The upper-level training floor buzzed with a low hum—an ambient thrum of energy panels embedded in the walls and floor. The room was washed in synthetic daylight, casting long shadows beneath metal beams and reinforced paneling. Even the air felt sterilized, as if it had been filtered too many times.
Rowan stood off to the side, arms folded, monitoring the sparring sequences through a tactical interface on his wrist console. Lucian hovered nearby, leaning against a column with the kind of casual, loose-hipped stance that made Rowan hyper-aware of his presence.
"Are you staring at me or the vitals?" Lucian asked, not looking up.
Rowan smirked. "Do I need to choose?"
Ari stretched a few meters away and rolled her eyes. "If you two flirt any harder, I'm gonna need shielding just to keep training."
Quinn adjusted her settings at the terminal nearby. "That's not how shielding works, Ari."
Dain lounged on a bench near the wall, arms folded behind his head. "No, but I support the complaint. I mean, at least take it to the observation deck like normal people."
Lucian raised an eyebrow. "You spying on us now?"
"I'm just saying—if someone's console logs a heat spike at 3AM, and your quarters are glowing like a goddamn forge…"
Alexander, seated silently with a protein bar, grunted. "Enough."
Dain held up both hands. "Alright, alright. I'll save the performance report for the team meeting."
Vespera, poised beside him with her usual quiet grace, sipped her tea. "You should be grateful they're not flinging knives at each other. Again."
Lucian nodded toward Ari. "Speaking of knives…"
"Bring it," Ari said, cracking her knuckles.
---
After the laughter faded, Kira stood in the doorway, silent and watching.
Her pale eyes tracked every movement. Lucian, too close to Rowan. Rowan, too tired to admit he was pushing his limits. Their sync pulses didn't just flow—they tangled, spiraled, bent inward like a recursive loop.
Kira didn't speak.
She watched.
---
Later, in the diagnostic wing, Kira stood motionless before the Rift map projected in icy blue light across the far wall. The air in the chamber felt colder than usual—not from the temperature controls, but from the weight pressing against her chest.
Sector V-9 pulsed faintly. A soft, steady blink. Like a heart that had never stopped beating.
Her breath hitched.
And then—
The past hit like a resonance backlash.
They'd been sent in on what was classified as a minor breach. Contained. Safe. Her squad—six Espers, two Guides—had joked on the flight in. Someone passed around a bag of dried fruit. Their team leader, Captain Trent Calyx, promised drinks after. Kira had even smiled.
The moment their boots hit the snow, everything changed.
The Rift didn't pulse—it screamed. Open terrain shattered beneath their feet. The resonance snapped and coiled, corrupted. One heartbeat they were securing boundaries, the next they were falling through a chasm carved from raw, frozen time.
Trent Calyx fell first. She remembered his face—shock, confusion, then agony—as his resonance barrier ruptured. It looked like shattered glass imploding inward. He didn't even scream. He just… broke.
Two more were lost in seconds. One was vaporized by a pulse. Another dragged screaming into the fissure. Kira had tried to reach them. Her fingers bled through her gloves as she clawed across ice. She remembered calling their names. She remembered no one answering.
Her heart pounded.
The only thing left to do was survive.
She dropped to her knees, threw everything she had into her cryo field. Her resonance poured out in waves—layer after layer of ice, freezing the breach closed, locking the land, the creatures, the bodies—everything—into stasis.
And then she turned that same power on herself.
She wrapped her own body in frost, slowing her vitals, stilling her breath, sealing her inside a cocoon of time-laced ice.
She expected to wake to the sound of her squad's recovery team. Medics. Familiar voices.
But when her eyes opened, it was to sterile lights. Foreign uniforms. Blank stares.
"You were listed missing in a mission that never happened," they'd said.
That breach was marked resolved months before their deployment ever took place.
Her teammates? Not listed in any registry. Not dead. Not alive. Just… never there.
Their names weren't carved into the memorial stones.
Because in this version of reality… they never died.
Because in this version of reality… they never existed.
And she—
Kira Mendez, survivor, anomaly, ghost—
She wasn't supposed to be there at all.
