Chapter 134: Convergent 4
BOOOOM!
The combined attack met it head-on, and the collision produced no sound at first—only a thin, expanding distortion where light bent incorrectly and distance lost meaning.
Then it collapsed.
A fracture appeared in the air.
It was just a narrow separation between layers of the atmosphere, like two sheets that no longer aligned. It held for less than a second, then began to close immediately, edges drawing together with increasing speed.
Francis did not hesitate.
SWOOOSH!
He moved through it.
The moment his body crossed the boundary, everything changed.
His body adjusted before thought could catch up.
At a cellular level, oxygen dependency was no longer relevant.
His bloodstream did not rely on gas exchange. Instead, the hemoglobin analog within his system began binding directly to residual energy particles in the surrounding vacuum, extracting usable charge from quantum fluctuations rather than atmospheric oxygen.
Mitochondria-like structures in his cells shifted into a dormant oxidation cycle and replaced it with direct energy conversion, stabilizing production through field resonance instead of combustion.
In simple terms, his body stopped "breathing" and started sustaining itself through ambient energy extraction.
There was no panic response. No deprivation signal. The feedback loops that would normally trigger suffocation had already been rewritten long before this moment, tuned to recognize vacuum as a neutral state rather than a hostile one.
His muscles loosened slightly as his body recalibrated. Blood flow redistributed to reduce unnecessary pressure gradients. Neural activity stabilized as temperature regulation shifted from convection-based cooling to internal radiation control, releasing excess heat as low-level particle emission.
The result was immediate efficiency.
He did not need air.
He did not even register its absence as loss.
"That's handy," he chuckled under his breath, more amused than impressed, as if testing the sound in the empty space around him.
Behind him, the fracture closed completely.
The world he just left sealed itself off, as if nothing had ever been opened.
Well. technically, he was the only one who could perceive the restriction. From any outside point of view, he had only struck empty air.
"Let's see if this will work."
He closed his eyes.
When he opened it again, he was somewhere else.
A human body.
The capital city stretched around him. People were either panicking or hauling what they could from their homes. Some ran with packed bags held too tightly, others abandoned everything halfway through the street.
On large screens mounted across buildings, broadcasts played without interruption.
Not warnings about beasts.
Not reports of battle.
Only the same silver, now stretched out like an ocean.
It had already spread across nearly half the continent. The estimates on screen kept changing, each update worse than the last. The capital, they said, would be reached within a day.
He turned his head slightly.
Around him, the city was breaking apart in different ways.
Some people were looting what was left, moving with quick, sharp motions, avoiding eye contact. Others drank openly in the streets, leaning against walls as if waiting for something final to arrive and finish the decision for them.
A few just stood still.
Crying without sound that carried far enough to matter.
Death was not the part that weighed on them most. It was the waiting—knowing it was coming, and still having time to think about it.
He would not even be shocked if some had already taken their own lives.
Francis closed his eyes again and reached outward, connecting with the nearby humans.
Unlike before, his parasites was no longer visible. It moved through the air without form, spreading quietly across the city. It did not take long for him to link with nearly everyone in range. He moved through them one by one, skipping from mind to mind until he found what he was looking for.
Inside a warehouse somewhere in the capital were Samantha and John. Unexpectedly, several members of the Covenant had also gathered there. Aris was among them.
They were speaking over each other, voices rising and breaking, trying to force order.
Samantha stood near the center of the room, hands clenched at her sides.
"This is on you people," she said. Her voice was tight, but steady enough to carry. "The Covenant brought this into the world. You, your decisions, your silence when it mattered."
John stepped slightly between her and the others without fully blocking her view. His posture stayed controlled, but there was strain in his face.
"That's not helping," he said. "Blaming each other right now doesn't change what's outside. We need a way out of the capital before it reaches us. Our best option is to get an airship."
"We already are out of options," Samantha snapped back. "You keep saying 'we' like there's still something left to coordinate. Look at the screens. Look at the reports. Half the continent is gone."
