Part I – Fragmented Awakening
The first thing Rowan felt was pain.
Not sharp. Not sudden. But familiar—a distant echo of agony that didn't belong to this moment.
He sat up too fast in the dark, breath catching in his throat like broken glass. Cold slicked down his spine, sweat pooling beneath his collarbone. The sheets were twisted around his legs, clinging like restraints. His heart pounded—but it wasn't just his heart. It was other hearts, from other moments.
Beating.
Stopping.
Dying.
The silence in the room was heavy. Too heavy.
Lucian lay beside him still, breathing slow, mouth parted slightly against the pillow. His dark lashes rested against sharp cheekbones, one arm loosely wrapped across Rowan's waist. Even asleep, Lucian was anchoring him—always anchoring him.
Rowan stared at the ceiling and blinked.
And blinked again.
But the visions didn't go away.
He died screaming— A blade through his spine, claws ripping upward. His mouth open in a silent cry before blood choked him.
He died cold— Locked in a glass pod, resonance bleeding from every pore as he tried to reach the console. His hands cracked and blistered from overchanneling. Frost crept over his lips. Lucian was screaming his name.
He died burning— Pinned beneath the rubble, his guiding amp fractured, and flame devoured his lungs before he could scream. He remembered Lucian's silhouette—just out of reach.
He died again and again.
Electrocuted. Eviscerated. Unraveled by an echo that wore his own face. One death showed his own hand—gloved in black, holding a blade slick with blood—his own blood. The look on Lucian's face in that one wasn't grief.
It was horror.
Rowan's hands were shaking before he realized he was even breathing.
He curled forward, gripping his head in both hands, nails digging into his scalp.
"Stop," he whispered. "Stop showing me."
But the memories weren't memories. They were reflections. Rippled from something deeper—older. Versions of himself that hadn't survived. Fractured pulses of resonance echoing across timelines that no longer existed.
But he had felt them. Every one.
His resonance field surged wildly, skipping like a scratched record. He could feel himself thinning at the edges—losing cohesion. Like the thread of his existence had been pulled too tight and now the seams were unraveling.
"Rowan."
Lucian's voice cut through the dark like a warm blade.
Rowan startled—but didn't pull away. Lucian had already risen, half-naked, eyes still half-lidded from sleep but sharpened by instinct.
He crossed the room barefoot, a sheet wrapped low around his hips. His hand cupped the back of Rowan's neck.
"You're spiraling."
Rowan's breathing hitched.
"I saw myself die," he said. "Over and over. I—Lucian, I could feel it. Every version. Every fucking death. One of them—" his voice cracked, "one of them had you killing me."
Lucian froze.
Then he dropped to his knees in front of Rowan, kneeling between his legs, hands firm on Rowan's thighs.
"Look at me."
Rowan did.
Lucian's expression was unreadable—eyes like a storm barely held at bay. His thumb brushed beneath Rowan's eye, catching a tear he didn't remember shedding.
"I didn't," Lucian said. "I wouldn't. No version of me that exists would ever—"
"But they did." Rowan's voice trembled. "I felt it. They did. I think I've died more times than I've lived, Lucian."
Lucian inhaled sharply, then pulled him forward, arms wrapping around him in a full-body embrace. His head tucked against Rowan's neck, breath hot against his skin.
"You're alive here," Lucian said fiercely. "With me. This version—this moment—is real. I don't care what the others did."
Rowan didn't answer. But he clung back just as tightly.
Lucian eventually pulled away and rose, stepping toward the console. He tapped the display.
It didn't respond.
The room lights flickered once.
Twice.
Then—
Total darkness.
The power died with a soft, vacuumed pop.
Rowan's console dimmed. The wall panel lights vanished. The resonance panels in the floor shut off in a sweeping wave of black.
The air shifted—became still. Too still.
Rowan grabbed Lucian's wrist. "Lucian—"
A pulse buzzed from the walls.
Then every surface in the room lit up in sudden, jarring red. Emergency lights cast sharp shadows against their skin, warping their faces into strange masks of panic.
