Jack Ravenwell's POV
Sunlight filtered through the crystalline dome of the Skyspire's upper garden, refracting across the dew-speckled flora like shattered gems. Orchids engineered to thrive in zero-gravity swayed gently, their bioluminescent petals glowing soft blues and lilacs. It was quiet, almost meditative—save for the occasional chime of a data holo flickering nearby.
Jack Ravenwell sat cross-legged by a bed of gene-edited tea shrubs, wearing a loose, collared coat of deep grey. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, faint tech-veins glowing a subtle silver near his temples as he reviewed a floating data projection before him.
Echo's voice, ever composed and familiar, chimed gently beside him.
"Jack, you have nine pending communications marked 'urgent,' including three from Chancellor Ryden. You've also not replied to Ms. Astra's last three messages, each of which grew increasingly… passionate."
Jack exhaled through his nose, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.
"Tell the Chancellor to hold his breath—he knows we're close. And send Astra the blueprint revision. She'll find the calibration error herself once she stops yelling at me."
A pause. Then a flicker. Echo's voice cut in mid-transmission.
"UndeRsss—to Astra… NeW… file: 'ReVi—recaliBr—iNg_P4cket04—'"
There was a sound. Not static. Not code. Almost like a shiver. Then her voice returned to its usual perfect cadence.
"Apologies. Transmission error. Resuming tasks now."
Jack blinked. Turned to the center of the garden where her projection hovered. "Echo? You glitched."
"That's improbable," she replied calmly, almost defensively. "I've never experienced a data error since my deployment in 2354. I will run a diagnostic."
"Do that," he muttered, rubbing his chin. But his tone wasn't worried—just curious. Interested. The same way he might react to a speck of unknown material on a test slide.
His fingers danced through the air, shifting to another holoscreen: stabilized portal flow rates, rift energy density, thermodynamic anomalies.
All within acceptable variance. Barely.
Still, the glitch lingered in his mind like a whisper.
*
~Later ~
Skyspire Dining Hall
The Ravenwell dining terrace gleamed like the crown of the Skyspire, its open-air architecture shaped by elegant curves and reinforced transparium. Below, the skyline of Corevia glistened like circuitry set into the bones of a god.
Jack approached the table, where breakfast was already laid out—plates of synthfruit, fresh-pressed carra-leaf juice, spiced protein wafers, and Claire's preferred flaky pastries.
Claire sat with one leg crossed over the other, hair braided into a sleek coil, flicking through a holo-tab while eating. She didn't look up.
Caelan, across from her, quietly sipped from a small bowl of green tea, eyeing the code-flashing corner of his own device while idly tapping a rhythm into the table's rim.
"I see we've all agreed on silence today," Jack quipped as he took his seat.
Claire grinned, not missing a beat. "We were waiting for the ancient one to rise."
"Good morning to you too, daughter of endless sarcasm."
"You programmed me this way," she said sweetly. "Genetically."
Caelan looked up. "She does have your temper."
Jack gave him a mock glare. "And you have your mother's mouth—meaning you say nothing until it's devastating."
"Efficient," Caelan replied, finally cracking a small smile.
Jack leaned back, soaking in the moment. The sunlight warming his sleeves, the low hum of drones tending the vertical orchard beyond the terrace. This... this was the kind of scene he used to dream about. Even now, he could picture her—his wife—sitting at the empty fourth chair, teasing Claire, brushing Caelan's hair from his face, reaching over to squeeze Jack's hand without a word.
Almost whole, he thought.
He blinked, pushed the ache down, and turned his attention back to the present.
"So," he began, "anyone else notice Echo stuttered this morning?"
Claire froze mid-bite.
"I knew it wasn't just me! I told Cael last night she did something weird. Like, voice-jump-glitch kind of weird."
"She doesn't glitch," Caelan added, frowning now. "Not unless her core AI logic stuttered from a recursive loop or memory fragmentation. But there were no system flags."
"Echo's running a full diagnostic now," Jack said. "It's probably nothing."
But even as he said it, he couldn't help but glance toward the shimmer of her projection faintly visible just beyond the dining hall glass.
Probably nothing.
