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Chapter 22: Information (Part 1)
Pain moved through my body in waves.
Not the sharp, immediate kind — the deep, bone-level ache that sets in after everything is already over. Muscles that had been torn apart and forced back together protested with every small movement. My head felt packed with something heavy and hot. Even breathing took deliberate effort.
My reserves of universal energy had been scraped nearly dry.
Every instinct told me to lie down. Close my eyes. Just for a few minutes.
I forced myself upright instead.
My gaze found Khan immediately.
He lay several meters away, completely motionless. For one second, my heart stopped.
"Khan."
Nothing.
Then — barely — his chest rose. Fell.
Relief and something colder crashed together inside me. Alive. But the margin was thin enough that I didn't want to think too hard about it.
I couldn't rest yet. If I delayed his treatment much longer, I didn't want to follow that thought to its conclusion.
The digital ground shimmered faintly beneath me as I sat cross-legged.
It didn't feel like soil, or stone, or metal — something in between all three. Every surface in this dimension had that quality, as if reality had been assembled from countless microscopic panels of glowing glass. Beneath the translucent floor, streams of symbols drifted in slow patterns, like fish moving under ice.
Even sitting on it felt wrong. Like the solidity was a decision the floor had made, and could unmake.
I closed my eyes.
Since entering this dimension, I'd been running entirely on the energy I'd arrived with. No time to replenish. Now there was.
I slowed my breathing and let my senses expand outward, reaching toward the strands of universal energy drifting through the surroundings.
The moment I touched them —
Pain.
My body flinched hard. The energy flooding into my meridians felt wrong in a way that was difficult to describe. Universal energy was supposed to feel clean. Natural. Like cool air after being inside too long.
This was the opposite.
Freezing — not physically, but conceptually. Artificial. Every strand carried something dissolved into it: tiny fragments that brushed against my awareness like microscopic shards of glass. Information. Data. Numbers. Code. As if someone had taken an incomprehensibly vast database and reduced it to particles, then saturated the air with it.
The foreign substance immediately tried to merge with me.
A burning sensation crawled up my arm. My eyes snapped open.
Glowing symbols were spreading across my skin — strings of unfamiliar characters, rows of shifting numbers, fragments of equations, letters from scripts I didn't recognize. They moved beneath the surface like luminous veins, climbing from my fingertips toward my shoulder.
A translucent screen materialized in front of me.
**Datafication: 2.0% → 2.1%**
I severed the connection instantly.
The energy cut off. The burning faded. The symbols dissolved into faint motes of light and disappeared.
I let out a slow breath.
"So. That's how it works."
I stared at my own hands. A cold knot had settled in my stomach, but my thoughts were moving clearly now — everything clicking into place.
The creatures. Their digital bodies. The corrupted energy. The percentage that kept appearing on our status screens.
This wasn't ordinary universal energy. It had been contaminated. Every time we absorbed it, that contamination seeped in — slowly, patiently — changing us. Making us compatible with this world.
Or transforming us into part of it.
I looked toward the horizon. Towers made entirely of geometric light pierced the sky. Mountains flickered at their edges as if someone had forgotten to finish rendering them. The air itself shimmered with invisible streams of data.
This dimension wasn't just strange. It was infectious.
My thoughts drifted to the monsters from the fight. Their bodies had looked almost biological. Almost. But every wound had revealed circuitry and streams of data beneath the flesh. Had they always been that way? Or had they once been something else — something that had simply been here long enough?
A chill moved through me.
If that percentage kept climbing, would we eventually look the same?
I didn't know. And I had absolutely no intention of finding out.
I reached into my pack.
Depressingly sparse. A few crushed nutrition bars, a partially damaged water container, some basic medical supplies.
I tore open a bar and shoved half of it in my mouth.
Dry. Powdery. Like compressed cardboard with chalk mixed in.
I grimaced. "Still awful."
Military rations managed to get worse every year through what I could only assume was deliberate engineering. I swallowed with difficulty and grabbed another. Then another, working through them methodically.
Each one replenished small amounts of biological energy — energy that couldn't be used directly, but could be converted through careful meditation. Slowly, inefficiently, painfully.
I closed my eyes again and focused inward.
The food began breaking down. Chemical energy, biological energy — I guided it through my body step by step, refining it until it gradually became something usable. The conversion rate was embarrassingly bad. Nearly eighty percent lost in the process.
But it was clean.
No data. No symbols. No glowing veins crawling up my arm.
The screen stayed still.
**Datafication: 2.1%**
Good. That confirmed it. A safe method existed — slow and wasteful, but safe. At least until the food ran out.
That thought wasn't comforting. I set it aside.
The restored energy wasn't much. Enough for a few techniques. It would have to do.
I turned toward Khan.
The closer I got, the worse it looked. His broad chest had partially collapsed where several ribs had shattered. Both arms bent at angles that made me look away for a moment. Deep lacerations ran from his shoulders down to his ankles. Burns had blackened entire patches of skin. Blood had soaked through nearly everything he was wearing.
Even unconscious, his face was tight. Like some part of him was still in the fight.
My chest tightened.
This was my fault.
Not because he'd been careless — he hadn't. He'd stood alone and held back things that had no business being held back, buying us time with his own body. Refusing to retreat. Refusing to go down even when going down would have been the reasonable choice.
If I'd been stronger. If I'd ended the fight sooner. If I hadn't burned through everything I had before it mattered most —
"No."
I shut it down. Regret wouldn't fix a single broken rib. Action would.
I placed both hands gently against his chest. My breathing steadied. Universal energy moved from my core into my palms — warm, stable, familiar.
"Transfiguration."
The technique activated.