A three-foot fracture opened across the cave roof with the sound of a snapped pine tree.
Dark rock shards rained down, shattering against the stone benches like brittle glass.
Through the opening, the dark underbelly of the high sky was visible. A churning mass of golden clouds punctuated by the blinding flashes of sky-high moving strikes.
“The bedrock is shearing,” Meng Shan called from the cave entrance, his shield wedged into the doorframe to keep the top door beam from caving in. “The mountain’s load-bearing spine has two hours left. When it goes, this entire peak drops fifty thousand feet into the lower air.”
“Two hours is plenty,” Lin Ke said.
He was still seated on the floor before the Precursor console. His right arm was bound in linen, the two silver wires protruding from his flesh humming with cold, steady shaking.
The physical connection was holding.
Ten gigabits per second of pure, unattenuated Ancient bandwidth was coursing through his glassy glass waveguides, bypassing sky static entirely.