Now, her console blinked.
[RECURSION MARKER – COORDINATE: V-9]
[ANCHOR SIGNATURE: MERCER, ROWAN]
[ANOMALY TYPE: FRAGMENT ECHO | TIMESTAMP SHIFTED]
Kira stared.
Her knuckles whitened around the edge of the console.
---
Back in the training hall, Rowan sat against the padded wall, sipping from a hydration flask. His body ached—not painfully, but with the hum of strain beneath his bones.
Lucian dropped beside him, passing him a cloth. "You're pulsing weird again."
"Thanks for the poetry."
"I mean it. Your sync signal keeps oscillating."
Rowan rubbed his temple. "It's not the Guiding—it's something under it. I feel like I'm syncing with something I can't see."
Lucian looked at him sharply.
"Did you feel it earlier? In the chamber?" Rowan asked.
Lucian nodded. "You flickered."
"I saw myself freeze," Rowan whispered. "Like time blinked."
They sat in silence.
In the corner, a diagnostic drone flickered.
And in the ceiling panel above them, the resonance frequency display blinked once, briefly.
[ANCHOR DRIFT – DELTA: 0.04%]
Lucian's eyes narrowed.
"I think we're being watched," he said.
Rowan nodded. "Not by a person."
Not this time.
---
The alarm blared through the facility—sharp, thunderous, and unmistakable.
A Rift surge alert.
Rowan's head snapped up just as emergency lights flared red, casting long, angular shadows across the walls. His heart dropped.
Lucian was already on his feet, stance wide, gaze sharpened like a blade.
"Surface breach?" Rowan asked, standing.
Lucian checked his console. "Perimeter four. External Rift rupture. Type-G echo burst. No entry—but something's coming through."
Rowan's pulse surged.
A surface breach.
Not a Rift field mission, where protocols were in place and teams had time to prepare, to enter and exit with a semblance of control. This was different. A rupture into their world—unplanned, uncontrolled, raw. A tear in space that spilled chaos into the heart of the city. No buffer zones. No predictive scans. Just monsters emerging into places meant to be safe.
A breach.
The worst kind.
They raced through the corridor. Other teams flooded in from opposite halls—Alexander already suited up, his massive shield locked onto his arm. Ari slid into place beside him, dual knives drawn and crackling with resonance.
Quinn moved in stride behind her, gaze scanning vitals, already syncing his emotional field to hers.
Dain whooped from behind. "Finally, some cardio!"
"Don't jinx it," Vespera murmured, brushing her chime pendant.
They burst into the open perimeter zone just as the air tore apart.
Above the towering spires of Zarek Technologies, the sky fractured with a thunderous crack. A jagged rift yawned open directly above the facility's upper tier—its sharp edges glowing with unstable resonance energy. People scattered in a flurry of panic, technicians and researchers pouring out of side exits, hands shielding their heads as echoes began to spill from the opening.
Security alarms blared. Automated turrets hissed into position but failed to lock onto the first wave of distortions fast enough. Civilians screamed. The plaza near the central atrium became a chaos of bodies, falling glass, and resonance static.
A rift in the sky—not large, but jagged like broken glass—split open with a violent roar. From it poured creatures that didn't belong to any evolutionary chart—limb-extended horrors with too many joints, eyes that shimmered in the wrong spectrum.
Lucian stepped forward, body humming with raw power. His eyes lit faintly purple, fingers curling into fists.
"Team two, flank left! Ari, you're with me! Quinn, anchor her from backfield! Rowan—"
Rowan nodded, already shifting into stance. His shield barrier pulsed into being with a deep thrum, curling outward in a shimmering dome.
Alexander slammed into position beside him, shield raised, defending their rear. "We hold. You pulse, I punch."
"Got it."
The monsters hit.
Lucian was a blur—space distorting around him as he moved, each strike collapsing in on itself before impact. Ari was chaos and lightning, spinning between targets, Quinn at her back like a steady current grounding her rage.
Vespera released a sync wave—emotionally nullifying the echoes' shrieks, keeping the team focused. Dain launched into the fray with his signature unpredictability—taunting the creatures and taking wild swings that somehow always landed.