Aris leaned against the edge of the table, arms folded. She hadn't raised her voice yet. When she finally spoke, it cut through the argument more cleanly than shouting would have.
"It's not a beast," she said.
That made the room quiet for a second.
Samantha turned toward her sharply. "What did you just say?"
Aris didn't move. "That thing. It doesn't behave like an organism in the way we understand it. There's no centralized neural structure. No feeding pattern. No survival instinct in the biological sense."
John frowned. "Then what is it supposed to be?"
Aris exhaled slowly. "Maybe it's the planet's retribution?"
"That's not an answer," Samantha retorted. It seemed her personality had become much bolder since Francis's DNA had been integrated with hers.
Lightning erupted from her right hand, while her left ignited with flames. The ground beneath her began to tremble, small cracks forming as pressure built
Francis was taken a back by this.
He had not expected the power of the Kings to manifest in Samantha at all.
This wasn't a simple genetic transfer.
It meant that his connection to her wasn't limited to DNA. It extended deeper, into something less defined—something closer to a shared framework of existence, where abilities didn't just transfer, but resonated.
A metaphysical link.
His mind processed the situation quickly, breaking it down. His best hypothesis was that the Kings' powers were tied to the soul itself—an embedded authority that wasn't purely physical or genetic in origin.
That would explain why Samantha could access them.
Which also explained the limitation he was seeing now.
She could manifest the Kings' powers because they were resonant at a foundational level, but she couldn't access the other abilities he had absorbed. Those were layered talents, tied to his own body rather than the underlying soul structure that the Kings' abilities were anchored to.
Nevertheless, his connection to her had deepened. She was the only reason he had returned to the capital at all, driven by a concern for her well-being more than anything else.
(I'll help you all survive.)
His voice carried multiple tones at once, layered and overlapping, speaking through a single point.
"You!" Samantha moved instantly, vanishing from her position and reappearing in a strike aimed straight at him.
But Francis was already gone.
He had transferred into another host before her attack could land.
Samantha stopped herself mid-motion. The strike never completed. She stood still, recognizing what would have happened if she had followed through—an innocent body destroyed in place of the real target.
Her expression tightened as she scanned the room, realizing how easily he could force that outcome again.
(Don't be too impulsive, Samantha. I'm here to protect you,) A child stood where he spoke, looking out of place in the middle of the room.
"Stop hiding."
Samantha raised her hand, and ice gathered in her grip, forming a blade in a slow, tightening spiral of frost.
(I'm not hiding. I really want to save you because you're the closest thing to a daughter I have in this world,)
"D...Daughter?" she was lost for words.
(It might be hard to accept, but when I was inside you, part of me altered your biology. That's why you started becoming stronger, why you began manifesting power.)
She wanted to argue, but this explained many things.
(Stop hesitating. I won't be in this world for long anyway. I just want to give you all a chance to survive. Inside the underground level of the military base in the eastern port, there's an airship. It's not operational, but it could be fix. If you can get to it, I can find a way to make it work and get you out of the atmosphere.)
"L—leave the atmosphere?" she shot back. "You want us to go to space?"
(Yes. Right now, it's the safest place. The silver anomaly will keep growing until the entire world is consumed by it.)
"I…"
"We will follow your instructions," John answered.
"Wait—why are you making the decision?"
"Samantha, listen. It has saved your life multiple times. It might be a monster, but there's no denying it's protecting you. And if we take advantage of that, we can save more lives. Look around."
He gestured toward the young children—family members of the Covenant, gathered quietly at the edge of the room.
(He's right. Right now your options are limited. It's better for everyone if you cooperate with me.)
"What if it's a trap?" she asked.
(It's not. If I wanted to kill you, I could have done it already. Although you're strong now, your current power isn't even ten percent of mine.)
In reality, he was being generous with that estimate. She was likely only reaching one or two percent of his actual strength.