The room spun.
Charles sat on the edge of the bed, the blanket clinging to sweat on his bare back. Olivia still slept behind him, unaware of the storm crashing into him. Her breathing was soft, peaceful—a stark contrast to the chaos tearing through his mind. Alina's words echoed like a gunshot in his skull.
"One lives. One dies."
He stared at the footage playing on the tablet in Alina's hand, each frame burning itself into his memory.
Lira.
Jade.
Maya.
Each one suffering, each one breaking down from the shard Omega had hidden inside their Sync threads. Emotional overload, corrupted bonds, feedback loops tearing at their minds and nervous systems. The medical readouts showed neural patterns fragmenting in real-time, synapses firing in cascading failures that would leave them vegetables at best.
All because of him.
"I can't choose," he said, voice low and cracked.
"You don't have the luxury not to," Alina replied flatly.
