The command deck was quiet, a sleeping beast beneath layers of steel and resonance.
The air carried a faint ozone tang of overcharged consoles, and the low hum of power conduits ran like a heartbeat through the floor. Occasionally, a soft ping or glitch flutter echoed in the distance, too faint to be meaningful—yet too consistent to ignore.
Only emergency lights glowed faintly along the floors, and the soft pulse of data streams reflected off the polished surfaces like veins of fading starlight.
Evelyn Zarek stood alone, her posture rigid, shoulders squared with that familiar, unyielding tension. Her long black hair was pulled into a high ponytail, a few strands loose and clinging to her temple from long hours awake. Her dark brown eyes were sharp but shadowed—haunted by lines of code she couldn't solve. She wore her usual sleek tactical uniform, black and gray with faint kinetic energy nodes along the sleeves, but she'd stripped off the outer armor. Beneath the crisp efficiency, fatigue clung to her like a second skin. Dozens of surveillance feeds, system diagnostics, and field logs scrolled silently across the displays. None of them gave her what she needed.
Not yet.
Her eyes were locked on a section labeled: [RECURSION EVENT – UNCLASSIFIED]
Across three different rift sites, hidden within random data packets, fragments of recursion code had begun appearing. First as errors. Then as patterns. Then as something far more deliberate.
She zoomed in on a collapsed archive cluster marked VEIL_ARCHIVE.BK46.
"This shouldn't even be active," she muttered to herself, frowning as the archive flickered to life. Project Veil—she'd seen its name buried deep in legacy code over the years, a dead-end file too corrupted to trace and too classified to review. Every time she'd tried, the system had stonewalled her, citing obsolete clearance levels from a department that no longer existed.
She'd assumed it was abandoned. A failed initiative.
But this... this was different. The archive wasn't just awake—it was responding. Updating. As if something inside the network had recognized a signal. Or a presence.
Evelyn's eyes narrowed. "Someone's touched it. Or worse—Veil's touching back."
The sound of the door sliding open behind her didn't startle her.
Ava Halloway entered, her approach quiet but purposeful, a soft halo of light catching on the strands of her loosely tied blonde hair.
She wore a comfortable long-sleeved shirt and dark leggings, practical and unassuming compared to her usual field attire. Her expression was gentle, but her bright blue eyes were alert and full of concern, taking in Evelyn's tension with a practiced eye.
She moved like someone used to walking into a storm and offering calm instead of resistance. She paused in the doorway for a breath, her eyes skimming the wall of glowing screens. Her lips pressed into a thin line before she stepped forward, the quiet concern in her gaze evident even before she spoke. She wore a loose shirt and leggings, a mug of tea in each hand.
She didn't speak immediately. Just watched Evelyn for a moment before approaching.
"You've been standing there for three hours," Ava said gently, offering her a mug.
Evelyn took it without looking away. "I've seen recursion anomalies before. Echo drift*. Pattern redundancy*. But this..."
Ava moved to her side. "It's self-aware."
Evelyn turned to her then. "Yes. And it's reaching for something. Or someone."
Ava's brows furrowed as she leaned over the terminal. Her fingers danced over the interface, pulling up the last three flagged anomalies. Each one pulsed with a common thread:
[ANCHOR IDENTIFIED: MERCER, R.] [SIGNATURE INSTABILITY: ACTIVE]
"Rowan," Ava whispered.
Evelyn nodded. "Whatever Project Veil used to be, it's still buried in our system. And now it's reawakening—not from the outside. From inside. Like it's trying to reassemble itself."
Ava exhaled slowly. "And Lucian?"
Evelyn pulled up another cluster of logs. The screen flickered as the system hesitated, like it knew it was being watched.
Then it displayed:
[EXTERNAL INTERFERENCE: L. VAUGHN]
Evelyn's jaw clenched, her fingers tightening around the edge of the console. Ava drew in a breath, the flicker of worry in her eyes sharpening to alarm. Neither spoke, but something passed between them—a shared realization that this was no longer theoretical.
"He's at the center of it," Evelyn said. "But not from here. Whatever he is now, it's not just the Lucian we know."
They stood in silence for a long moment.
"If the anchor collapses," Ava began, her voice quiet, "what happens?"
Evelyn answered without hesitation.
"Then everything holding the recursion loop together fractures. Memories, resonance, timelines—it all unravels."
Ava turned toward her, searching her expression. "Is it already happening?"
The console beside them blinked once. A terminal Evelyn hadn't touched.
Lines of red code scrolled upward, unprompted.
[RECURSION INTEGRITY BREACHED]
[ANCHOR: MERCER, R.]
