The gates of Site V9 sealed behind them with a final hiss.
A pulse of static rolled through the corridor, flickering out the last of its corrupted lights. The air snapped still. Reality, for all its brokenness, felt momentarily suspended—as if even the world had stopped to witness what they brought back.
Lucian's body was limp between Alexander and Dain, arms looped over their shoulders.
He was breathing. Shallow, erratic, but alive. Bruised. Burned. And empty.
Not a word had been spoken since they emerged from the rift, only the sound of boots scraping against the floor, the low thrum of medlift stabilization units, and Rowan's breathless pacing beside them.
The team staggered into the docking corridor of Zarek HQ, and silence followed them like a shadow. Staff froze. Medtechs stepped forward, eyes wide. Someone dropped a datapad.
Rowan didn't notice. He was still holding Lucian's hand, his thumb rubbing circles into the back of it like an anchor. Like if he stopped, Lucian might disappear again.
Ava was the first to move. She crossed the corridor without hesitation, guiding the med team to the stretcher waiting just ahead.
"Prep for deep neural scan and resonance containment," she instructed, her voice calm, but her eyes never leaving Lucian.
"His levels are fractured," Rowan said hoarsely. "There's... nothing stable."
Evelyn stepped beside him. Her expression was taut with something deeper than worry. She didn't speak, just set a hand on Rowan's shoulder as the med team took over.
Lucian was lifted away.
Rowan watched until the doors closed behind him.
In the aftermath, the team dispersed in fractured silence.
Alexander remained by the main debriefing console, blood drying along one sleeve. Mira leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, her expression unreadable. Haru stood close, watching the readouts flash with hollow eyes. Ren sat on the floor, arms draped over his knees, staring down at his chrono unit as if willing time to undo what had just happened.
Rowan didn't speak. He stood in the same spot for too long, the tether in his chest now just a dull ache.
"He's still here," Ava said softly when she returned. "His vitals are weak, but holding."
"But his mind isn't," Rowan murmured.
A heavy silence fell again.
Kira finally spoke from near the entrance. "Site V9… it's closed again. Collapsed in on itself after they exited."
Evelyn narrowed her gaze. "We'll need to run diagnostics immediately. Every fragment we pulled from the site could hold something crucial."
Rowan still hadn't moved.
It was Vespera who approached him quietly, setting a hand over his heart. "You brought him back. That means something. Even now."
Rowan's throat bobbed, but no words came.
Because he wasn't sure if the one they brought back was still Lucian at all.
—The air in the medbay hung thick with antiseptic and static discharge. Sharp, sterile, almost bitter on the tongue—like iron scraped against ozone. Lights hummed softly overhead, filtered through cool panels that dulled their glare to something softer, but not quite warm. There was no warmth in this room.
Rowan stood just inside the threshold.
Lucian lay on the bed nearest the window. Not restrained, but still. So still. Pale sheets were pulled to his waist, the faintest sheen of sweat on his temple.
A residual tremble rolled along the line of his arm every so often—barely a flicker, like a system rebooting endlessly and never finishing the cycle.
The window beside him flickered every few seconds, displaying a corrupted rendering of the skyline. Fragments of different hours—sunrise, dusk, midnight—looping in odd succession as if time itself forgot how to behave.
Rowan exhaled quietly and stepped closer.
Lucian didn't stir. Not to the sound of his boots on the polished floor. Not to the press of Rowan's shadow crossing over his frame.
His skin was too pale. Dark circles bruised beneath his closed eyes. The kind of exhaustion not born of a single battle, but of a hundred deaths replayed through his mind.
Rowan reached out—fingers hovering over Lucian's wrist—but stopped short.
Instead, he whispered, "I'm here."
A flicker of response—a twitch of Lucian's hand.
But nothing more.
Rowan sat in the chair beside the bed, leaning forward, arms on his knees. The silence between them wasn't empty. It was full. Saturated with things unsaid and the echo of a tether once too strong to fail.
