The hum of the data stream continued, low and steady, like the last breath of something ancient dying beneath the surface.
In the command deck, filtered light flickered across glass panels and holo-screens. The quiet wasn't peace—it was anticipation. Everyone waited.
Rowan stood near the central console, hands tight against the edge, knuckles pale. He didn't speak, but his jaw was clenched tight, and his eyes stayed fixed on the map readout—still centered on the last ping from Site V9.
Quinn stood just behind him, silent but ever-present. His brow was slightly furrowed, hands folded behind his back in a posture of professional calm, but his eyes flicked between the console data and Rowan's too-tense form. Occasionally, he glanced at the quiet warning lines streaking across the side of the display.
Kira leaned against the far wall, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her expression was blank—but not absent. She was observing everything, dissecting with quiet calculation. Her wristwatch continued to flicker at odd intervals, a remnant of the earlier anomaly. She'd already rebooted it three times. She hadn't told anyone yet about the way the humanoid figure had vanished mid-step when she followed it. Not yet.
At Rowan's side, Ava's eyes swept the projections, trying to connect irregular pulses in the data feed to any known anomaly pattern. Her resonance amp flickered once as if picking up a trace, but it died again too quickly to capture.
Evelyn stood slightly apart, arms folded. Her face was composed, but there was a sharpness in her eyes that hadn't dulled since Lucian vanished. The white-blue of the command deck's lighting cast a pale gleam over her black armor and neatly tied back hair.
Rowan finally broke the silence. "Still nothing?"
Ava's fingers tapped rapidly across the display. "No movement. But the signal remains inconsistent—fluctuating every eleven seconds now. Like it's trying to stabilize and failing."
Rowan's throat tightened. "That's the same pattern we saw when—"
"Lucian was pulled in," Quinn finished gently.
A harsh beep broke the silence.
Everyone turned.
A new marker blinked onto the map.
It wasn't from the outside. It was inside Site V9.
"Energy spike," Ava said quietly. "Same signature as before. We've seen it once—right before the fracture point."
The pulse repeated.
Then a second.
Then a third.
Evelyn stepped forward. "It's syncing into rhythm. Controlled. Intentional."
Rowan's voice was barely audible. "He's alive."
No one answered. They didn't have to.
In the flickering dim of the chamber below Site V9, Lucian knelt by the fractured pod. His breath came in short gasps, blood dried against the side of his face. He reached toward the cold glass again, watching his own reflection twist and warp.
Another version of himself stared back from inside—a corpse, perhaps. Or a warning.
He didn't look away.
The corrupted figure that had dragged him into this twisted ruin had disappeared. But its echo still haunted the static-clogged air.
He closed his eyes, steadying his breathing, one hand pressed against the floor.
Outside the chamber, the air shifted. A low groan echoed through the metal hall, a vibration that moved like thunder beneath his skin.
He opened his eyes slowly.
The pulse began again.
Not from the system.
From him.
His resonance signature spiked.
On the command deck above, the screens began to glow.
A new update appeared—sudden and stark.
[SUBJECT: VAUGHN, L.]
[STATUS: SIGNAL STABILIZING]
[SITE V9: ACTIVE STATE — PHASE UNKNOWN]
Rowan's knees almost buckled.
Quinn caught him instinctively, easing him into the seat behind.
"He's trying to sync to something," Ava whispered, eyes wide. "But not to us."
"Then to what?" Evelyn asked.
The room fell into silence again.
On the screen, the signal pulsed once more.
Steady.
Alive.
Waiting.
Lucian POV – Site V9
The air inside Site V9 was thick—viscous with memory, sharp with static.
Lucian stepped through a corridor that had no end. The walls were metal, but they pulsed faintly, like muscle—breathing in time with something that wasn't him. With every step, he left behind echoes. They didn't fade.
They multiplied.
Footsteps clicked behind him that didn't match his own. The lights flickered, not randomly, but in a pattern—one he knew too well.
1 second. 2 seconds. Flicker. 1 second. 1. Flicker.
The same rhythm as Rowan's pulse when they synced.
Lucian stopped.
His throat was dry. He turned sharply—nothing but the corridor stretching back like a stretched ligament. Yet the air shifted. Warm, electric.
Rowan?
He said it, but the name didn't reach his mouth. He heard it behind him instead—his own voice, whispering Rowan's name like a prayer. Then again. And again.
He turned again.
There—down the hallway—stood Rowan.
Lucian staggered toward him, breath catching in his chest.
Rowan didn't move. Didn't blink. He stood too still. Too perfect. Eyes the wrong shade of green—too bright. Too glassy. Like a photograph frozen in motion.
Lucian reached out.
"Rowan."
The moment his hand touched skin, it shattered.
Rowan's form broke apart like brittle glass, collapsing into static. The hum screamed through his skull. He stumbled back, pressing his palms against his ears—but the whispering grew louder.
"Why did you let me die?"
A voice. Rowan's voice.
Another corridor. Another hallucination.
Another memory that wasn't his to hold.
He looked down at his hands. Blood.
No… not quite.
They flickered.
His fingers split and reformed in static trails. Half a moment, he saw his arm reshaped in someone else's outline. Taller. Thinner. Scar on the wrong side.
The system was rewriting him.
"No—" he growled, voice slipping. "I'm not—"
He gripped the wall. It pulsed beneath him, reacting to his fear. His instability.
"You said you wouldn't let go."
Lucian spun around.
Another Rowan stood at the far end of the corridor. This one dying—lips pale, a line of blood sliding from his mouth.
Lucian screamed. "STOP IT!"
The image vanished.
A fresh pulse hit him in the chest like a spear—his own resonance feedback, misaligned and corrupted.
