"Dad Dad, your nose is bleeding."Nina's voice cut through, small and worried. Victor's chest heaved violently, the whole room tilting around him.A high, electronic whine filled his ears, and his balance gave out entirely. He hit the ground, the plate in his hands shattering beside him."Nina's dad? NINA'S DAD? What's wrong?!"Denise spotted him collapse across the cafeteria and rushed over. Victor's face had gone bloodless, blood streaming freely from his nose."Someone get Chase! NOW!"Denise's panic spiked hard. Symptoms like this read as genuinely serious, and this base didn't have a doctor Chase's healing was the only real medical option they had.Victor understood exactly what was happening to him. The first rewind, only a few hours' worth, had left him mildly dizzy at worst.This time, a full day's reversal had put a considerably heavier strain on his body than he'd anticipated.None of that mattered next to Nina's life. Trading his own condition for hers wasn't even a real qu

Chase had originally planned to head straight for sublevel ten to check on Miles, but a red-core signature shifting position mid-night caught his attention first.Nobody moved around the base this late, which made even the already-rare red signatures stand out sharply.He clocked it immediately the gamer he'd observed earlier was closing in on another red signature. Grant's.He still didn't have a clear read on what Grant's Queen Ant ability actually did. Same with the gamer's Starlight Sight, unclear function, twenty minutes of prior observation having turned up nothing beyond someone parked in front of a screen.That same twenty minutes had also made clear the gamer wasn't expected to contribute anything productive no assigned tasks, a room stocked generously with food and drink. That kind of treatment alone was enough to make Chase genuinely curious what the guy actually did to earn it.He tracked the signature converging on Grant's location and followed, slipping into her room's s

"Freak! Freak! Hahahaha!""...Where am I?"Graves looked around. School. The place that had haunted his dreams more times than he could count.Must just be exhaustion. Another one of those nights."Freak! What happened to your hair!"A sharp, stinging pain cracked across the back of his skull someone's open palm, already withdrawn."AH"Graves cried out, genuinely startled. Dreams don't hurt. Why does this hurt?He scanned the room, dread creeping in fast.Recess. Even tucked into the farthest corner of the classroom, that had never once been enough to keep them off him.They circled in, familiar faces studying him head to toe like he was something new, despite years of knowing each other.He'd been born thin, hairless a genetic quirk that had earned him a rotating cast of nicknames since his very first year of school.Freak. Baldy. Voldemort. Hard-boiled egg.Every insult they invented seemed to double as entertainment, tossed back and forth like their own private sport.But why am I

Piper lowered her arms, and the blinding light was gone.She found herself standing right back in the hotel courtyard.No award ceremony. No champagne toast. No monster crawling out of a bathroom mirror.Just a handsome young man in front of her, red eyes fixed on hers.Behind him: Graves, Elliot, and Reed, all three drenched in blood.Her scattered thoughts snapped into focus fast. Subject One.Piper lunged at Chase without a second's hesitation and doubled over instead, coughing blood."The soul contract from the illusion is real. Come at me, and it comes back on you."Chase had originally planned to run all four of them through the same illusion simultaneously, but Reed had partially resisted midway through his recon-tier perception sharp enough to catch that the whole scenario was constructed. Chase had simply converted him into a controlled asset directly instead; not especially difficult once identified.As long as Piper stayed under, the other three were never a real threat reg

Zoe felt like crying and couldn't even manage that much.She'd had a bad feeling the second she got called into that meeting room, and Grant's briefing had only made it worse."You've survived multiple direct encounters with Subject One. You have the most communication experience with him out of anyone here, and your teleport ability makes you the obvious pick for the job. We need you to negotiate. This is time-sensitive go now."Zoe nearly laughed out of sheer disbelief. Nobody listened when I said don't provoke him. Now that provoking him blew up in everyone's face, suddenly peaceful coexistence sounds appealing?And none of the actual leadership is walking over there themselves. Just hand it to the expendable recon girl instead. Like she didn't already know exactly how dangerous this errand was.She left the meeting room taking each step slower than the last.She could already see the black column rising in the distance. The Auriga might well be a warzone by now. Walk in there, and