On the nearest panel, a message blinked in garbled text.
ANCHOR ERROR. CASCADE IN MOTION. TERMINATION PENDING.
Rowan's mouth went dry.
Lucian's jaw clenched. "Get dressed."
Part II – Sudden Facility Blackout
Lucian was already moving.
He yanked open the drawer by the bedside, pulling on his tactical shirt—black, tight-fitting, still half-wrinkled from being stuffed into a corner hours ago. His boots followed, one hand lacing them while the other tapped furiously at his backup wrist console, scanning for response channels.
None connected.
Rowan threw on his field jacket, fingers sluggish with adrenaline. His body felt like it was vibrating—too tightly wound, like his cells hadn't stopped skipping between versions of himself.
"What the hell does Termination Pending mean?" he asked, voice low but sharp.
Lucian didn't answer.
Not because he didn't want to—but because he didn't know.
The emergency lighting outside their quarters stuttered erratically as they stepped into the corridor. Crimson pulses spilled down the hall in waves, casting shadows that moved before they did. Each panel buzzed faintly—then louder. Then stopped.
Everything was too quiet.
As they turned the corridor, a low-pitched wail rolled through the facility. Not a siren. Not protocol.
It was the sound of a system shutting down its own heartbeat.
Doors down the hallway sealed automatically, blast locks sliding into place one after another. Windows darkened with resonance-proof shielding. Console panels blinked once—then died. Power nodes sparked and shorted out. It was like watching the building suffocate.
Lucian swore under his breath. "Come on."
They reached the command corridor leading to the core monitoring bay—only to stop short as a wall panel sparked violently and dislodged from the wall, clattering to the ground in a puff of smoke.
Behind it, veins of glowing blue resonance pulsed erratically—twitching, fracturing across the facility like lightning bolts frozen in crystal.
Rowan stepped closer, breath hitching.
"That's not external power disruption. That's resonance feedback. Something's overriding the stabilizers."
Lucian tapped at the closest working port. "Then it's not a blackout. It's a—"
A flicker surged down the hallway like a pulse of light—rushing past them fast enough to whip Rowan's coat around his legs.
The hallway lights died again.
ANCHOR ERROR DETECTED
RECURSION SYNC UNSTABLE
That line crawled in flickering red across the far wall panel—just before it cracked, shattering the screen from the inside out.
They weren't alone in the hall anymore.
A figure turned the corner up ahead—blurry through the flickering emergency lights. A staff member in partial uniform staggered forward, pressing a hand to his head. His eyes were wide—glassy. And behind him, another figure followed. Unsteady. Dragging one leg.
Lucian stepped forward, ready to assist—
The second figure opened its mouth.
The sound that came out wasn't human.
Not quite a scream. Not quite a mechanical shriek. But something in-between—something garbled by recursion distortion, like static wrapped around a memory that never fully formed.
Lucian threw out a hand, instinct snapping in.
A ripple of pressure shoved both figures backward into the wall, hard enough to stun but not kill.
Rowan stepped beside him, heart racing.
"That's not normal resonance corruption. That's echo drift—tethered to a recursion event."
Lucian's jaw was tight. "Then it's here."
Rowan turned slowly, staring down the corridor toward the sealed observation wing.
Something moved past the window.
Just a shadow. Too fast. Too familiar.
His breath stopped.
"I think… I think this cascade isn't just an error," he whispered. "I think something's trying to break through."
Lucian didn't answer.
Because he was already turning back toward Rowan—his eyes glowing faintly violet at the edges.
"I felt it when you woke up," he said, voice low and taut. "Something snapped in our tether. And whatever broke off—it's still here."
Part III – Emergency Convergence
The doors to the command deck were already sealed.
Emergency glyphs pulsed along the reinforced surface, each symbol etched with shifting resonance lines—security patterns that should only activate in an external siege. Not during an internal cascade. Not when the threat was inside.
Lucian's palm hovered over the lock scanner. His eyes, still tinged with that eerie violet glow, reflected the security panel's distorted flicker.
Rowan moved in beside him. His wrist console sputtered but managed a weak connection.
