DC : Architect of Vengeance

The neural pathways along the vault walls pulsed faster, their gentle blue glow shifting to warning amber as the massive door began to shake.

Each impact sent tremors through the chamber, but the fortress held—just as Emily's subconscious had designed it to.

Alex watched the child streak upward like a comet, her essence calling out through every synaptic connection in Emily's mind. Above them, brilliant streams of light began connecting throughout the neural networks as Emily's scattered fragments finally had a clear path home.

The integration had begun. Now Alex had to buy them time.

The vault door groaned under another assault, its psychic metal warping to the force. Through the translucent surface, Alex could see something massive pressing against it—the Hollow Primate, Grodd's concentrated arrogance given form, battering at the final barrier desperately.

"The fortress will hold," Alex said aloud, his voice carrying through the mindscape. "This is Emily's deepest sanctuary. Her most protected space."

As if responding to his words, the vault door's neural patterns flared brighter, reinforcing itself with layers of new psychic defenses.

But the Hollow Primate's attack grew more vicious, abandoning patience and slamming at the barrier with the fury of something sensing its victory slipping away.

The door held. Minutes passed as the integration lights grew brighter above them, Emily's consciousness reassembling itself piece by piece. But Alex could see hairline fractures beginning to appear in the psychic metal—not from the creature's physical assault, but from something more insidious.

Doubt. Fear. The accumulated trauma of months of fragmentation was weakening the vault's foundations, creating psychological stress fractures that grew with each impact.

"She's almost whole," Alex whispered, watching the streams of consciousness flow together overhead. "Just a little more time..."

That's when the first crack appeared.

It started as a thin line of darkness along the door's edge. More cracks spread across the vault door like a spider web of despair. Each one whispered the same message: There is no safety. There is no escape. Grodd finds everything eventually.

The whispers grew into a grinding roar as the vault door began to dissolve, its light bleeding away into nothing.

Above them, the integration was nearly complete. Emily's consciousness blazed like a newborn star as her fragments merged—but she was still vulnerable, caught in that fragile space between shattering and wholeness.

Through the widening breach stepped a psychic imprint of Grodd, towering in the form of a massive pitchback gorilla. Its burning eyes radiated a cold focus that pressed against the mind itself, as if the very air of the mindscape had grown heavier in its presence.

"At last," it rumbled, stepping through the collapsing door, its voice heavy with the weight of something that had waited forever and always known it would win. "The insects have stopped scurrying. The mouse flees to her little reunion above, thinking coming together will save her." Those burning eyes swept over Alex lazily. "And one waste of humanity remains to watch the futility of resistance."

Alex positioned himself between the creature and the ascending streams of integration light.

"The hunt ends here," he said, and felt the chamber respond to his declaration. The organic walls pulsed with renewed strength, drawing power from his certainty.

The Hollow Primate's laugh was like the sound of mountains crumbling. "You? You are less than dust before Grodd's infinite intellect. You are a brief inconvenience to be swept aside."

It began to circle him like it was an executioner that took pleasure in explaining exactly why hope was futile.

"Do you even understand what you're facing?" it said, each word slow and deliberate. "I am Grodd's will made flesh, his certainty given form. I've hunted my prey through every corner of this broken mind, I am patient as time itself. I cannot be stopped. I will not be stopped. I am—"

The creature struck faster than conscious thought, massive claws sweeping through Alex's midsection.

"—perfection incarnate," it finished as Alex's body separated at the waist, his upper half toppling backward while his legs remained standing for a moment before collapsing.

The world slowed as Alex fell, watching his own blood spatter across the organic walls. Above them, Emily's integration continued, streams of light growing brighter as her consciousness reassembled itself piece by piece. She was so close to being whole again. So close to being free.

The Hollow Primate was already turning away, dismissing him as thoroughly as one might dismiss a crushed insect. "Pathetic. Did you truly believe that you could stand against the infinite intellect of Grodd? Your species' delusions of significance never cease to—"

"Quite talkative for a gorilla."

