The air outside the tunnel was sharp and metallic, as though the night itself had teeth. Lana stumbled out first, mud streaking her coat, lungs burning from the sprint. Grey emerged behind her, gun drawn, scanning the treeline. They’d surfaced somewhere beyond the industrial quarter—on the outskirts of a forgotten rail yard that smelled of rust and rain.Neither spoke for a long moment. Their breaths came out in clouds, the only movement in the still dark. Somewhere behind them, the tunnel entrance rumbled faintly, like a throat closing shut.Grey holstered his gun but kept his eyes on the darkness. “They’ll seal that route. We can’t go back.”Lana nodded absently. Her mind wasn’t on the tunnel. It was on Seraphine’s voice—its calm precision, the way it had framed her not as a person, but as the lock.“What did she mean by that?” Grey asked quietly, watching her.Lana shook her head. “I don’t know. But it wasn’t metaphorical. It never is with her.”“Then she built something that only

The rain eased by morning, though the sky remained thick and bruised. Lana stood on the balcony of the estate, watching mist drift across the woods below. Her fingers still held the letter from Seraphine, though she’d read it so many times that the words had already carved themselves into her memory.Grey was downstairs, loading the car. They hadn’t slept. After Marcel’s visit, neither of them trusted the silence in the house, nor the sense that they’d arrived one step too late.When she finally joined him, he was staring at the open trunk, lost in thought.“He’s heading for the ruins,” she said quietly.Grey nodded. “The Thompson facility fire. The one that was supposed to have killed Seraphine.”“Supposed to,” Lana repeated. “That’s where all of this began.”He slammed the trunk shut and turned to her. “Then that’s where we end it.”They drove north, cutting through empty roads lined with skeletal trees and forgotten signposts. The air smelled faintly of rain and metal. Neither of t

The voice echoed through the hangar, soft but steady, threading through the metallic air like a memory returning to life. It wasn’t an illusion. Lana knew that cadence—the deliberate rhythm, the unflinching calm.Seraphine.Grey’s weapon stayed raised, eyes sweeping the rafters and catwalks. “She’s not here,” he said quietly.Lana didn’t answer. She moved forward, drawn by instinct more than logic, boots echoing against the concrete floor. The light flickered again, illuminating the rows of crates around them. Each was marked with identical serial codes—Foundation-grade. Whatever Coldwater Logistics was, it wasn’t new. It was inheritance wearing a new face.“Lana.” Grey’s voice was low, warning.She ignored him and stepped toward a terminal set into the far wall. The screen was dark, save for a blinking cursor at the bottom. Her reflection stared back at her in the glass—rain-slick hair, hollowed eyes, and behind them, faint motion.Not hers.Her breath hitched as the reflection shift

The power died completely an hour after the surge. The hum of machines, the pulse of circuitry, the low static that had filled the room—all of it faded into the same dense silence that had haunted the world outside the Foundation’s reach.Grey stood by the broken terminal, the faint light from his torch cutting through drifting smoke. Every step crunched over glass and wires. He kept looking at Lana, as though expecting her to collapse or… change.She hadn’t moved since Seraphine’s words. Her palms rested flat against the console, her reflection gone from the dark glass.“Lana,” Grey said quietly.She blinked, slow and deliberate, as if remembering how to breathe. “I’m here.”“That’s not what I asked.”“I said I’m here, Grey.”Her voice was steady, but something in it didn’t sit right—it carried a resonance, an echo that hadn’t been there before. Seraphine noticed it too. She stepped closer, keeping her tone calm, controlled.“The integration wasn’t complete,” she said. “But it’s begu

The rain had slowed to a fine mist by the time they reached the outer edge of the old industrial quarter. The air smelled of rust and burnt oil, of a city that had long stopped pretending it was clean.Grey stopped the car before the chain-link fence that circled what used to be the Foundation’s secondary archives — a decaying red-brick building swallowed by ivy and silence. The last report had said the place was cleared out years ago. But the faint shimmer of a bulb burning behind one of the cracked windows told a different story.Lana stepped out of the car first, her boots sinking into soft mud. “It’s still powered,” she said.Grey followed, checking the street behind them before ducking under the fence. “Someone’s been here recently.”They crossed the yard, moving quickly, the drizzle threading through their hair. The air was too still for comfort. Lana could hear her own breath echo faintly as they reached the side entrance — a narrow steel door with a broken padlock hanging by a