So that was it.
He had outmaneuvered her yet again.
Perhaps he had never left at all. Perhaps he had been hiding in the shadows all along, watching in amusement as they slaughtered one another.
Yes, she should have realized it long ago. He was a bastard through and through. Back when they had worked together inside Leviathan, his terrifying schemes had brought the whole of Leviathan crashing down. Beneath that chaotic exterior lurked a calculating mind. He was a bastard whose cunning bordered on the supernatural.
But what could she do now...
If he really had entered the fray, who could possibly rein him in now...
Perhaps the Mother Tree of Desire had been right. If they could have briefly set aside their prejudice against flesh-and-blood life, perhaps things would have ended differently. But she knew that was impossible, because from the moment she had failed to kill Lynn, this entire situation had condemned her to staking everything on one desperate gamble.
Because if she really let the Mother Tree of Desire go, if she failed to distinguish herself, her personality was almost certain to be reset.
But at this very moment.
For the first time, she felt utterly powerless.
That sneaky bastard.
Never in her life had she hated a sneaky bastard so much. And what made it even worse was that this particular bastard was Lynn.
Gradually.
Amid that endless, deathly silence, she felt herself being dragged.
Within her consciousness, she helplessly closed her eyes.
That immense despair kept assaulting her consciousness, making her want to sob like a flesh-and-blood being.
Because she knew.
The Black Star Hive was almost destroyed. Amid that vast Flesh Plague, whoever was dragging her body could not possibly be one of her mechanical brethren.
There was only one possibility left.
Lynn...