The Past, Rewired

[thisDerius]

"I highly doubt they would put a Nomad cell into the Leviathan, but..."
Derius' voice trailed off briefly as he paced slowly around the console, his heavy boots making soft thuds against the metal floor. "...I'm quite sure the IRG cell was made using Nomad cells as a template of sorts."

He stopped, arms crossed, his cybernetic fingers drumming restlessly against his plated forearm as he watched the lines of data scroll down the screen. The low hum of the annex buzzed faintly in the background, the only sound accompanying the sluggish progress bar creeping forward.

"The whole thing allowed the IRG cells to replicate tasks that were only possible for true Nomad biotech—like infinite cloaking, for example."
He turned slightly, his profile lit in the dim blue glow of the monitor.
"Still... the IRG cell was a crude imitation compared to the real thing. An impressive achievement, yes, but it required a complete re-routing of a ship’s entire power grid just to attempt cloaking operations. Nothing clean. Nothing sustainable. It was more... brute force science, really."

Derius sighed, leaning one elbow casually against the console, his eyes catching Donagan's for a brief moment across the room.

"If you ask me," he said with a dry smirk, "the Leviathan should stay buried. It’s a relic. A tomb. Whatever was great about it belongs to another time."
His voice was steady, but there was a strange sadness to it too—like someone mourning an old friend long lost to time.

The room fell quiet for a moment, only the hum of cooling fans and the occasional beep of the data terminal filling the stillness.

Derius pushed off the console with a small grunt and stepped closer to the main terminal. His gaze sharpened as he checked the latest readout.
"Nearly there," he murmured, noting the progress bar finally passing 92%. Lines of heavily encrypted data danced across the screen as the systems strained to keep up.

Without turning, he addressed Donagan again, his voice calm but with a thin edge of tension behind it.

"You sure this’ll hold up?"
He arched an eyebrow, not because he doubted Donagan’s work—but because he knew too well what would happen if it didn’t. All it would take was one misstep, one triggered failsafe, and the security protocols IRG buried deep inside the files would erase the data—or worse, fry half the systems on the annex.

Derius stood there, still as a statue, his cybernetic arms crossed again, watching. Waiting.

This was it. The final stretch. Either they walked away with the keys to rebuilding the future... or they walked away with ashes.