Mated to the Beast of the Wasteland novel Chapter 194

Chapter 194 Old Memories

Chapter 194 Old Memories

Out in that hellscape of taint, the strange little Cryolotus terminal still had a signal.

It had saved him when he was lost at the source.

He took the terminal, and he took her with it.

• 20 Free Coms

Opening the terminal required Elara’s blood, so Maddox kept her around like a living blood bank.

“Elara’s all grown up. Old enough to bite the hand that fed her. Twenty years ago I pulled you out of a coma at the source of the taint. The Cryolotus terminal as a thank-you gift. I never saw a problem with How does someone turn out this ungrateful?”

A bitter smile pulled at Elara’s mouth. Maddox couldn’t even remember how he’d really saved her. The whole thing was almost laughable.

“You pulled me out of a giant lizard’s jaws, then quietly pocketed the Cryolotus my mom left me. That makes you a thief. I could have given you the Cryolotus. What you shouldn’t have done was use me and ⚫ bond with me just to swallow Gillian’s White Griffin.”

Each of them read something off in the other’s face.

Down to their last breaths, neither of them had any reason left to lie.

“I bonded with you, sure. Not because I love you. Only to unlock the second-layer access code on the Cryolotus System.”

Maddox felt like he was swinging at empty air.

Meanwhile, the airships under Cryolotus control had reached the base housing.

The crash of metal rang out across the sky.

Airships slammed into each other overhead. Lasers ripped through the dark. The protective dome shielding base housing rocked under the assault, ready to fail at any moment.

Merrick pushed the White Griffin System straight to its limit.

The two top-tier wrist terminal systems began calculating each other’s weak points.

The females and children of base housing had been evacuated well clear of the area. Watching the flames rip through their homes, every one of them was crying. Their houses couldn’t be saved.

“Let’s keep moving. Commander Cole will pull through.”

“Captain Reed, aren’t you coming in?”

Freya was directing grip-buggies into safe positions, her own vehicle taking up the rear.

“I’m fine. I’ll go in last. I’m young. Let the kids and the elders go first.”

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11:32 Wed, Jun

Chapter 194 Old Memories

+25 Free Coms

Only after everyone had filed into the underground shelter did anyone notice Freya’s vehicle hadn’t followed.

“Gillian and Grandma are still out in base housing. They haven’t been evacuated yet. How can I leave?”

Her fingertips tapped the steering wheel. Freya had already turned back toward base housing.

Her alluring eyes tracked the two systems tearing each other apart in the sky, and a flare of deep blue surged through them.

Then a deep blue firebird rose out of her chest, circling around her body in graceful flight. The sight was breathtaking.

“Blue, once you’ve swallowed both the White Griffin and the Cryolotus, we’ll take Grandma and Gilljan home. Should we take Elara too? She’s only my copy. A bioclone carrying twenty years of my memories. I’m a little jealous of her, what do I do about that?”

“Fine, fine. We’ll take her too.”

Freya muttered to herself and rubbed the side of her head where a dull ache still lingered.

When the White Griffin had first devoured a piece of the Blue Phoenix System, the Blue Phoenix mainframe core sleeping inside Freya had woken up, and the memories she’d lost for twenty years began surfacing again.

She remembered her days at the research base, and her feelings cycled through joy, then rage, then quiet

acceptance.

Then yesterday, when the White Griffin swallowed another fragment of the Blue Phoenix, the mainframe core finally met the conditions for a backup reboot.

Blue’s backup woke up inside her body.

That was the unique feature of the Blue Phoenix System.

Legend held that the phoenixes of old could rise reborn from fire. This one was no exception. As long as the main chip remained inside her body, the system could regrow and reload itself.

The grip-buggy parked a short distance from base housing, wrapped in a faint blue glow. The two terminal systems overhead never registered its presence.

Back then, a giant lizard had carried Freya away from her parents, and she had watched them die with her own eyes while baby Gillian lay unconscious nearby.

The main culprits behind the lab massacre were the Phoenixkin who had built the base in the first place.

Once they’d gotten hold of the purge-creation method, they released every experimental beast in the lab to stage the scene as a mass killing by tainted beasts.

The lizards hadn’t taken young Freya outside. They carried her deeper underground, marking her as food storage for the larger beasts.

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