"I keep thinking I'll wake up," Rowan murmured. "That you'll crack a joke. Roll your eyes. Say I'm worrying too much."
Lucian said nothing.
Rowan swallowed. His voice softened. "But you're not... gone. You're still in there. I know you are."
Outside the medbay, down the corridor and past the sealed entry, voices murmured in lowered tones. Tactical briefings. Diagnostic scans. Grief held behind professional language.
In the observation deck above, Evelyn stood with her arms folded, back straight, posture tight with unspent tension. Her tactical coat was gone—left draped over a chair somewhere—revealing the scuffs and wear on her inner gear. Lines of strain edged the corners of her eyes.
Beside her, Ava leaned silently against the railing, watching Rowan through the one-way glass. Her fingers twisted a resonance charm between them—one of Lucian's old calibration anchors. It flickered in and out, unable to hold a stable sync.
"He hasn't moved in hours," Ava said softly.
"He won't," Evelyn replied. "Not until he's safe."
"You mean not until Lucian is safe."
Evelyn didn't deny it. "He's tethering again. It's muscle memory now."
Ava's gaze remained fixed on Rowan. "You're not going to stop him?"
"No," Evelyn said. Her voice was level.
"Because if he doesn't anchor Lucian, Lucian may never come back."
Silence stretched.
Ava exhaled, tired. "This is what grief looks like before it admits it's grief."
Evelyn looked away. "It's not grief yet."
Meanwhile, in the cafeteria, the usual din was subdued. The clatter of trays. The low thrum of vending drones. But voices were hushed. Laughter absent. Chairs were filled—but no one lingered.
Alexander sat alone for once, shield leaned against the wall, bandages wrapped tight across one arm. He stared into his protein ration without eating.
Across from him, Dain slouched in a seat, bruises blooming across one cheekbone. He picked at a stale pastry, mumbling something to Vespera beside him.
"He'll pull through. Right? Lucian's a bastard but he doesn't die easy."
Vespera's reply was quiet. "He didn't die. That's the hard part."
At another table, Kira sat with Mira and Haru. Her fingers drummed silently. Her eyes never strayed from the door.
"They said V9's reading shifted again," she muttered. "Like it's still open. Still bleeding."
Mira didn't respond.
But Haru said softly, "Then we watch the bleed. And we wait."
—
Rowan didn't know how long he'd been there.
Time had abandoned the room. No clocks. No shifts in light. Only the unbroken hum of life support and the low, glitching cadence of the corrupted window behind Lucian's bed—sunrise bleeding into midnight, then back again in a stuttering loop, like the sky itself had forgotten how to move forward.
Everything outside this sterile haven—the war rooms, the analysis decks, even the rift-scarred world beyond—had dulled into insignificance.
Here, there was only Lucian. And the breath Rowan wasn't sure he could take without him.
He hadn't let go.
Lucian's hand lay motionless in his. Fingers slack, skin cool but not cold. Alive, yes—but not present. Like his soul had splintered and scattered into the fragmented timelines he once carved open with his own hands.
Rowan's thumb moved in slow, steady circles across the back of that hand. Over and over. A rhythm. A ritual. An anchor.
His voice, when it came, was nothing more than smoke in the still air. "I kept my promise."
Memory
It bloomed with uninvited clarity.
The training facility hadn't yet been upgraded with Zarek's new resonant dampeners.
Everything felt too bright. Too loud. The hum of energy fields in the walls pulsed like a heartbeat.
Lucian had just shattered another pulse amplifier, and the scent of scorched metal lingered in the air like ozone after a storm.
"You're a goddamn menace," Rowan muttered, arms crossed, his expression stern—but the corner of his mouth betrayed him with the start of a smile.
Lucian stood amidst the debris, one brow arched. "It attacked first."
"It was bolted to the floor."
"Exactly. Suspicious."
He walked toward Rowan then, slow, deliberate. Not predatory, not flirtatious—just full of something so intense it made the air thin.