[UNAUTHORIZED INTERFERENCE DETECTED – L. VAUGHN]
[MULTIPLE LOOPS IDENTIFIED – INSTABILITY ESCALATING]
[REDACTED ACCESS BLOCKED – SYSTEM QUERY IN PROGRESS]
Ava's hand moved to Evelyn's shoulder, fingers firm with the need to anchor. Evelyn's muscles tensed beneath her touch, but she didn't pull away. Her voice barely above a whisper.
"We're not in control of this anymore."
Evelyn didn't look away from the screen.
"No," she said. "We never were."
The silence between them stretched, thick and oppressive. The hum of the room seemed louder now—deeper, almost breathing.
Ava stepped closer, her hand still resting on Evelyn's shoulder, but now her other hand reached out, gently curling around Evelyn's fingers on the console. "Tell me something. Anything. Just so I know you're still here with me."
Evelyn exhaled shakily. "If I could protect you from this, I would. I'd bury it so deep it'd never touch you."
"But it already has," Ava whispered.
A sharp ping disrupted the moment. Another diagnostic flashed across Ava's screen. Her expression shifted—eyes narrowing in alarm.
"This... isn't right," she muttered, pulling up an overlay of resonance logs. "Rowan's sync data. Look—his baseline frequency is... doubled."
Evelyn leaned in. Two waveform patterns danced across the screen—nearly identical, but slightly offset. One glitched in and out, flickering like a ghost echo.
"That's not possible," Evelyn said. "Unless—"
"He's overlapping with himself," Ava finished.
Before they could react further, a surveillance window blinked open on its own.
Footage from Rift Site Epsilon began to play. The feed showed Rowan entering the field.
Then—without warning—it shimmered. Warped.
And showed Rowan already there. Standing at the Rift edge. Watching Lucian.
Ava gasped. "That never happened. I was monitoring the sequence. He arrived after Lucian."
Evelyn's voice dropped to a whisper. "The system's not replaying history. It's remembering alternate versions."
The overhead lights flickered.
A distorted crackle burst from the speakers—garbled at first, then clearer.
The console blinked in warning.
A line of corrupted code began typing itself across the primary display, letter by shaky letter:
A N C H O R B R E A K I N E V I T A B L E
Ava's hand clutched Evelyn's tighter. Neither of them breathed.
The lights flickered again.
Then silence returned.
And the system hummed like nothing had ever happened.
The glow of the system's final warning still haunted Evelyn and Ava's command deck when the scene shifted—quietly, unknowingly—to the quarters where Rowan and Lucian had retreated for the night.
Outside their window, the city blinked with quiet light—neon veined against clouds, the haze of faint Rift shimmer still lingering along the horizon.
Rowan sat on the edge of their shared bed, his shirt half-unbuttoned, pale skin catching the faint glow of his wrist console. He stared at the incomplete resonance logs scrolling there—his own vitals flickering intermittently. Breathing steady but shallow. Hands twitching every so often, as if trying to ground a current that kept slipping.
Lucian stepped in, shirtless from the shower, towel slung low on his hips, skin still damp and glistening. The light caught along the curve of his shoulders, down the ridged plane of his chest, his lean form outlined in subtle shadows.
His grey eyes were watchful, almost too quiet.
He crossed the room with slow, soundless steps.
"You're scanning your vitals again," he said softly.
Rowan didn't look up. "They don't make sense."
Lucian crouched beside him, hand reaching for the console. But instead, he found Rowan's wrist, turned it gently. Blood. A thin smear beneath Rowan's nostril.
His thumb brushed it away slowly.
"You're flickering again," he murmured.
Rowan gave a breathless laugh. "It's happening more often."
Lucian's jaw tightened. He leaned forward until his lips brushed Rowan's temple.
Rowan didn't argue. He pulled Lucian toward him instead.
The kiss was immediate—heat blooming as mouths met in an urgent crush, hands roaming. Lucian's palm slid up Rowan's chest, pushing aside the loose fabric to reveal the curve of his collarbone, the ridge of his ribs.
Rowan's fingers fisted in the towel at Lucian's waist, tugging him closer until their bodies met. Heat flared between them, breath hitching as Lucian pressed him back against the bed.
They moved with the quiet desperation of two people trying to memorize each other by touch—lips open and greedy, breath mingled, teeth scraping gently across jawlines. Rowan gasped when Lucian's fingers slid beneath the hem of his waistband, dragging the fabric lower just enough to expose bare skin and bone.
"You're warm," Lucian whispered against his throat. "Like you're burning from the inside."
Rowan arched up, voice low and strained. "Cool me down then."
Lucian groaned quietly, mouth trailing down his chest, hands framing his ribs like he was afraid to let go. Rowan's pulse thundered under his skin, resonance stirring—flickering, unstable.
But here, wrapped in Lucian's mouth, Lucian's hands, Lucian's heat—he felt tethered.
Lucian pulled back slightly, eyes searching Rowan's face. "I've got you. I'm not letting go."
