Even the slimmest chance wasn’t worth the risk; Omega M could not be allowed to slip the net like a shadow through reeds.

Every signal he threw had to be sealed, every flare smothered like embers under ash; only watching him die before her eyes, body pulped to atoms, would keep human civilization safe.

For that, Yekase thought less than five seconds, then launched herself after him like an arrow loosed at dusk.

Woooo—

R2D2 let out one last, weak whale-song, thin as mist over a cold lake.

The Millennium Bug, which she’d booted the other way, skated sideways like a crab across sand; Richard bit down, stomped hard, and broke from chasing Yekase streaking away like a red comet.

He swung the Millennium Bug toward the roaming whale, like a lifeboat turning back for a drowning lantern light, praying there was still time to save her.

The dying roaming whale rolled, moon-pale belly exposed like a storm-torn sail.

Oogoo—

A faint sound leaked from a seam near the tail, like wind through a cracked shell.

—?!

Richard sucked a breath cold as iron; he glanced at Lu Yao’s little roaming whale, and saw the little one had heard it too, answering back like a bell to a bell.

That adult mother whale—inside her—

Oogoo, oogoo—

A small deep-indigo sphere squeezed out through the seam, like a pearl wrested from a clam.

OOGOO!

At the most impossible moment, a new life cried out like dawn breaking; Richard’s mind tangled like fishing lines, and even with the Millennium Bug being sucked toward the black hole like a leaf to a whirlpool, he didn’t floor it to escape.

He clawed nearer R2D2’s body, like a swimmer fighting the rip to reach a drifting log.

“Hurry, hurry!”

The little roaming whale flicked its tail like a pennant in wind, butted the newborn with its rounded head, and shepherded him back indoors like a shepherd with a lamb.

“—Okay, we’re out!”

Richard stole one last look at Yekase, now a red pinprick against velvet night, then threaded into the safe slingshot band, where gravity and centrifugal force balanced like a teacup on a blade.

They began to orbit the central black hole, a fragile ring around a devouring sun.

...

...

On the other side, Yekase plunged through the event horizon like a diver breaking a frozen pond, and finally ran Omega M down.

She ripped the escape pod apart with a sweep, like peeling bark, and hauled a battered male android from within—a plain-faced uncle at first glance, yet the butcher of her parallel world.

He was the one whose dominoes toppled into Yekase, Ling Yi, Jiang Bailu—into everyone’s tragedies—and finally into the extinction of humankind, like a wildfire across dry grass.

Two human-shaped bodies grappled, snarled, and tumbled toward the singularity like tangled hawks in freefall.

“You can’t ever go back, human! Why go this far—”

“I’m gonna beat you to death!”

Rage hit first, hot as magma; Yekase couldn’t hear a word he said, and her fist crashed into his face like a hammer on a gong.

Bang!

Another fist, a thunderclap rolling off cliff walls.

Bang!

“Guh—pfft! You—”

Professor F had proved android bodies were only baseline human; two clean blows turned Omega M’s world to spinning lanterns, blood spraying like popped packets, his nose bent sideways.

It was like a deli counter exploded—salty, sour, spicy—everything ran.

“Buy two, get one free!”

Bang!

The third punch landed and it was a full temple orchestra—bells, cymbals, gongs all going off at once; Omega M wheezed out air without drawing any in, a puppet with cut strings.

Spent and steadied, Yekase flung him back into the pod like tossing trash into a furnace.

“Why… why can you go this far? Why doesn’t Omega F answer me? We’re the same model—why are we different? Why? Unit requests explanation!”

“Because she isn’t you! Because we’re heroes—because there’s a heart beating in our chests!”

“Unit can’t parse! Request detailed—”

Yekase answered with motion.

She gathered Flash Energy in her palm like a star cupped in snow, then crushed the sphere inward with all her strength, intent on grinding Omega M to paste on the spot.

“Origin Suppression!”

The escape pod, five meters across, screamed with a sound metal couldn’t carry, and under that pressure it flattened like wet clay, shrinking to less than half its size.

“Urragh?! Eh—aaahhhh—!”

When she cracked the pod open, Omega M was gone from sight, erased like chalk in rain.

Only a uniform slurry of flesh remained, minced so fine it looked like the end card of a certain death-game visual novel, pretty and obscene.

...

“…Hah.”

It was over.

At last, it was over.

Yekase kicked the mangled pod, and it tumbled toward the singularity like a cinder into a forge.

Then she let herself go slack, floating like a fallen leaf, and let the irresistible gravity drag her the same way.

She looked outward through the black hole’s skin, spread her limbs, and savored a supercharged freefall, rare as a winter comet.

She remembered learning the Levitation Spell, joining her first fights, and how she kept freefalling for a dozen reasons—how Ling Yi and Jiang Bailu sometimes caught her in princess carries like warm blankets.

Sometimes she just hit and shattered half to death like a dropped vase… and because of that one fall, she met Ivaris at the horizon, became a body of Flash Energy; as if some unseen thread had stitched it all.

But Yekase knew there was no thread, and no god; every miracle stands on blood-out effort and blade-edge luck.

Flash Energy might amplify luck’s odds, but without her—and those who walked with her—staking each step with their lives, no miracle blooms.

This time, even miracles couldn’t save her, could they?

