Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 71 - Chapitre 80

Nikos reached out, grabbing Aris by the collar of his grease-stained flight suit, pulling him close until their foreheads rested against one another. The air between them was frigid, tasting of ozone and ancient, recycled rot."Look at me, Aris," Nikos commanded, his voice a serrated whisper. "Do you see this? Do you see how the light under my skin is pulsing? It’s not just the Ledger anymore. It’s the city itself, siphoning life from the only vessel it has left. If I die, the containment unit fails. If the unit fails, Andreas isn’t just dead—he’s erased. Is that what you want for him? To be a footnote in a history book written by Victor Kalos?"Aris blinked, his eyes darting to the shifting, bioluminescent maps playing out beneath the translucent skin of Nikos’s forearms. "It’s not just about Andreas, Nikos! It’s about you! You’re pregnant, for god’s sake. The strain… the sheer biological load on your heart… you’re cannibalizing your own reserves to keep him floating in that tank. If

"We aren't going to make it to the secondary vault, are we?" Aris asked, the words falling flat in the cramped, freezing air of the conduit.Nikos leaned his forehead against the cold steel of the stasis pod, his body trembling as the violet glow under his skin dimmed and flared like a dying star. "We are going to make it, Aris. We have to.""Look at the monitors, Nikos!" Aris gestured wildly at the flicking, malfunctioning holos projecting from the pod's interface. "The internal coolant is dropping. If the temperature hits critical, the liquid inside will freeze his blood solid. If I boost the power, the entire sector grid will blow, and Kalos will know exactly where we are because every light for three miles will go dark."Nikos winced, his hand instinctively dropping to his abdomen, shielding the bump beneath his tattered vest. "Then let them know. Let them come. I’d rather fight them in the open than watch him wither in this box.""You're not thinking straight," Aris hissed, grabb

Nikos pulled his hands back, clutching them into his armpits as if to trap the warmth he didn’t possess. The veins beneath his translucent skin pulsed with a sickly, rhythmic luminescence—a jagged web of violet light that seemed to be actively eating his capillaries."They’re turning to glass, Aris," Nikos whispered, his voice sounding hollow, like wind whistling through a cracked ribcage. "Just look at the edges of my fingernails. The Ledger... it’s not just using my metabolic output anymore. It’s rewriting the cellular structure of my hands. It’s making me part of the machinery."Aris didn’t look at the hands. He couldn’t. He stared instead at the massive, frost-caked door of the stasis pod, his eyes darting between the failing thermal gauge and the structural integrity readouts. "Then stop it," Aris barked, his voice sharp enough to draw blood. "Disconnect the neural tether. If you die, the Ledger goes dark, and maybe—just maybe—Andreas stays in stasis long enough for us to make a

"We die for him, or we live with the guilt of letting the only man who could stop this nightmare turn to rot," Nikos rasped, his voice barely audible over the low, discordant hum of the failing cooling system. He pushed himself off the wall, his joints popping with a sound like snapping dry twigs. Aris stood up, his face illuminated by the flickering, sickly violet light radiating from beneath Nikos's skin. "Guilt? You think I care about the morality of this? I care about the fact that my lungs are turning to ice while you play martyr for a man who hasn't spoken a word to us in three months.""He's not a man right now, Aris. He’s the anchor," Nikos said, his eyes unfocusing as a surge of data—raw, agonizing, and cold—flashed behind his retinas. "He’s the only thing keeping the city’s grid from collapsing entirely. If he wakes up in a state of entropy, he dies. If he dies, the grid fails. If the grid fails, the life support in the slums, the hospital, the wards... everything stops."A

Nikos clutched his midsection, his knuckles white as bone. The child within him stirred—not with the gentle flutter of life, but with a sharp, electric jolt that mirrored the Ledger’s volatile current."Don't," Nikos hissed, his teeth grit against the sudden, blinding ache. "Don't you dare bring them into this. That’s a line you don’t cross, Aris."Aris didn’t back down. He stepped into Nikos’s space, his shadow cast long and jagged against the weeping conduit walls. "It’s the only line that matters! Look at you. You’re barely tethered to this world. You’re becoming a bridge for electricity and history, and the further you walk down that road, the less of you is left to raise that kid.""I don't need to be whole," Nikos whispered, his voice trembling. "I just need to be enough. If I let go, the Ledger doesn’t just shut down—it wipes. It purges. Every sector currently siphoning power from this vault loses its connection. The gravity plates in the medical bays will fail. The air scrubbe