The voice came from behind the creature, calm and darkly amused. The Hollow Primate spun around with impossible speed, its burning eyes widening as it searched for the source.

Black tendrils erupted from the wound, twisting like something alive. They reached down to his torn body, dragging the pieces together with wet, sucking sounds. Flesh crawled and sealed over itself, bones snapped into place, and veins slithered until they locked together.

His body was whole again, but subtly different. Stronger. More fluid in its movements. The gentle therapist who had earned Emily's trust was still there, but underneath lay something else entirely.

The Hollow Primate snarled, finally recognizing that its assumptions had been wrong. "Impossible. What are you? How is your mind so strong?"

"YYu dont need to know that" Alex said, his voice sending a unsettling vibration through the chamber's walls.

Tendrils erupted from Alex's back and shot towards the creature. It wrapped around the creature's limbs, holding it in place while his arms became massive blades that carved through psychic flesh like smoke.

The Hollow Primate's arrogance finally cracked, the Hollow Primate encountering something it couldn't categorize or dismiss. But even then, the entity's core programming reasserted itself. "No! This is impossible! I am the extension of the greatest mind in existence! I am inevitable! I am—"

"Predictable," Alex finished.

The biomass spread from the wound like infection, but this was not random consumption. Alex was absorbing the entity like he did everything else—taking in its essence, its memories, its direct connection to Grodd himself, while carefully isolating the useful components from its toxic arrogance.

The Hollow Primate's form began to dissolve, but even as it died, Grodd's fundamental nature asserted itself. "You think this is victory? Grodd will know of this! The master will find you! The infinite intellect will—"

"Will never see me coming," Alex finished quietly.

As the last of the Hollow Primate was absorbed into his biomass, Alex felt it - a broken link back to its creator,now buried in the deepest corners of his own mind. The link still pulsed faintly, but Star Labs' mind-shielding tech kept the connection from breaking through.

The chamber was finally filled with warm, golden light from above. Emily's integration had reached its peak—Dr. Emily Blunt's consciousness reassembling itself, whole and complete and free for the first time since Grodd's assault.

Alex felt her joy through the neural networks, her overwhelming relief at being whole again. But he also sensed her brilliant mind beginning to analyze what had just occurred, trying to understand how Grodd disappeared suddenly.

The chamber began to dissolve around him as Emily's consciousness fully reclaimed control of her mindscape. But before her mind could tighten its hold completely, Alex knelt down and pressed his palm against the floor.

His biomass abilities, now fully integrated with his consciousness, spread through Emily's neural networks like invisible fingers. He located every memory of the Hollow Primate—every moment of terror, every revelation about Grodd's psychic imprint, every second of the creature's existence in her mind.

The process was delicate, requiring the kind of finesse that came from years of experience but simple for someone with his abilities. He couldn't simply delete the experiences—that would leave obvious gaps that others would immediately notice. Instead, he rewrote them, layering new explanations over the old memories.

The Hollow Primate became the NSE protocols' final defense mechanism—an automated security system that had grown increasingly aggressive as integration approached.

The creature's hunt through Emily's mindscape became a methodical sweeping for dangers. Its destruction became the collapse of defenses once they accepted his presence as something meant to help.

By the time Emily's restored consciousness turned its attention back to the him, she would remember only Alex Thorne—the dedicated therapist who had helped her overcome the final psychological barriers to integration. The rest would remain his secret.

As the mindscape began to dissolve around him, returning him to the waking world, Alex allowed his transformed appearance to fade back to normal human parameters. The shadow-tendrils dissolved, and the Architect of Vengeance settled back into dormancy—ready when needed, invisible when not.

Emily was safe. The immediate threat was eliminated. And deep in his consciousness, a fragment of Grodd's psychic imprint waited patiently to guide him to the next stage of a much longer game.

Some scales, after all, took time to balance properly.

But Alex Thorne was a patient man, and the Architect within him was even more so.

Notes :

1) Small fight. Nothing special.

2) All the blood & flesh in this fight are - what do u say ? Figurative? Symbolic? I am missing the word for it.

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DC : Architect of Vengeance

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