He fell to his knees, gasping. Lights overhead cracked, spilling sparks. The walls throbbed again—repeating a single, broken phrase in red across every display:
[ANCHOR UNSTABLE]
His throat burned.
"I'm still here," Lucian muttered, eyes wide. "I'm still Lucian."
The walls didn't answer.
The hallway reshaped. Now it looked like the medbay—white, sterile. The cot where Rowan once lay after his last sync overload.
Rowan sat on it again. Pale. Eyes closed.
Lucian stumbled forward.
"Please," he breathed. "Please be real."
He touched Rowan's wrist.
Nothing.
Lucian sank to the floor beside the illusion, hand shaking as he pressed it to his own chest.
"I need you," he whispered. "Just—just tether me. Anchor me back. Take me home."
Silence.
He closed his eyes and focused. Dug into the marrow of his mind—into the bond carved between them over too many timelines. Too much blood.
He reached for it.
For Rowan.
The resonance surged.
A pulse. Pure and sharp. One second. Two.
Then—
[ANCHOR SIGNAL DETECTED – WEAK LINK ESTABLISHED]
[RESURRECTION ECHO PULSE: INITIATED]
Lucian's head snapped back. The system screamed.
All around him, walls glitched. Lights spiraled red and violet. Alarms failed to sync. His body arched, and his name fragmented across ten thousand timelines.
Still—
He held on.
"I'm coming back to you," he hissed. "Even if I have to tear through time itself."
—-
The air had long stopped tasting like air.
It shimmered now, fractured between layers—too thick to breathe, too thin to live in.
Lucian staggered through the corridor where walls looped back into themselves, where his own footsteps echoed ahead of him. His left side burned—resonance overuse fraying the edges of control. The flare of energy from the last Echo left his ribs bruised, breath shallow.
But he kept walking.
The tether—the one he hadn't realized he'd still been clinging to—had flickered moments ago. A pulse. A whisper.
Rowan.
It had felt like fingers brushing the back of his mind. Warm, desperate.
And it was gone just as quickly.
He growled and pressed a hand to the wall. The metal was hot. No—it was cold. No—it didn't exist.
"Anchor," he rasped, voice raw. "Rowan, are you—?"
No response.
He pushed deeper into the corridor. The hallway bent downward into a spiral, like a gullet swallowing the space itself. Doors lined the walls—but none opened. The floor beneath his feet crackled with residual memory pulses. Visual drift—Refracted trauma.
He passed one wall and flinched.
It flickered—Rowan's face, etched in static, half-smiling, half-screaming—then gone.
Lucian's knees buckled.
"No," he whispered, clawing his fingers into the nearest surface. "No. That's not real. That's not—"
His resonance snapped outward in an uncontrolled burst, smashing the nearby panel into shards. Sparks lit the air. For a moment, everything stopped. Like the system itself forgot what time it was supposed to be in.
And then—he felt it.
The tether pulled.
Not enough to reach. But enough to break him open.
He fell to his knees, gasping. The pain wasn't physical—it was worse. It was the sensation of almost being found. Of almost holding onto something real before it collapsed in his fingers.
[Lucian Vaughn. Tether Pulse Recognized.]
[Anchor: Rowan Mercer.]
[STATUS: Destabilized.]
He slammed his fist into the floor.
"I'm still here," he growled. "I'm still—"
The light above him burst.
Command Deck – Zarek HQ
Rowan's breath hitched hard enough to make Quinn flinch.
Across the dimmed command deck, the lights flickered once, then pulsed red. A low, shuddering tone echoed—system-level. Deeper than alarms. Like the building itself had felt the tremor.
Rowan's hand flew to his wrist console. The screen was glitching—torn text, unregistered data. But one signal pulsed through it all:
[Lucian Vaughn. Identified. Tether Attempted.]
[Signal: Rejected.]
Ava stepped forward. "What the hell was that?"
"Lucian," Rowan choked out, already shaking. "He tried to connect. Some thing's happening on his end—he reached out to me."
Evelyn was already interfacing with the uplink. "The tether didn't hold. Whatever's on the other side, it's corrupting the signal on contact."
"Not just corrupting," Rowan muttered, fingers tightening. "It's twisting it."
The image flashed across the screen again. Not a person. A figure. Shaped like Rowan, but wrong.
Quinn paled. "That thing... it's not him."
"No," Rowan whispered, "but it thinks it is."
The console flared. Another pulse. Rowan flinched.
[INBOUND RESONANCE ECHO – SITE V9]
[ACTIVE TETHER DRIFT DETECTED]
[ANCHOR: ROWAN MERCER]
[RESPONSE STATUS: COMPROMISED]
Evelyn's eyes narrowed. "Something's calling to you."
"I know," Rowan said. His voice was low, calm, but his hands trembled. "And if it reaches me again—if it pulls me in like it did Lucian—"
"We're not going to let that happen," Ava said firmly, stepping close, her palm gently brushing Rowan's back. "We're going to stabilize it. You're not alone."
Lucian – Site V9
He slumped against the wall. The flickering image had returned—this time not of Rowan.
This time, it was himself.
But wrong.
Too still. Too cold. As if the figure wasn't wearing his body—it remembered it. Like a code trying to rebuild him without knowing who he really was.
Its eyes glowed faint violet.
Lucian pushed to his feet.
"You want to replace me," he said aloud, his voice hoarse. "But you're not real. You're just what's left."
The figure cocked its head. No words. But Lucian felt it—familiarity beneath malice. Like standing in a mirror that wanted to crawl out and live in his skin.
Lucian stepped forward.
"You won't reach him," he said.
The figure didn't move.
Lucian's own hands trembled—his abilities building. Crackling across his arms. But inside him, the tether was slipping. Rowan's presence was like a thread fraying under pressure.
If he stayed too long... he'd forget.
He'd become this.
"No," he muttered. "Not yet."