Up on the high central platform, Davin Sorell felt the change in his rig. The purple tracking data crystals on the master console didn’t glow brighter. They flickered, dimmed, and began to spit showers of yellow sparks as the captive energy of Senn’s memories leaked out through Pella’s copper line.
“They’re dissolving it!” Sorell screamed through his cracked lips, his hands clawing at the bronze spokes. “The traitors are dissolving the sky matrix! They’re letting three hundred years of divine power wash into the sewer!”
In a frenzy of uncontrolled, world-ending pride, Sorell threw his entire body against the override wheel, using an iron pry-bar to force the bronze teeth past the final safety stop into the total stop peg. A position that locked the extraction cage into a permanent, non-reversing clockwork seizure. The bronze crown-ring eighty feet above the river began to glow with a dull, sickening cherry-red heat, baking the surrounding air until the rain turned to hissing steam before it touched the metal.
The central granite pier, already compromised by Morvan’s kiln line, gave a tremendous, groaning lurch that echoed from the riverbed to the High Terraces. The stone snapped another eight tiny fractions of an inch to the south. Three massive granite balusters snapped from the platform railing. It plunged into the boiling deep gap below with ear-splitting cracks. The machine was destroying its own bones to maintain its grip.
