesh-Architect Osric Malveaux realized that his combat chassis had reached load-bearing and living failure.
His cut knee actuators were leaking high-pressure high-pressure oil across the stone. His four cut spine channels were smoking like burned chimneys. And the twelve grafted organs in his chest were thrashing in end-post, chaotic desynchronization. His compound eye had cracked down the center, leaking yellow vitreal fluid across his withered human cheek.
Yet even as his physical body crumbled, the madness that had burned up him for one hundred and sixty years burned with feverish, world-ending intensity.
“You think you have won, Vance?” Osric wheezed, his vocoder whistling with clockwork feedback as dark, dark blood bubbled from his lips. “You think you can preserve this dying world? If I can’t climb as Father Genesis, then humanity will drown in the deep pit with me!”
With a desperate, convulsive burst of his living left arm, Osric reached into his open sternal cavity. His trembling, man-made fingers grasped a crimson, armored toggle switch wired directly into the base of his main myocardial graft: THE Earth-shaking OVERRIDE SHUNT.
Before Arthur could step forward, Osric wrenched the switch down.