He stopped close. Close enough that Rowan could count the flecks of silver near the edge of his irises. Close enough that their resonance fields brushed, just for a moment—an accidental sync that never quite stabilized.
Then Lucian spoke.
"If I ever lose it," he said quietly, "if I ever go too far—don't wait. Don't ask. Just pull me back."
Rowan's breath caught.
"You think I wouldn't?" he said.
Lucian's eyes searched his face, like he wanted to believe it. Like he needed to.
"I think it's going to be worse than we expect," he said. "And I need you to promise. No matter what I become. No matter what it looks like."
Rowan didn't hesitate. "Then don't become something I'll have to fight."
Lucian's grin came slow, wry. "You always did have a way with words."
And then—just for a heartbeat—he looked scared. The kind of fear that came not from death, but from becoming something that couldn't be loved.
Now
Rowan blinked, and the memory dissolved.
Lucian lay still—chest barely rising, eyes sunken, a sheen of sweat ghosting his temples. Bruises trailed like fingerprints down his arms. Residual resonance burns marked his torso in painful arcs, the aftermath of his power turning against itself.
He looked like a battlefield.
Rowan exhaled, slow and trembling.
"I meant it," he whispered. "I'm still here."
Outside the medbay, another hour passed. The shift chime echoed down the corridor like a distant bell tower tolling a death that hadn't yet arrived.
Rowan remained.
Still tethering. Still hoping.
Still holding on.
Command Deck – Later
The lights were dimmed, casting the war room in deep amber tones. Screens shimmered in and out of focus, haunted by fragments of corrupted data. Across the main display, tangled resonance lines pulsed like a wounded heartbeat.
Evelyn stood at the center, posture carved from iron, though the shadows under her eyes betrayed sleepless hours. Her coat was gone. Just the combat-worn underlayer remained, stained and weathered. She hadn't changed since they pulled Lucian out.
Her gaze didn't move from the screen.
"Run the fragment again," she ordered.
Ava, seated at the main console, didn't argue. Her fingers flew across the keys with clinical precision, but her jaw was tight, the muscles in her neck rigid with restraint. The back of her hand glowed faintly—an old anchor sync charm reacting to Lucian's interference. It flickered in and out like a dying pulse.
The projection flickered on.
Rowan—alone in Site V9's main chamber. He stood as if bracing against a storm no one else could see, hair disheveled, shoulders trembling, eyes hollow.
But he wasn't alone.
Behind him, just barely distinguishable through the static haze, was another figure. Towering. Distorted. Its outline shimmered with fractured space. The face was Lucian's.
But the eyes were wrong.
They were nothing. Empty sockets of bleeding light.
Ren swore under his breath. "That's the Echo."
"It's not just an Echo," Ava said softly. "It's intelligent as hell."
Evelyn's brow furrowed. "Meaning?"
"It remembers. It evolves. It isn't static like the others."
Kira crossed her arms. "We killed it."
"We displaced it," Ava corrected. "Site V9 didn't collapse. It folded inward. That thing didn't die. It bled into the seams."
Elias stood in the corner, silent until now. "Then it could still be in Lucian."
No one spoke.
The silence carried weight—like the room itself was afraid to breathe.
Another fragment loaded. Audio only.
Rowan's voice, raw and jagged.
"Don't—please. That's not him. That's not him."
The line cut. Static followed.
Evelyn closed her eyes, just for a second. Long enough for the fatigue to show.
Ren shifted beside her. "You think something followed us out?"
"No," she said.
Her voice was lower now. Quiet. Terrible.
"I think part of Lucian never left."
Ava's eyes drifted back to the resonance charm in her palm. It had begun to vibrate.
A low, pulsing hum. Sync reformation.
Attempted tether lock.
"But if that Echo is inside him," she said slowly, "then what comes back… might not be the Lucian we knew."
Evelyn didn't flinch.
"Or it might be the only piece strong enough to keep him from breaking."