Rowan's hand came up, cupping the back of his neck. "Even if I break?"
Lucian kissed him again—slow this time, reverent. "Especially then."
Lucian's lips trailed down Rowan's neck, his breath hot against the sensitive skin. Rowan shivered, his hands gripping Lucian's broad shoulders for support. Every touch felt like fire, igniting something deep within him that he hadn't fully understood until now.
Lucian's hands slid down Rowan's sides, tracing the curve of his slender frame before finding the hem of his shirt. He tugged it off in one smooth motion, leaving Rowan exposed and vulnerable. "You're beautiful," Lucian murmured, his voice low and gravelly.
The compliment sent a wave of warmth through Rowan, his cheeks flushing as Lucian's gaze lingered on him.
Rowan's breath hitched as Lucian's lips found his collarbone, teeth grazing lightly against the bone.
His hands moved back to Rowan's waistband again, fingers deftly undoing the button and zipper. Rowan's heart raced, his body trembling with a mix of anticipation and nerves. "Lucian…" he whispered, his voice barely audible.
Lucian looked up, his piercing gaze locking with Rowan's. "Trust me," he said, his tone firm yet gentle.
Rowan nodded, his throat dry. Trust. That was what this was about. Trusting Lucian to guide him, to show him the depths of their connection. Lucian's hands slipped beneath the waistband of Rowan's pants, slowly pulling them down along with his underwear.
The cool air hit Rowan's skin, but it was quickly replaced by the heat of Lucian's mouth as he moved lower.
Rowan's eyes widened as Lucian's lips brushed against his inner thigh, sending a jolt of electricity through him. "Lucian, I…" His words caught in his throat as Lucian's tongue traced a path up his thigh, his hands gripping Rowan's hips to steady him.
"Relax," Lucian murmured against his skin, his breath hot and damp.
Rowan's body trembled, his hands clutching the sheets as Lucian's mouth moved closer.
And then, suddenly, Lucian's lips were on him, his tongue swirling around the head of Rowan's cock. Rowan gasped, his back arching off the bed as pleasure shot through him like a bolt of lightning. "Ungh…" he moaned, his voice shaky.
Lucian's hands tightened their grip on Rowan's hips, holding him in place as he took him deeper, his tongue working in slow, deliberate strokes. Rowan's head fell back against the pillows, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. It was too much, and yet not enough.
Lucian's mouth moved with a practiced ease, his tongue flicking against the sensitive underside of Rowan's cock.
Rowan's fingers tangled in the sheets, his body writhing with pleasure. "Lucian, I… I can't…" he stammered, his voice breaking.
Lucian pulled back slightly, his lips still brushing against Rowan's length. His voice steady and reassuring. "Let go, Rowan. I've got you."
Rowan's chest heaved as Lucian took him deep once more, his tongue swirling around him in a way that made Rowan's vision blur.
The sensation was overwhelming, every nerve in his body alight with pleasure. His hips bucked instinctively, but Lucian's firm grip kept him in place.
Lucian murmured, his voice vibrating against Rowan's skin. "Let me taste you."
Rowan's breath hitched as Lucian's pace quickened, his tongue and lips working in perfect harmony. The pressure built within him, coiling tighter and tighter until it was almost unbearable. "Lucian, I'm… I'm going to…" he gasped, his voice barely a whisper.
Lucian's eyes met his, and in that moment, Rowan felt a surge of something deeper than pleasure. Connection. Trust. Surrender.
Lucian's lips wrapped around him once more, and that was all it took. Rowan's body arched off the bed as he came, his release spilling into Lucian's mouth with a guttural moan.
Lucian held him through it, his hands gentle yet firm as Rowan's body shuddered with the intensity of his orgasm.
When it was over, Rowan fell back against the pillows, his chest heaving and his mind blissfully blank.
Lucian pulled back, a small, satisfied smile on his lips. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his gaze never leaving Rowan's.
"How was that?" he asked, his voice soft but filled with a quiet pride.
Rowan blinked up at him, his thoughts still hazy. "I… I don't even have words," he managed to say, his voice hoarse.
Lucian chuckled, leaning down to press a kiss to Rowan's forehead.
They didn't speak after that. Not for a long time.
When they finally stilled, breath slowing and limbs tangled beneath the covers, the quiet stretched long and deep.
But on Rowan's wrist console, a quiet alert blinked in the dark:
[ANOMALY DETECTED – STABILIZER OFFLINE]
[ANCHOR STRESS LIMIT APPROACHING]
*Echo Drift: A resonance phenomenon where past emotional or energetic imprints linger in the environment or within Espers/Guides, gradually "drifting" out of sync with current reality.
*Pattern Redundancy: The detection of repeating behavior, action, or temporal sequences within system logs or memory architecture—usually attributed to corrupted data loops or time-bound recursion