[Override accepted: MERCER, ROWAN | ZAREK AUTHORITY PROXY – ACTIVE]
The doors unlocked with a sigh and a heavy click.
Inside, the command deck was chaos contained by force of habit. Half the main monitors were dead. Others streamed corrupted data—looping maps, recursive warning codes, or sheer static. Evelyn stood at the central console, tall and composed, her blade strapped across her back, but her eyes were narrowed and glowing faintly with kinetic energy buildup.
Ava stood beside her, her resonance amplifier glinting as she passed a hand over the stabilizer nodes. Her calm expression didn't mask the tension in her posture—shoulders drawn tight, lips slightly parted as she synced multiple data pulses.
They turned as Rowan and Lucian entered.
"You're late," Evelyn said flatly.
"We brought the apocalypse with us," Lucian replied.
That earned him a glance. And a twitch at the corner of Ava's mouth that might've been amusement—or worry.
"Status?" Rowan asked.
Ava answered first. "System feedback initiated without operator command. Primary power relays are intact, but the resonance net began auto-cascading approximately three minutes before the facility-wide alert."
Evelyn gestured to one of the smaller monitors still functioning. The feed displayed a side corridor—somewhere deep in the facility's lower labs. The image was blurry, like looking through water. But there, framed in the chaos, was a silhouette.
Moving.
Shifting.
Its shape bent in unnatural ways. As if time and space refused to hold it in one form.
"Someone—or something—is inside the feedback loop," Evelyn said.
Lucian stared at the screen. His fingers clenched slowly. "It's not a Rift echo."
"No." Ava's voice was quiet. "It's bound to your resonance frequency."
Rowan looked between them. "That shouldn't be possible. We haven't entered a Rift in days. There's been no signature drift…"
Evelyn brought up another file. This one—heavily encrypted, half-redacted—flickered across the screen with glitching lines of metadata.
Rowan recognized the title instantly.
VEIL SEED PROTOCOL – SUBJECT CLASS S – CANDIDATE 1A
His stomach dropped.
Lucian inhaled sharply. "You kept this buried."
"It was dead data," Evelyn said tightly. "Until this morning. We didn't activate it. Something else did."
Rowan moved to the console, scanning the signature logs. One pattern kept repeating. A spike. A feedback coil. Then an echo.
And all of them mirrored Lucian's own resonance.
Lucian's voice was low. "It's trying to override me."
Ava stepped forward gently. "Or loop you. Into another recursion. That would explain the memory feedback Rowan experienced earlier."
"Then it's not just the system breaking," Rowan said. "It's someone trying to reset it from the inside."
"Not someone," Lucian murmured. "Me."
The room went silent.
Rowan stepped closer to him, their shoulders brushing. "No. Not you. A version of you. Something that didn't die properly in the last recursion."
Lucian's jaw tensed.
Evelyn's eyes sharpened. "Whatever it is—it's unspooling resonance we can't afford to lose."
She turned to them. "Gear up. Ava and I will meet you in Lower Deck 12. We're activating full containment. If this thing reaches the anchor systems again, it could destabilize every version of you that ever existed."
Lucian's voice was cold. "Then I'll kill it before it gets the chance."
Part IV – System Lockdown Echoes
The alert resounded through the facility now—no longer just silent warnings etched in flickering red, but an all-out blare of reality unhinging. An emergency-level breach, broadcast on all private channels and echoed through the very bones of Zarek Technologies.
Across various sections of the building, the message scrolled in jagged, unending script:
RECURSION EVENT DETECTED.
ANCHOR FLUX: UNSTABLE.
CONTAINMENT COMPROMISED.
Command Gymnasium – Level 4
Alexander Hawke had been in the middle of a cooldown set, sweat trailing in slow lines down the hard lines of his back, the resistance gear stacked beside him humming with residual kinetic tension.
When the lights snapped to crimson and the alarm sounded, he stood up so fast the mat creaked beneath his boots.
His dark blue eyes flicked toward the wall monitor—just in time to catch the static-laced recursion warning scroll across it.
His jaw clenched. "Not again."