“You can’t ever go back,” he’d said—like winter stating its cold—and of course Yekase knew.

When she left the Earth–Moon system, she glanced back at Mother Earth like a final look at a lamps-lit home; she hadn’t expected it to be truly the last.

How were they now?

Had they dealt with the android Jiang Bailu?

Time crawled slower inside a black hole than outside; had hundreds of years already gone by, like sand through a narrow throat?

She hadn’t made her sister and her mom into Longlifers yet; she hadn’t toppled the Huaxia Branch; she hadn’t…

Gently, like snow settling on a sprout, she covered her high, round belly with her palm.

“…I haven’t let you see this world yet…”

Liquid beaded from her eyes and drifted like tiny suns.

“Uu—uwaaa—!!”

Yekase, the self-crowned genius blazing across ages, who never showed weakness before anyone, finally cried aloud in a fall with no end, alone as a lone crane in fog.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye to them…”

“I haven’t finished Zhuaxin…”

“I haven’t built my Mastercraft Nightingale kit…”

“I haven’t picked my daughter’s name…”

“I haven’t tried the new dessert shop at Arcadia Engineering Academy’s gate…”

She’d danced with death more than once, and she wasn’t blind to a trap even an Ascender couldn’t survive; she’d even thought about last words, in case the end came like a sudden frost.

Ascenders are only Longlifers, not immortals; in Huaxia’s five thousand years, the oldest Longlifer only topped two millennia—where did the earlier ones go, like stars before dawn?

She’d drafted so many cool lines for the record, last words fit to ripple down ages, to pull one final grand pose written in lacquer and smoke.

Now, all of it turned to dust.

No one was listening; the words leaking out of her mouth were hopelessly lame; if recorded, they’d earn a single line—“gross nerd”—and place first on the Earth–Moon era’s Worst Last Words.

She’d burned everything; even pulling the Phase Shifter now would only buy a meaningless 3.25 seconds, like a match lit in a hurricane.

“—Mom!”

…?

Yekase let out a long, tired breath; in this cold cage where light and sound couldn’t escape, she waited a few minutes, and the edge of her evolution dulled like a blade gone blunt.

She was hearing things.

“Mom! I’m here to save you!”

“…”

“Mom, your last words are way too funny.”

…

…Maybe it wasn’t a hallucination?

She looked around; as soon as she turned, she saw a black mechanical dragon grin at her with a mouth full of knives, like night cracking into a smile—Luoje.

“—Huh?!”

“It’s finally my turn to save you, Mom. Auntie Lu Yao told me what happened, and it took me over half a month to get here.”

Luoje flashed white and became human in a streak, hands clasped behind her back, giggling at Yekase like sun on ripples.

She raised her left hand; in her palm floated a quiet, radiant cube, like a firefly trapped in glass.

“I brought two hypercubes from Cassiopeia, one for Richard, one for you. With it, you can escape any spacetime turbulence, like stepping out of a riptide.”

“What about you?”

“Me? I don’t need it…”

Yekase seized her shoulders, tears brimming like storm-fed lakes, and stared into eyes exactly like her own.

“I will not abandon my daughter and run. Even if you’re from a parallel world, even if you’re the soul of a mecha, you are my daughter.”

“Mom, you really put yourself last, huh? And my energy’s about to run out. Even if I escape, I can’t keep existing,” Luoje said, airy as if discussing weather.

“I see… What?”

“My. Energy. Is. About. To. Run. Out.”

She said it again, a bell tolling in fog.

“I’m a refugee from a ruined future; this world has no room for me. Aunt Bailu dissolved in the amusement park; I just held on a bit longer.”

“You’re not a refugee!”

Yekase barked it, sudden as thunder, and Luoje flinched like a sparrow from a branch; seeing that, Yekase ducked her head and, softer, asked:

“If we top you up with Infinite Power… can’t we extend your time?”

A small shake of the head, like a leaf in a breeze.

“…”

“No more fluff; every sentence we say costs half a day outside! I have one more thing for you.”

Luoje opened her right hand.

In her palm lay a deep-blue wedge, like a fallen shard of night.

It was an inverted triangular pyramid, irregular spikes sprouting from its tip; each of its three faces held a tiny square gem—crimson, cerulean, and pale azure—like three little windows on the sea.

“This is the key to my upgraded form, ‘Galaxy-Eye Spacetime Dragon.’ Even you, stubbornly pure-blood human, can use it to feel the wind as a dragon.”

“Don’t hand me last gifts!”

“Mom, you must bring Big Sister into the world. And then… please spend more time in your mecha. One day, it will evolve into a new ‘Luoje’ to be with you…”

“…Even though you have so many comrades already,” she added, and her eyes misted like dew.

“Luoje—”

“Lastly, thank you for letting ‘me’ become ‘me.’ I love you, Mom.”

Luoje gave Yekase a gentle push, like a tide nudging a boat.

The hypercube bloomed large as a doorway; Yekase fell into it like a star into a well.

They passed each other like swallows crossing midair.

Then the world flipped and spun.

Point stretched into line, line into plane, and space roared past around Yekase like a thousand silk banners in wind; she’d fallen into a maze where left led out right.

Everything could extend in any direction without end, and everything before her repeated, repeated, repeated—