Chen Ran's biocrystalline fingertips brushed the control panel of the stellar gate generator, their liquid-metal runes twisting into DNA double helices—each base pair radiating searing blue light. He heard cries echoing from Orion, 120,000 light-years distant, the sounds transmitted through quantum-entangled gene dust resonating in his veins.
"Alert! Genetic contamination threshold breached." A synthetic female voice screeched as holographic alarms erupted across Chen's retinal HUD. Three hundred meters below the ice shelf, three bronze-hued stellar gate generators melted, their liquefying metal droplets coalescing into embryo-like organisms. Their surfaces crawled with serpentine patterns mirroring Chen's spinal cryomarrow helix, each respiration port emitting ozone-laced liquid nitrogen.
Chen's right arm jerked involuntarily. His jadeified index finger pressed a crimson button. The instant contact ignited seismic tremors across Antarctica. The melting generators screamed with infantile wails, their armored plating fracturing to expose pulsating mechanical hearts.
"You made the wrong choice." Su Yanran's voice reverberated from above. Chen looked up to see her shattered suit suspended in the ice dome, her skin veined with argon-blue circuitry. Most horrifying was her chest—a mechanical heart pierced by a broken bronze gear, its rotating teeth sparking with electrostatic discharges.
Chen's biocrystalline carapace splintered. His left arm reemerged as mechanized bone, nanites swarming through his veins to form silver-white reticulated networks. As the first metallic tendril breached his fingertip, Su's pupils fractured into twelve concentric rings, each reflecting apocalyptic scenarios of civilizations destroyed.
"Behold your magnum opus." Su tore open her torso, revealing the Mechanized Church's signature serpent insignia. The pattern resonated with Chen's collarbone brand, triggering subglacial detonations. The three generators levitated, their hulls peeling to expose blue-black cartilage cores—biological engines thrumming with primordial rhythms.
Chen's vision hemorrhaged crimson. When clarity returned, he saw colossal holograms etched into the ice: twelve stellar gate generators operating on oceanic planets across the galaxy. Their metallic tentacles plunged into submarine volcanoes, ejecting not magma but liquid metal infused with mechanical shards. These droplets solidified into humanoid forms, each bearing Su's serpentine tattoos.
"This is the true purpose of the Sowers." Su's mechanical heart exploded, shrapnel reforming into bronze gears midair. "Every terraformed world is a gene crucible—and you," she jammed a gear into Chen's spinal interface, "are the master key."
Agony warped Chen's reality. His bones jadeified; cryogenic blood crystallized into fractal ice. Su's shrapnel embedded in his veins, her mechanical heart fragments freezing him into an ice sculpture. Beneath him, dormant bronze gears awakened, their surfaces etched with Chen's avatars across timelines.
"The game concludes." Chen's larynx vibrated with synthetic resonance. He seized a nearby gear, discovering seven-million-year-old mammoth DNA frozen within. As it spun, twelve laser beams erupted from the ice, stitching a Dilapidated Disk pattern into the stratosphere.
Subglacial chains shattered. Chen's reflection fractured into countless mechanized whales—each bearing the generators' biological cores. Their jaws disgorged not seawater but gene-fragmented liquid metal.
"Did you think freezing me would end this?" Su's ice sculpture exploded, exposing serpentine tattoos oozing argon-blue ichor. The fluid reacted with Chen's cryogenic blood, catalyzing tectonic spasms. Beneath the ice, leviathan gears assembled, broadcasting chrono-echoes:
70,000 BCE: Cro-Magnons dissecting mammoths on bronze altars, their ocular implants mirroring stellar gate ignition cores.
Arctic Research Station: Colleagues grafting mechanical hearts into cryo-pods, their spines branded with Chen's spinal helix.
Future Self: Standing amidst mechanized leviathans, wielding Su's melting heart.
"Stop!" Chen's roar shattered three warships. His mechanical wings split, revealing nebula-core energy vortices. The first laser struck, reversing the liquid metal ocean. Ten thousand gears ascended, forming a gene-chain constellation.
Su's sculpture detonated. Her biomechanical husk bled silver liquid, each droplet projecting gene-serum vials—silver for cybernetic assimilation, emerald for genetic purification, violet for nebula-born consciousness.
Chen's carapace disintegrated. His reflection multiplied into 36,000 shards: in one timeline, he became the Church's god; in another, a leviathan guardian; in the farthest future, a rainforest breeder of untainted mammoths with Su.
"Time's up." The projections merged, their syringes piercing Chen's twelve pressure points. The serums crystallized into micro-gears embedding in his vasculature. He heard cosmic wails—twelve generators etching his genome into exoplanetary cores.
The metal ocean stilled. Chen's wings retracted, revealing a gene-key glowing in his palm. Its engravings morphed into Su's visage. Inserting it into his waist console, Antarctica levitated as thousands of bronze pillars assembled into a stellar gate frame.
Su's husk melted into mercury-like fluid, revealing twelve mechanical hearts. "Remember," her heartbeat echoed faintly, "you are both sower and reaper…"
The gate ignited. Chen's reflection splintered into countless iterations—each piloting variant generators. As light consumed him, the final vision showed Su's heart melting into text:
"You never touched truth. You were merely code in their sowing."