He grabbed his jacket off the rack, tossing his training gloves into the bin with mechanical precision. His forearm still bore faint bandaging from the recent Rift encounter, but he didn't hesitate.
From behind him, a familiar voice chirped, "You sure you're cleared for combat, Captain Big Shield?"
Dain Ashcroft emerged from the adjacent stairwell, unbuttoned jacket flapping open over a white shirt already rumpled from sprinting.
"I'm not missing another internal breach," he added. "Last time I skipped one, you all got mauled and had sexy trauma bonding."
Alexander exhaled through his nose. "We don't bond through trauma."
Dain winked. "Speak for yourself."
Beside them, Vespera stepped out of the hallway like she'd been summoned by the tension in the air itself. Her violet eyes flicked to the alert scrolling above the gym's console as she drew her resonance amp pendant from beneath her collar.
"Field dampeners are coming online in zones two and five," she said, tone low and even.
"The net's reacting like there's an echo threading through baseline layers."
Alexander shouldered his shield into place.
"Then we don't wait. Let's move."
East Wing Corridor – Quinn & Ari
Ari Winters was halfway through threading a repair patch through her damaged jacket sleeve when the hallway lights flickered overhead.
She looked up.
Then her wrist console vibrated—hard. So did Quinn's.
[RECURSION EVENT FLAGGED – ALL UNITS STANDBY]
Ari's eyes widened. "Tell me that doesn't mean what I think it does."
Quinn Reyes, seated cross-legged across from her in their shared maintenance alcove, had already begun lacing up his gloves. His calm demeanor didn't falter, but his brow furrowed in concentration.
"It's not a standard Rift surge," he murmured. "Feels... heavier."
He stood, extending his hand to Ari. She took it with a snap-grin.
"Guess we're suiting up again."
"I'd like to avoid another emergency triage night," Quinn said, brushing dust from his shirt. "But with Lucian involved, odds are slim."
Ari kissed his cheek in passing. "You love it."
"I love you," Quinn replied. "The chaos is just an unfortunate tagalong."
They broke into a jog down the corridor as the overhead lights began to pulse red in rhythm with the warning klaxon.
Sublevel Quarters – Ren Saiki
Ren Saiki jolted up from where he'd been sprawled across his bunk, chrono charm dangling loosely around his wrist. The room's soft glow had just begun to dim for the artificial sleep cycle—but now everything was lit in sharp staccato pulses of red.
He squinted at the console mounted beside the door.
[RECURSION INITIATION DETECTED – AVOID CORE WINGS]
"Recursion?" he muttered, voice still raspy with sleep.
Then he perked up, eyes wide.
"Ooh, this sounds important."
Ren hopped off the bed, shaking out his arms. He slapped his jacket over his shoulders, tied his long hair back in a haphazard half-bun, and sprinted barefoot into the hall.
"Time to find Rowan!"
Descent to Deck 12 – Rowan and Lucian
By the time Rowan and Lucian reached the lift toward Deck 12, the facility had transformed into a warzone waiting for its war.
The elevator doors hissed open, and Rowan stepped in first. Lucian followed silently, his grey eyes reflecting the red emergency lighting.
They didn't speak until the doors closed and the elevator began its slow descent.
Lucian leaned his shoulder against the side panel, crossing his arms. His ribs still ached—dull pain throbbing from the strike he'd taken days ago from the Echo. He hadn't said anything. But Rowan had noticed the way he winced when turning too fast.
"You're hurt," Rowan said softly.
Lucian's lips twitched. "Still handsome, though."
Rowan didn't smile. His hand reached out, fingertips brushing Lucian's side. "Don't make light of it. You're not invincible."
Lucian turned his face toward him slowly, some shadow in his gaze. "I was never supposed to survive any of this, Rowan. You're the reason I did."
Silence stretched.
Then Rowan reached for his hand and laced their fingers together.
The elevator continued downward.
And just before the doors slid open onto the flickering chaos of Deck 12, Rowan whispered, "Then stay alive for me."
Lucian didn't answer.
But his grip tightened like a vow.