The aftermath of the rejected connection lingered like a storm that had only half-passed—quiet on the surface but charged beneath. Zarek's halls were still trembling from the weight of what had just occurred. What they had nearly lost.
Rowan stood in the dimly lit recovery chamber, sweat clinging to the curve of his jaw, hands still trembling from the force of the resonance rejection.
Across from him, Ava monitored the stabilizer logs, her mouth pressed in a thin, worried line. The silence was heavy, every breath seeming to echo.
Rowan was trying to remember.
When Lucian was resting in the medbay when he hadn't stirred yet.
He lay unconscious but stable. Machines pulsed softly around him, syncing to the beat of his slowed vitals. His body bore fresh bruises, a crack of dried blood by his temple, and an ugly gash along his ribs that still seeped through the sterile gauze. The fight with the echo wore his body and mind down too much, too far.
Rowan's heart squeezed.
He reached out slowly and rested a hand just above Lucian's pulse point. His touch didn't shake the way it had minutes ago, but there was still that desperate ache in his chest—the kind that came from nearly losing someone you weren't supposed to care about this much.
He gripped his hand tighter, "you're important to me," he whispered, more to himself than to Lucian. "Please."
Back to present time
Behind him, Evelyn entered with deliberate steps. Her expression was unreadable, but there was tension in the set of her shoulders.
"He's not in critical danger," Ava said quietly. "But his resonance is fluctuating. He's... trying to connect to something that doesn't exist."
Rowan blinked, tearing his eyes away. "What does that mean?"
Evelyn stepped forward. "His anchor—his link to stability—was compromised the moment the Echo caused him damage. Whatever he is seeing inside Site V9 left an imprint. He's still reaching for it."
"For what?" Rowan asked, voice fraying. "For me?"
"No," Evelyn said. "Not you. Not exactly. Something else. A memory of you. A version. It's enough to confuse his body into thinking the real connection is unstable."
Rowan closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. "Then tell me what I'm supposed to do."
Ava glanced at the console. "Anchor stabilization might help. But we can't push too hard or it'll fracture his mind. He's... hanging on. But barely."
"I don't care how close the line is," Rowan said. "I'll walk it."
Evelyn said nothing.
Elsewhere, the rest of the core team had gathered in the strategy chamber, the air thick with unease. Elias stood near the central console, arms folded, his expression unreadable as projections shimmered in fractured loops across the screen.
"Still no solid trace on Site V9," he muttered. "It's like it blinked out of existence again."
Ren sat cross-legged on a bench beside the console, absently spinning a chrono disk between his fingers. His expression was uncharacteristically somber.
"I can try again," he said. "Open another fold. Track the ripple where Lucian was taken. But I need help."
Quinn stepped forward. "What kind of help?"
Ren looked up at him. "Someone to keep me grounded. I can jump through cracks in time. But coming back?" He paused. "That's harder."
A tense silence settled over them until Rowan walked in.
His gaze swept the room, pausing on Elias, then on Ren.
"I'll do it," he said.
Ava looked up from her place at the side. "Rowan, you're barely holding it together."
"I'm not letting him stay trapped in there," Rowan snapped, though his voice cracked. "I'm not losing him."
The pain in his voice silenced the room.
Elias stepped forward. "Then we need a plan."
They turned to Evelyn. She'd been standing quietly in the corner, watching everything. Slowly, she lifted a small device and plugged it into the console. The screen flickered—and then displayed a corrupted feed: glitching lines of echo resonance, unreadable fragments of what had once been the anchor network.
"While the sync attempt was happening," Evelyn said, "I found this buried in the stabilizer logs. A buried echo thread. I traced it back to an auto-flagged anomaly."
She keyed in a final command.
The screen split.
Rowan's ID. Lucian's status. And in between them—
[ANOMALY ANCHOR CLASSIFIED: ROWAN MERCER]
[STATUS: UNSTABLE SEQUENCE] DISPLACEMENT DETECTED]
Everyone in the room stilled.
Ava's breath hitched. "That wasn't there before."
"No," Evelyn whispered. "Because this wasn't supposed to happen. Something's rewriting the structure. And it's targeting the bond."
The silence pressed harder, heavier.
Ren broke it, voice soft but serious. "Then we don't wait anymore."
Rowan nodded.
He turned to Evelyn. "When Site V9 opens again—whenever it does—we go in."
Evelyn held his gaze. And for the first time, she didn't argue.
