Lyra didn’t hear her own breathing until the evacuation craft surged into the upper air corridor. It rasped inside her helmet speakers—sharp, uneven, almost painful. Her hands still burned from how violently she’d fought the responders. Her chest was tight, her throat raw.Her reflection flashed against the interior glass—dust streaking her cheeks, hair shaken loose, eyes blown wide with shock. But she didn’t truly see herself. She saw the moment the platform split. Adrian’s hand reaching. The way he fell to his knees when the tether cut through him. The word he tried to shout before the responders dragged her away.Her voice cracked.“Turn this craft around. Now.”The pilot didn’t look back. “Negative, Dr. Vance. Level 7 protocol. Command orders.”“I don’t care.” Her restraint clicked open under trembling fingers. “Turn it around.”Two security responders blocked her immediately.“Sit down,” the taller said. “Half the upper deck already collapsed. The craft won’t survive another trem

Lyra moved first.Her boots struck the fractured platform with a muted clang, dust spiraling around her ankles as she stepped into the open expanse between them. The city groaned under her—metal and light shifting like a wounded giant trying to breathe. She didn’t slow.Adrian stood across the shattered field, swaying slightly, one hand braced on a bent rail as though it were the only thing tethering him to the world. The faint halo of resonance clinging to him flickered like heat off a dying engine.Lyra pressed her palm around the fragment. Its warmth pulsed faster.Not just a signal.A warning.The core was tightening its hold.“Adrian,” she called, softer now.He lifted his head slowly, as if the air resisted him. The moment his gaze found her, fear cracked into something else—hope, relief, a painful spark of recognition. He took half a step toward her——and the platform beneath him shrieked.“No!” Lyra shouted. “Stay still. I’m coming to you.”He froze, breathing hard as the reso

The shaft opened into darkness.Lyra’s boots hit the floor first, metal giving way to dust as she steadied her landing and turned just in time to catch Adrian’s weight. He stumbled, his knees nearly buckling beneath him, the faint light from above catching the sheen of sweat along his jaw. His breath was shallow—shuddering—and the mark beneath his collarbone pulsed in erratic bursts of gold.She tightened her grip. “Easy.”He nodded once, though his eyes were unfocused. The descent had drained him more than either of them wanted to admit. Every time the tether quieted, it came back harder—like the core was learning how to reach for him faster.They’d made it down.For now.“Sit,” she said softly, guiding Adrian toward a rusted support beam.He didn’t argue. Just sank to the floor, back hitting the wall, head tilted slightly back. His fingers twitched once before falling still at his sides.Lyra crouched beside him, scanning the shadows. The chamber wasn’t empty. Faded emergency lights

The fog swallowed the horizon whole, thick and unnatural, bending the wind around it as though the air itself wanted to get out of its way. Lyra had never seen anything like it. No natural phenomenon pulsed in time with a broken frequency. This fog wasn’t drifting—it was reacting.To Adrian.To the mark.To the signal that lived under his skin.“Stay behind me,” Adrian breathed, but the command trembled, unsteady, fighting itself.Lyra stepped directly beside him. “No.”He shot her a look—half anger, half fear, all human. “Lyra—”“We face this together.”The words came out before she could swallow them, and something in Adrian shifted. His chest rose on a sharp inhale, the gold in his eyes flickering as if her voice disrupted the static inside his skull.In the fog, the figures moved again.Closer.Their silhouettes were tall, too symmetrical, too perfect—like something engineered rather than born. They didn’t walk; they advanced with precise, synchronized steps, each movement flowing

The night held its breath.Even the sea seemed to flatten, going unnaturally still as the figure emerged from the last wisps of fog — a silhouette carved from a darkness older than the prototypes, older than the program that had created Adrian, older even than the regulations the government now scrambled to enforce.Lyra felt Adrian tense beside her, tension radiating off him in a pulse she could feel against her bones. His skin had gone cold, but the mark under it blazed like iron in a forge.“Adrian,” she whispered.He didn’t answer.His eyes — gold, burning, frantic — were fixed on the figure walking toward them with the unhurried precision of something that had never needed to run.The prototypes, once aligned in perfect formation, lowered their heads in eerie synchronicity.The Original didn’t look at them.It only looked at Adrian.Lyra stepped half a pace forward, keeping her hand braced against Adrian’s arm.The Original stopped ten meters away.No fog. No flare. No distortion