Rowan's shield shimmered with every impact, the kinetic absorption making his whole frame tremble. But he held, each step calculated, syncing with Alexander's timing.
Kira appeared on the high flank, frost arcing from her palms as she iced down the aerial echoes, slowing their dive.
It was chaos—but choreographed.
Until something shifted.
A pulse. A flicker.
Rowan's shield faltered for half a second—not enough to break, but enough to sting.
Lucian jerked mid-strike. Turned.
His gaze found Rowan immediately.
Something had just bent the field.
Another echo tore through—and this one was different.
Twice the size. Eyes glowing violet. Its resonance… familiar.
Lucian's expression darkened. "That thing's synced."
Rowan's chest tightened. "To me."
Lucian vanished—reappearing in front of the creature in a warping surge of space.
"You don't touch him," he growled.
And the real fight began.
The ground fractured beneath Lucian's feet as his power flared—space distorting in a visible ripple as he launched himself at the violet-eyed echo. He didn't strike with brute force, but with precision, bending the space around the creature's core. Its limbs warped unnaturally, staggered, then howled.
Ari flanked right, dual knives flashing with resonance. She moved like lightning—sliding beneath the echo's guard, slashing at tendons and soft points while Quinn projected a focused emotional barrier behind her, anchoring her rhythm and dampening panic for the civilians still escaping the courtyard.
Alexander tanked another smaller echo to the left, his massive shield intercepting a kinetic blast midair. "Left quadrant—breacher incoming!" he barked.
"I've got it," Dain called, bounding up a broken column. He flipped midair, launching a burst of spatial disruption into the incoming spawn, sending it skidding into the pavement like a puppet with cut strings.
Above, Vespera raised her hand and sent out a calming sync pulse. The wave expanded across the field, brushing over the civilians, slowing their panic, suppressing the chaos just enough for the team to maneuver. Her voice was calm, steady, barely louder than a whisper. "Hold your lines."
Then the wind changed.
A sharp chime of resonance echoed across the plaza—followed by a burning shockwave of kinetic force.
Evelyn Zarek descended from the upper command wing, her sword drawn, cloak whipping behind her. The blade crackled with energy as she slashed downward, cleaving straight through two echoes in one clean strike. Kinetic discharge flared from her boots as she landed in a crouch, eyes scanning.
Ava followed—her guiding pulse sweeping wide. "Resonance destabilizing across vectors," she called. "Lucian, your field's peaking. Rowan, you're flickering."
"I know," Rowan said, bracing behind Lucian. His shield flared again as another beast charged toward them, snarling.
And then—a thunderclap.
A beam of fire and lightning streaked across the courtyard, slicing an echo mid-roar.
Mira Kael landed on a broken support beam above them, rifle already reloading. "Visual acquired. Engaging priority targets."
Lucian didn't look back. "You're late."
"I was waiting for an entrance," she replied.
Suddenly—a pulse.
Not from the rift.
From the ground.
A newly awakened Esper—barely eighteen—staggered forward from the med evac point. His body trembled, energy crackling in unstable waves around him. His eyes glowed white-blue. His scream split the air, resonance warping wildly as power surged outward.
The team reeled.
A flare that strong could collapse their entire sync net.
Rowan was already moving.
He dropped his shield, sprinted straight toward the boy. "Everyone back!"
Lucian turned. "Rowan—wait!"
Rowan reached the Esper and slammed his palm to the teen's chest, breath rushing out. He poured everything—every stabilizing thread, every resonant tether—into the panic storm.
The Esper flared once more—then crumpled into Rowan's arms.
Quiet.
The echoes stilled. For a heartbeat, the breach flickered.
Lucian was at Rowan's side in an instant, catching him as he sagged.
"Still think I'm not reckless?" Rowan muttered.
Lucian's expression was pure fire. "You're lucky I like you."
Ava moved in quickly, stabilizing Rowan's vitals. "He's okay. But he's drained."
The boy in Rowan's arms stirred. "W-What happened?"
"You resonated," Rowan whispered. "Hard. But you're safe."
