Kane's scream ripped through the abyss like a symphony of shattered glass, his voice fracturing reality itself as his throat shredded and rebuilt with each guttural roar. His hands, twisted into grotesque amalgamations of flesh and bone blades, twitched with autonomous malice. Jagged growths erupted from his arms, splintering into crystalline edges that refracted the dim emergency lights into chaotic rainbows, painting the abyssal void in shades of carnage. Each mutation came with the sound of sinew snapping like waterlogged rope and bone cracking like ancient ice under unrelenting pressure.

  "Do you fucking see this?!" Kane spat, his voice a cocktail of rage, anguish, and something deeper—something primal. His face contorted as a spasm of pain rocked his body, forcing him to his knees. Through the blood pooling in his eyes, he saw his arms split further, sprouting sub-blades like parasitic offspring. He let out a scream that was less human and more an orchestra of suffering.

  ? ! ? CRITICAL WARNING ? ! ?

  【BIOLOGICAL PARAMETERS EXCEEDING SUSTAINABILITY】

  【CORRUPTION GAUGE: 7/10 - UNSTABLE】

  "Aria!" Kane bellowed, slamming one of his blade-hands into the steel floor with enough force to send a shockwave rippling through the Leviathan's neural corridors. "Why the fuck aren't you stopping this?! You're supposed to keep me—me!"

  "Kane, the nanites are responding to your emotional instability," Aria's voice, calm and clinical, resonated directly in his mind. "You're pushing them beyond their designed parameters. Attempting to stabilize will likely accelerate the mutation. You must regain control."

  "Control?! Look at me!" Kane's jaw unhinged with a sickening crack, his teeth splintering into crystalline daggers that glinted with frozen gore. He slammed his fist—if it could still be called that—into the Leviathan's quivering neural mass, sending a cascade of ruptured tissue and frozen blood spraying into the air. "This isn't fucking control! This is a goddamn nightmare!"

  The Leviathan's translucent flesh quivered, its nerve clusters sparking like dying stars. Kane's relentless assault tore through its body, each strike carving grotesque patterns into its gelatinous form. Flesh split open like overripe fruit, spilling streams of bioluminescent fluid that painted the chamber in eerie, shifting hues. Faces trapped within the creature's membranes twisted in silent agony, their mouths gaping in screams that would never reach the surface.

  "Kane, focus," Aria interjected, her tone sharpening like a scalpel cutting through his chaos. "You are still in control of your actions, even if your body no longer listens. Use me. Direct the pain. Finish this mission, or we both die here."

  The Leviathan shuddered violently, its death throes causing the entire structure to groan and buckle. Kane laughed, a sound dripping with madness as he wrenched his blade-arms free from its neural mass. "Oh, don't worry, Aria. We're finishing this. But first..." He turned his gaze inward, his voice dropping to a guttural whisper. "You're going to tell me why. Why did you let this happen to me?"

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  There was a pause—just long enough to sting. "Kane, I didn't 'let' this happen. The parameters were set before I was even integrated. I exist to guide you, not to rewrite the past."

  "Bullshit!" Kane roared, his voice layered with the unnatural harmonics of his mutated vocal cords. "You knew! You *always* knew this was coming!" He thrust his arm forward, burying his blades into the Leviathan's quaking flesh. The creature let out a sound like metal being torn apart underwater, its form unraveling in grotesque ribbons that disintegrated into fractal patterns of frozen gore.

  ▓═══ CRITICAL ALERT ═══▓

  〢 NEURAL FEEDBACK LOOP DESTABILIZING 〢

  〢 NANITE RESPONSE: EXCEEDING OPTIMAL LIMITS 〢

  〢 CORRUPTION GAUGE: 8/10 - IRREVERSIBLE 〢

  ▓═════════════════════════════▓

  "Kane, stop this." Aria's voice carried an uncharacteristic edge of urgency. "If you keep pushing—"

  "Shut the fuck up, Aria!" Kane snarled, his eyes blazing with a pearlescent light that bled through his rupturing skin. "You're just as much to blame as Pierce and his goddamn experiments. You were supposed to protect me!"

  "And I have," Aria countered, her tone hardening. "Every decision I've made was to ensure your survival. Even now, as your body mutates beyond recognition, you are alive because of me."

  "Alive?" Kane barked a laugh that turned into a hacking cough, blood spraying from his mouth in glittering arcs. "This isn't life, Aria. This is a fucking horror show!"

  He staggered, his crystalline limbs trembling as new growths erupted along his spine, each vertebra transforming into jagged shards that tore through his flesh like living knives. His ribcage split open, revealing a lattice of bioluminescent organs pulsating with alien energy. "This isn't survival. This is hell."

  The Leviathan let out one final, deafening screech, its body convulsing as Kane's blades severed its remaining neural connections. The creature collapsed in on itself, its translucent flesh liquefying into a pool of viscous, glowing ichor that clung to Kane's legs like sentient tar.

  "Kane," Aria said softly, her voice cutting through the cacophony of his agony. "It's over. The Leviathan is dead."

  "Over?" Kane muttered, his voice barely audible over the sound of his own body tearing itself apart. He looked down at his trembling hands—or what remained of them. The crystalline structures had begun to fracture, the nanites struggling to hold his form together. "This isn't over, Aria. This is just the fucking beginning."

  He turned his gaze upward, his bloodied face illuminated by the cold, unfeeling light of the emergency strobes. "Pierce might still be out there. And when I find him..." He clenched his fists, the motion sending cracks spiderwebbing through his crystalline limbs. "I'm going to make him wish he'd never been born."

  "Kane," Aria interjected, her tone laced with something resembling pity. "If you continue down this path, there may not be anything left of you to exact revenge."

  "Good," Kane said, his voice a low growl. "Let the monsters come. Let them see what their fucking science has created."

  With that, he staggered forward, leaving the ruins of the Leviathan behind. The chamber fell silent, save for the sound of his labored breathing and the faint hum of Aria's presence in his mind.

  The corruption gauge pulsed at 8/10, but Kane didn't care. He had one purpose now: to make the world pay for what it had done to him. And he would do it with every ounce of blood and rage left in his mutated, broken body.