All Chapters of The Alpha's Regret: His Secret Hybrid Heir: Chapter 161 - Chapter 167

Marcus said "no" before Elena finished turning back toward the platform."Two minutes," she said."Your nervous system is in the same state mine would be in if I'd just put both hands through a running engine for seven minutes," he said. "I'm not being conservative. I'm describing the failure mode." He held her gaze. "If you anchor another full-capacity pulse right now, you don't collapse. You don't recover slowly. The damage is permanent and rapid in onset." He was precise because precision was the only thing she responded to when she'd already decided to do something. "I'm telling you the second instance of overcurrent at this interval will cause a neurological failure you don't come back from."Elena stopped.Marcus wasn't a man who overstated. She'd worked with enough doctors to know the difference between clinical caution and clinical accuracy.She stopped."Then we find something else," she said.Maya already had the blueprint.She'd pulled it from the geological survey stack tha

The morning light at 6 AM was the specific cold clarity of early winter at high elevation, and it did nothing to improve the situation.Sarah had the energy accumulation profile on the main display — a graph that showed the Leviathan's thermonuclear battery output climbing in the specific curve of a system building toward operational discharge. Not a spike. A sustained climb. The kind that had a designed endpoint rather than a variable one."Four hours was the countdown from activation," Sarah said. "The accumulation rate is consistent with that timeline. We're at forty-three minutes elapsed." She looked at the graph. "Three hours and seventeen minutes remaining.""What's the discharge mechanism," Marcus said."The plasma core drill fires a sustained sub-orbital beam that heats the target's geological substrate to the melting point of the constituent minerals," Sarah said. "The Shatter-Peaks' primary composition is limestone and granite." She pulled the material data. "Limestone melts

The medical bay at 10:15 AM had the specific atmosphere of a room where significant things had recently happened and the people in it were now doing the quieter work of accounting for those things.Aris was at Xander's hands.The neuro-stabilizing wraps required replacement every four hours, and the previous set had been applied before the return wave, which meant the previous set was not calibrated for what the return wave had done to the thermal injury profile. Aris removed them with the methodical care of someone who understood that speed and care were not the same thing and had chosen care.Xander watched the ceiling.He was doing the thing he did when something was uncomfortable and he'd decided discomfort was not a useful occupation — focusing on something neutral and letting the rest of his attention run elsewhere."The four remaining gunships," he said. "Altitude and sweep pattern.""I'll get Sarah to set up a terminal," Elena said, from the chair beside the cot."I can walk t