The rift shrieked above—flickering, weakening.
Lucian turned toward the breach, eyes glowing purple.
And then the world shuddered.
A second echo dropped from the sky—this one didn't fall like the rest. It landed, perfectly balanced, the ground beneath it fracturing in spider-web cracks. Its form was human—male—wrapped in fractured black armor that twitched with shifting resonance, warping and reforming like a glitch trying to render reality. Its face was obscured beneath a jagged half-mask of hardened corruption, but the outline of its jaw, the slope of its shoulders...
Rowan's breath hitched. "Lucian?"
The creature's eyes—burning violet—locked onto Rowan.
It launched forward.
Lucian warped midair, intercepting it just before it reached Rowan. Their powers collided in a violent burst—space folding in on itself with a sound like tearing metal and thunder. The shockwave threw back Ari and Quinn, who hit the ground hard. Quinn coughed, blood trickling from his lip.
The two figures—Lucian and the echo—vanished, blinking out of view as folded space swallowed them.
A second later, they reappeared mid-sky—clashing fist to fist. A ripple exploded from their impact. Mira fired a round to intercept the echo, but it dodged—phase-jumping sideways with uncanny, identical precision to Lucian.
"They're fighting the same," Rowan breathed. "Down to every step."
Lucian twisted behind the echo and struck with a phase slice—distorting gravity at a fixed point. The echo anticipated it—countered—warped behind him in return, elbowing Lucian in the ribs hard enough to break bone. Lucian hit the ground with a roll, immediately recovering, but blood stained his side.
The echo's corrupted blade extended from its arm—same curvature, same motion Lucian had used in the Rift Storm site a week prior.
"You're me," Lucian whispered, eyes wide.
The echo didn't speak.
Instead, it turned and hurled a spatial distortion straight at Rowan.
"Rowan, shield!" Evelyn shouted.
Rowan raised his hand, his resonance shield flaring bright—but the impact cracked it. Hairline fractures spidered across the barrier. He grunted, blood leaking from his nose.
Lucian surged forward with a roar, slamming into the echo's side. He punched again, phase-pulled a distortion to shatter the echo's footing—but the echo mirrored him, creating a looped rupture that threw Lucian off his axis. Lucian hit the ground hard, rolled—and came up bleeding from his mouth and shoulder. His left arm hung at a strained angle, movement tight with pain. He was still mobile, still standing—but the damage was visible. Bruising bloomed across his side, his breathing shallow and quick. Not mortally wounded, but he was clearly running on grit and fury.
Dain jumped in to assist, hurling a terrain bomb that splintered the area around the echo. It slowed it down—but only for a second. The echo reached him, claws slicing across Dain's chest, tearing through his vest. He fell back with a cry, blood seeping through.
"Dain!" Vespera moved in, sending a wide-radius emotional sync to suppress the echo's corrupted field. It staggered.
Lucian took the chance.
He warped above it, channeling every ounce of kinetic force into his heel and drove it into the echo's back. The impact cratered the concrete.
The echo didn't scream.
It didn't make a sound.
It rose.
And smiled.
Lucian's eyes widened. It was his smile—just… wrong.
Ava's voice rang out. "It's syncing to Rowan's resonance. Purposefully. Targeting him only."
Lucian didn't hesitate. He warped again—grabbed the echo from behind—locked it in a spatial loop.
"You don't get to touch him," Lucian hissed.
He tore open a rift-fold behind the echo's head and collapsed the gravity well—imploding space around the echo's skull. The creature writhed, its form glitching, collapsing—until Mira fired a final sniper round through its center.
It exploded into dark matter.
Silence fell.
Lucian staggered, bloody, breathing hard.
Rowan limped forward, face pale. "That… was you."
Lucian didn't deny it. He couldn't.
They both knew.
And somewhere beneath Zarek, the system issued a silent warning:
[RECURSION ECHO ANNIHILATED] [ORIGIN MATCH CONFIRMED – ACCESS RESTRICTED] [ANCHOR DESTABILIZATION LEVEL: 6%]
And no one saw it flicker.