The world felt too quiet, —quiet in the way a battlefield feels after the last blast fades, when the ringing in your ears is louder than the wind and what’s left behind is only smoke, broken steel, and the weight of everything that almost happened.Lyra sat on the ruined deck, Adrian’s head resting against her shoulder, his breathing shallow but steadying one fragile inhale at a time. The storm winds toyed with strands of his hair; she brushed them back gently, letting her fingers linger longer than she meant to.His pulse fluttered at his throat.A little weak and slow.The fact alone made her exhale a shaky breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.Below the fractured railings, the ocean slapped against metal scraps that had once been a deck. Remnants of the prototypes sank like stars going out. The fog had already dissipated, thinned to pale wisps chased away by ordinary wind—no signal, no pulse, no resonance riding within it.For the first time since stepping aboard this vesse

The armored officers fanned out across the ruined corridor, their boots clicking sharply against the metal floor. Lyra felt the vibration through her knees as she shielded Adrian with her body, the restraints biting painfully into her wrists. The drones hovered above, awaiting instruction like predators held back only by protocol.The woman leading the squad stepped forward, visor sweeping over the scene with an unreadable precision. She was calm—too calm—and that terrified Lyra more than the rifles.“Dr. Vance,” the woman said, “You are obstructing a containment procedure.”Lyra didn’t move. “He’s destabilized. You’ll kill him if you take him now.”“That is not your concern.”“It is exactly my concern,” Lyra snapped. “I’m the only one who’s kept him alive this long.”The commander paused. The visor hid her eyes, but Lyra felt the woman’s attention sharpen like a blade turning toward her.“I expected you to prioritize scientific integrity,” the commander said. “Not sentiment.”“It’s n

The tunnel swallowed them as they moved—half-stumbling, half-running—Adrian leaning heavily on the wall while Lyra kept one hand hovering at his back, ready to catch him if he slipped. The faint tremors of the bulkhead behind them slowly faded, replaced by something worse:Footsteps.Slow. Even. Intelligent.Adrian heard them too. His spine stiffened, resonance flickering faintly beneath his skin like distant lightning.Lyra didn’t speak. Words would’ve wasted breath they didn’t have.They pushed forward as the passage angled downward, the temperature dropping sharply. The corridor widened into an older section of the facility—rusted pipes, exposed conduits, and metal panels etched with serial numbers from decades before Echelon’s expansion. The lights here were dim, humming with weak, failing energy.Lyra slowed as she reached a split in the passage. One path was narrow and steep, air thick with coolant vapors. The other was wide, sloping gently into darkness.She looked at Adrian. “

The storm had been building for hours.Mira stood at the edge of the abandoned comms tower, the metallic wind slicing across her face as the sun sank behind clouds the color of molten iron. The world felt unreal-Her breathing froze for a beat.Adrian and Lyra were gone.Taken.Even now, hours after the emergency beacon from Lyra’s lab had gone silent, Mira’s brain refused to settle. She replayed the last transmission again and again—the sudden blaring alarm, Adrian shouting her name, Lyra’s voice cut short by a harsh electric crackle.Then nothing.Every instinct she had told her the same thing: they were alive. Somewhere under government lock and sedation, but alive.And Mira wasn’t going to lose them. Not after everything they’d fought through. Not after the Debris Wars. Not after surviving Echo-9.She refused to let this be the end.Behind her, footsteps crunched on gravel.Rourke, Kapoor, Sira, and Delta-unit Nine approached—her team, her people. All of them equally ready to burn

Wind hammered the skimmer as it cut across the night, altitude shifting with each pocket of turbulence. The cliffside facility shrank into a smear of lights behind them until even those disappeared beneath clouds.Inside the cabin, silence pressed heavier than any alarm.Mira sat on the floor between the two bunks, knees braced, back straight, her hands steady even though her pulse refused to settle. Lyra lay unconscious on the right bunk, shallow breaths rising and falling beneath a thin thermal blanket. Adrian lay on the left, half-propped, his eyes shut as the sedatives slowly bled out of his system.Sira paced. Rourke flew in complete focus, the stick shifting beneath his hands as he maneuvered through low-altitude flight corridors. Kapoor worked over a communications jammer, wires and circuit nodes scattered around her lap like a metallic nest.No one spoke.Not until Adrian stirred.Mira leaned in immediately. “Adrian?”He didn’t wake fully—just flinched, breath hitching, the se