Changing Vajra’s Activity radiation frequency — even just the surface layer — was a genuinely difficult problem. The theoretical difficulty alone made it something he wouldn’t normally attempt without significant preparation.

But he had two reasons to believe it was possible.

The first was the motorcycle absorption. When Vajra had devoured the motorcycle’s Activity, the two frequencies had initially been distinct — a friction he could feel in the system. Over time, they had synchronized. The process wasn’t instantaneous, but it had happened, which meant frequency wasn’t a fixed property.

The second was the motorcycle frame itself when he’d first found it. Under the rust layer, the Activity radiation had been completely invisible to him until he wiped the surface clean. The rust had masked it. That implied radiation could be occluded — and if it could be occluded, it could presumably be shaped.

Outside, the BHC powder was beginning to volatilize in the sunlight, the chemical’s sharp particulate dispersing into the air around the hull. In the areas where it had settled heavily, the ants had pulled back. In the areas without coverage, the secretion process continued.

He checked the saturation reading through the connection.

43.1%.

He looked at the ant he’d caught — a worker, held carefully between his fingers so it couldn’t sting — and focused on what it was putting out. The radiation was faint compared to Vajra’s, but distinct. A frequency he could feel as a quality rather than a measurement, the way you could hear a pitch without being able to name it.

Change the frequency. Like breathing. I can control Activity — I should be able to control this.

It was an underprepared attempt at something he hadn’t tested. The failure modes were unclear. He did it anyway, because the alternative was watching Vajra’s Activity reserves count down to the point where ordinary metal met a colony that had consumed dozens of cars.

He closed his eyes and pushed.

The first attempt produced a tiny, brief shift — barely detectable, immediately snapping back to baseline like a stretched elastic. He felt it rebound through his whole connection to Vajra.

It’s possible. Just not stable.

He kept his breathing even and tried again. The frequency shifted, held for two seconds, bounced back. Third attempt: three seconds. The rebounds were consistent — like holding his breath, the pressure building until it released whether he wanted it to or not. The skill was real. The endurance was the problem.

Time passing. Saturation falling.

42.5%. 41.7%. 39.8%. 36.2%. 34.4%. 32.1%.

Twenty-odd attempts. Each one getting fractionally longer, fractionally more stable, his willpower learning the shape of the problem the way a hand learns a tool.

At 30% saturation, on the twenty-something attempt, the frequency locked.

Not perfectly. Not permanently. But it locked at a value close enough to the ants’ own radiation signature that the difference fell below whatever threshold their sensing apparatus used to distinguish between things.

On Vajra’s hull: a collective shudder.

Every ant stopped simultaneously.

He felt it through the connection — the cessation of the acid secretion, the sudden stillness of a hundred bodies that had been continuously active a moment before. They were confused. The thing they’d been attacking had, from their sensory perspective, simply become one of them.

The relief that hit him was sharp enough to break his focus.

The frequency snapped back.

The ants resumed immediately.

He steadied himself, breathed, and went back in. Knowing the effect was real made it easier to hold — his mind settled around the interference pattern with less uncertainty, and the rebounds came less frequently. On the next successful lock, he stayed calmer, maintained it longer.

Second lock. Another collective shudder across the hull.

This time the confusion lasted long enough for the behavioral logic to kick in. Without an active target, and with the BHC disrupting their chemical communication, the colony’s directive shifted. The ants began moving off Vajra’s surfaces, redirecting toward the surrounding car wrecks — metal that didn’t smell wrong and didn’t require any unusual activity level to consume.

He watched through the cameras as the hull cleared, section by section.

When the last ant dropped off the rear panel, he let go of the interference and sat back against the seat.

Activity saturation: 28.4%.

He took several minutes to recover before doing anything else.

The technique was real and he now understood its shape. Maintaining it required a thread of continuous attention — not his full focus, but a persistent background engagement, like keeping a muscle slightly tensed. He could sustain it while doing other things. That was important.

He opened a side viewport and checked the surrounding terrain. The ants were spread across the car graveyard, working through the remaining wrecks. They’d be occupied for a while. He’d wait until they’d moved far enough from his position to give him clear egress, then drive out.

He thought about the motorcycle frame while he waited.

It had been hanging from the rear tow point, outside the hull, with no Active protection of its own. He’d heard the Plastic Rabbit making sounds during the worst of the assault but hadn’t had attention to spare.

He got up and walked to the rear compartment.

The cage was on the floor.

The Plastic Rabbit was on its side, motionless. Blood from the nose and mouth. When he reached his perception toward it, there was nothing — no heartbeat, no respiration, and the faint Activity signature he’d learned to associate with the animal was fading, bleeding away into the surrounding environment the way all Activity did when the source stopped maintaining it.

Dead.

He opened the rear viewport and looked at the tow point.

The motorcycle frame was gone. Consumed. Not even the mounting hardware remained.

He stood at the viewport for a moment, looking at where the frame had been.

The feeling that moved through him wasn’t grief for the rabbit — he’d been clear-eyed about what the animal was to him, a research subject and Activity source, something he would have cooked and eaten when it was no longer useful. It wasn’t anger about losing the motorcycle’s absorbed Activity, either. Resources ran out. That was the nature of resources.

What it was, was a recognition.

The motorcycle had died. When the motorcycle died, the rabbit died.

Shen Cong and Vajra were the same bond. If Vajra died, the implication was obvious and immediate.

He’d always thought of Vajra as a tool. The most important tool he had, irreplaceable in practical terms, but still a tool — something external to himself that he could theoretically abandon if circumstances demanded it. That framing had been comfortable. It had given him an exit.

The exit didn’t exist.

Vajra wasn’t a tool he was using. It was part of what he was. The crocodile incident — Vajra nearly destroyed, hull integrity failing, Activity draining toward zero — had been closer to his own death than he’d understood at the time.

He breathed through the discomfort of that.

Resenting it doesn’t change it. Find the angle that makes it workable.

Vajra had saved him more times than he could count in the past two months. The life-link wasn’t only liability. It was also the reason he’d survived a prehistoric crocodile, a month-long storm, and now a metal-eating ant colony. Whatever the cost of the bond, the alternative to having it wasn’t survival.

Then make Vajra impossible to kill.

He looked up at the camera feeds. The ants were deep in the wreckage, far from his position.

He started the engine.

Evolve.

(End of Chapter 24)