Behind them, on the edge of the network feed, a soft blip pulsed in the darkness.
[ECHO SIGNATURE DETECTED] [CLASSIFICATION: UNKNOWN]
[STATUS: PERSISTENT]
The silence between everything grew.
Waiting for the break.
—
Under the Weight of What Remains
The hallway outside the command deck hummed with soft overhead lights, empty except for two figures lingering near the observation bay. The wide glass stretched from floor to ceiling, showing the fractured skyline of Sector Twelve—still untouched, but for how long?
Evelyn stood with her arms crossed, her silhouette framed in pale glow, back rigid. Ava stepped beside her in silence, a hand brushing her shoulder. Evelyn didn't flinch, but she didn't soften either.
"You haven't slept," Ava said quietly.
"I will when he's back."
Then Ava replied, "You said that when I was gone."
Evelyn's shoulders twitched, and that was all the crack she needed. Ava stepped in front of her, meeting her gaze.
"I see it, Eve. I see how hard you're holding yourself together. I see the way you look at Rowan like he's standing at the edge of the same cliff you were once standing on."
Evelyn's lips parted, but no words came.
Ava reached up, touching her cheek. "You're trying to save him, not just for him—but for you. Because you know what it's like to lose someone into something you couldn't control."
"I lost you to a Rift surge," Evelyn finally whispered. "And I had nothing but the sound of static screaming in my ear." Her voice cracked faintly. "I got you back. I won't let this be different."
"You didn't get me back by breaking yourself," Ava said gently. "You led. You kept believing. Rowan needs the same."
Evelyn leaned forward, just enough to rest her forehead against Ava's. "I don't want him to break. I can't watch that happen again."
"You won't."
They stood like that for a while, the world quiet around them, two forces holding each other together where everything else threatened to come undone.
—
The archive room buzzed with the low static of dormant systems—dim blue light casting long, skeletal shadows across the stone-tiled floor.
Rowan stood alone at the main console, his wrist still raw from a sync session earlier, fingers twitching with unspent resonance.
He hesitated, then keyed in his override.
[ACCESSING: ANCHOR LOG // L. VAUGHN]
Lucian's latest resonance log flickered onto the screen. The readout wasn't right. It wasn't wrong either. It was worse—unreadable.
[CURRENT STATUS: NULL]
[CORRUPTION LEVELS: UNSTABLE]
[LOCATION: V9 // NONLINEAR TRAIL // FRACTURE DELTA]
The log glitched, repeating a burst of distorted code. Then another pulse.
[ANCHOR: MISSING]
Rowan gripped the edge of the console, knuckles whitening. His breath hitched, and his heart stuttered as pain burst behind his eyes like a needle driving into his skull.
He stumbled forward, palm slamming the screen. "No—no, you're not gone."
The screen pulsed again. Then showed a frozen frame—a blurred echo of Lucian's face, mouth open in silent scream, eyes glowing wrong.
Rowan collapsed to his knees, his sync charm overheating, blistering his skin. "I told you—I told you I wouldn't let go."
And still, Lucian's anchor log returned one last fragment before going dark.
[I SEE YOU]
—
Later, somewhere near the corridor by the weapons lock, Elias stepped out from the shadows. He wasn't wearing his field coat—just the base gear, sleeves rolled up, faint chemical burns lining the edges of his gloves.
Rowan froze. He hadn't realized anyone was nearby.
"You look like hell," Elias said bluntly.
"Thanks. I feel like it."
Elias didn't smile. "You're walking like someone trying not to fall apart."
Rowan turned back to the wall. "Shouldn't you be… brooding somewhere?"
"Already did." Elias stepped forward, voice low. "You're bleeding resonance. Everyone sees it. No one says it. So I will."
Rowan closed his eyes. "I'm trying to keep him tethered."
"I know." Elias leaned on the wall beside him. "I tried that once. Didn't work. They slipped through anyway."
Rowan turned sharply. "Lucian's not gone."
"I didn't say he was." Elias finally looked at him—really looked. "I'm saying... make sure you're not the one who gets lost trying to find him."
A long silence stretched between them.
Then Elias added, "You're not the only one who hates watching someone disappear."
Rowan blinked, startled by the quiet confession.
"I'm not offering comfort," Elias said. "I'm offering experience. Don't break yourself to rebuild someone else."
He left without another word, footsteps echoing behind him.
Rowan stood there for a long time, eyes stinging, chest hollow.