The operation to move the Diver from the Graveyard to Bren's workshop was a monumental, nerve-wracking task. It took the better part of a day, using Bren's powerful, resonant-powered salvage hoists and winches to carefully lift the dead ship from its cradle and haul it, inch by painstaking inch, across the groaning, unstable platforms of the decaying docks. Kael acted as a living sensor, his hands pressed against the ship's hull, listening for the tell-tale groans of structural stress, calling out warnings to Bren as she masterfully operated the humming machinery. Ria, ever the pragmatist, scouted the path ahead, testing the integrity of the causeways and ensuring their route was sound. It was a symphony of coordinated effort, a tense harmony of their disparate skills.
By the time they got the ship settled into the main bay of Bren's workshop, a palpable sense of shared accomplishment hung in the hot, sulfurous air. But the real work, the impossible work, was just beginning.
Bren's workshop, usually a place of organized chaos, was transformed into what felt like an operating theater. She rerouted the main conduit from her massive resonant power generator, a hulking beast of brass and crystal that took up a full quarter of the workshop, and hooked its heavy cables directly into the Diver's dead systems. Ria, meanwhile, set up her advanced diagnostic tools, a series of portable monitors and resonant scanners that she linked to the ship's engine core. Her screens flickered to life, displaying a chaotic, jagged scribble of conflicting frequencies.
The repair, as they had planned it, was a complex, three-part procedure, a delicate dance that required perfect timing and absolute trust.
Bren would be the Stabilizer. Her role was to use her generator to pump a low-level, stabilizing harmonic frequency into the core. It was a resonant tourniquet, designed to support the healthy parts of the crystal and prevent the entire thing from shattering uncontrollably when Kael applied his focused dissonance.
Ria would be the Monitor. Her eyes would be glued to her diagnostic screens, giving her a view into the core that Kael and Bren couldn't see. She had to act as the anesthesiologist, calling out readings in real-time, differentiating the sharp, jagged frequency of the Dissonant blight from the steady, warm sine wave of the healthy crystal. She would be Kael's guide in the darkness, and the first to warn them if the entire core was about to cascade into catastrophic failure.
And Kael… Kael was the surgeon. The scalpel. His job was to place his hands on the blighted core, listen to Ria's guidance, and use his Dissonance with a precision he had only ever attempted once before, on his own flesh. He had to shatter only the fractured, "dead" parts of the crystal, turning them into inert dust, without harming the fragile, healthy structure around them.
"Powering the stabilizing field," Bren announced, her voice tight. She threw a heavy lever on her generator. A low, powerful hum filled the workshop, and the massive crystal at the heart of the ship began to glow with a faint, steady, golden light.
"Frequencies are a mess, but the field is holding," Ria reported, her eyes darting across her screens. "I'm seeing the alien frequency. It's a sharp, jagged wave, concentrated in the peripheral fissures. The healthy resonance is a low, steady hum beneath it. Kael… you're up. Target the jagged waves. Avoid the steady one at all costs."
Kael took a deep, centering breath. He stepped up to the open engine housing and placed his hands on the massive, spherical crystal. It felt just like his leg had: cold where the fractures were deepest, sick, and vibrating with a grating, wrong energy that set his teeth on edge. This was familiar territory.
He closed his eyes and began his work. He let out a low, controlled, dissonant hum, channeling the vibration through his palms and into the core.
The crystal groaned, a low, pained sound that vibrated through the floor. The lights in the workshop flickered violently. The pain was not his own, but through the sensitive scars on his leg and the palms of his hands, he could feel the resonant agony of the crystal as his power warred with the blight within it. It was like holding the hand of a dying man and deliberately breaking his bones to set them straight.
He worked slowly, methodically, his brow beaded with sweat. He started with the smaller, peripheral fractures first, the ones furthest from the core's center. He targeted a single, ugly fissure and focused his song upon it.
"That's it," Ria's clipped voice cut through his concentration. "You've got it. The jagged frequency is destabilizing… hold it… hold it… okay, it's gone! That section is clean. Move to the next one, about four fingers to your left."
He followed her guidance, moving from one fracture to the next, a surgeon excising a dozen small tumors. Each successful cleansing left him feeling drained, but also filled with a fierce, triumphant energy. It was working. The process was slow, agonizing, and incredibly dangerous, but it was working. He could feel the crystal beneath his hands growing warmer, its healthy hum growing stronger as he cleared away the dead, dissonant tissue.
They worked in perfect, tense harmony for over an hour. Bren kept the stabilizing field steady, her powerful prosthetic arm making minute, constant adjustments to the generator. Ria called out a steady stream of data, her voice a lifeline in the resonant chaos. And Kael sang his song of unmaking, his precision growing with every healed fracture.
They cleared the outer layers, then the middle layers, working their way steadily toward the heart of the damage. Finally, only one major wound remained: the central, massive fracture at the very core of the crystal, the point of impact from the Guardian's attack.
"This is it," Ria said, her voice tight with tension. "The blight is deepest here. The healthy resonance is weakest."
Kael took a deep breath and focused his power on the final, central fracture.
The moment his dissonance touched it, the entire core began to vibrate violently. The low groan became a high-pitched, agonized shriek. The lights in the workshop didn't just flicker; they died completely, plunging them into the emergency red lighting powered by a secondary system.
"It's cascading!" Bren shouted over the terrifying noise, her prosthetic arm sparking as she wrestled with the controls of her overloaded generator. "The stabilizing field is collapsing! The whole thing's going to blow!"
Ria's monitors were a meaningless blur of red warning lights and screaming alarms. "I'm losing the signal! The frequencies are overwhelming the sensors! Kael, get back!"
But Kael couldn't. He could feel it through his hands. The core was tearing itself apart, the remaining healthy crystal not strong enough to withstand the resonant feedback loop he had created. In a few seconds, it would detonate with the force of a massive bomb, taking the Diver, the workshop, and all three of them with it.