Page 3448 -- CCLXXXIX.

Chapter Two Hundred Eighty-Nine: ‘O, tempted Star...’
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A small stack of papers slipped off the steel desk and splattered across the metal floor.

Jackson clutched his chest as the all-too-familiar pain shot through him anew. He grit his teeth and growled as he gripped the edge of the desk and tried not to fall out of his chair again. Flames whispered into life at the edge of his fingers, scoring the otherwise silvery metal.

Sudden and debilitating, that’s what this pain was. And if he had Hyozen numb it for him, then something else would go wrong. A hand would stop listening to him. Or a leg. Or an eye.

By now, he knew what the cause was, but in those first days after the disaster at Uego, he thought the blasted Mad Demon might have genuinely cursed him, somehow.

At times, he wondered if a curse might have been preferable. Having his body infested with nanomachines that were apparently programmed to torture him for the rest of his life? That didn’t seem like the more pleasant option.

He'd heard back from the Magician, who had managed to get his hands on various samples of Morgunov's work, and apparently, there were multiple different iterations of these damn nanobots in play around the world, at the moment.

"The ones that have a hold of you are the worst of the worst, by far," the Magician of Light had told him over a satellite call. "They're parasitizing not just your body but your soul, as well. That's why you can't just have Hyozen regrow your body from scratch and be rid of them. They will be regrown with you."

Jackson had been hoping for a solution from the Magician, but as of yet, all he'd gotten was an explanation. He tried not to let his disappointment with the man show too much on his face, but he probably hadn't succeeded. It was hard to even think straight, oftentimes, much less control his emotions.

Agh. Poor Xander. He didn't need Jackson piling more pressure on him, right now.

The Magician of Light had been having a rough go of it himself since the outbreak of this war--and indeed, since long before it started, too. Xander's success as a younger man had come back to haunt him, it seemed. When people started calling him the "Brain of the Vanguard" or the "most brilliant integrator since Skapa," they probably didn't realize the enormity of the burden that they were placing upon the young genius' shoulders.