Vaelen stepped over to Silas, looking down at the shivering Weaver. The commander checked his wrist display and nodded. "Forty years of data, perfectly intact. Remarkable."
He knelt by the terminal and pressed his palms against the cold glass of the primary data core. "Initiating connection," Silas whispered. The Conduit
Silas waded through the digital flood. The data was indeed corrupted, infected by a virulent logic bomb that twisted the information into terrifying, abstract shapes. He saw a digital leviathan rising from the sea of code, its body made of discarded files and broken algorithms. It lunged at him. Vaelen stepped over to Silas, looking down at
Gritting his teeth, Silas didn’t fight the entity. He became the conduit. Instead of resisting the flow, he opened his mind completely, letting the corrupted data stream through him. His silver palm-filaments began to glow a brilliant, furious blue. Remarkable
Silas set down his soldering iron and finally looked at the commander. Vaelen’s face was a map of scars and cybernetic implants, his eyes glowing a faint, menacing crimson. "Bleeding data is dangerous, Commander. You know what happens to Conduits who take on too much corruption. Their brains fry, or worse, they become part of the machine."