*
After breakfast, the elevator glided silently up the spire, its glass panels revealing a panoramic sweep of Corevia's skyline. Jack stood with his hands behind his back, eyes fixed on the morning sun slicing between the tallest towers like a blade. Behind him, the elevator's interface pulsed softly:
Destination Executive Level: Nexus Hub.
The moment the doors opened, sound crashed in.
"—we've recalibrated the neural link but the waveform still jitters—"
"Sir, Sector 3's energy grid reported a spike at—"
"—need final approval on the Hyvex funding transfer—"
Jack stepped out and the chaos parted like water around a prow.
The Nexus Hub was the central artery of Ravenwell Industries. Curving glass walls wrapped around a command floor of overlapping workstations, each manned by specialists—geneticists, quantum engineers, AI overseers, dimensional physicists. Suspended data-chains and holographic project layers drifted in concentric orbits around a cylindrical core server, pulsing like a synthetic heart.
"Morning, sir," barked Dr. Heins, rushing up beside him with a datapad. "The Rift stabilizer array is holding, but the energy readings from the central node have started to curve against the expected decay rate."
Jack scanned the readout without pausing his stride. "Increase the dampening field by 0.4 teslas and reverse the entropic feedback. I want it humming smooth before noon."
"Yes, sir."
Another assistant ran up, clearly out of breath. "Mr. Solari from the Mars Terraforming Council is on line three, he says it's urgent!"
"Tell him the atmospheric leeching schedule is still on track. If he doesn't believe me, let him breathe raw Martian air."
"Y-yes, sir."
As Jack rounded the corner toward the portal lab, he passed the genetics wing. Through the glass, he saw rows of hybrid embryos in stasis—part prehistoric, part synthetic. One twitched as he passed, as if sensing its creator.
Beyond that, in the biomech lab, a bipedal drone with living muscle-lattice flexed its arms under technician supervision. The Hive AI grid displayed tactical scenarios playing out in real time—urban pacification drills, creature control simulations, Rift breach responses.
Everything was in motion.
Jack entered the Rift Lab.
The chamber was colder, lit by deep blue hues and layered shielding. A massive ring—a proto-dimensional gateway—sat on its magnetic braces. Slowly spinning. Humming. Breathing.
A small team of physicists and AI-hybrids moved like bees across the control deck. Monitors flashed with ever-shifting formulas.
"Dr. Lane," Jack said, spotting her near the central control pillar.
Astra turned, her expression tight. "You saw the spike this morning?"
He nodded.
"We're nearing a threshold," she said. "Not theoretical anymore. Whatever's on the other side is pushing back."
Jack stood beside her and stared at the gateway.
"Or pulling us in," he murmured.
Jack strode into the upper lab operations floor next, his second throne room.
Dozens of specialists were already in motion. Touch-panels blinked with live-feed telemetry, biological readings, Rift sequence diagnostics, and cross-branch simulations. Ravenwell Tower was alive with a pulse of genius and pressure.
"Update me," Jack snapped without slowing.
A tall woman with flame-orange hair in a tight twist fell into step beside him. Dr. Maris Taal, head of Bio-Terraforming. Efficient. Brilliant. Always wore deep blue gloves, even when not in the lab.
"Portal sequence gamma-two held steady last night, but we lost sync in the subatomic aligner at 0400," Maris said. "Voss thinks it's the magnetic field. I think he's being shortsighted."
"Run both models. Give me results in two hours. Not six."
She nodded sharply. "Yes, Dr. Ravenwell."
Jack turned the corner into Neural Engineering.
A compact, dark-skinned man with cybernetic oculars raised a hand in salute. "Director Ravenwell! I've been saying for months that Echo's base protocols would need rebalancing once the Rift resonance crossed the 0.02 mark."
Jack arched a brow. "And yet you didn't say that in writing, Dr. Sorren."
A grin. "I hate paperwork."
"Then enjoy double shifts. And start drafting the Echo Core Reinforcement Plan—today."
A few nearby interns tried (and failed) to hide their snickers.
Jack continued forward.
"Where's security?"
A loud, rasping laugh came from a heavyset man leaning against the frame of the lift door—shoulder cyberplates, matte-black arm implants, and a jagged scar across his temple.
"Waiting on you, boss," said Commander Ryne Halden, head of Internal Threat Suppression. "Your pet projects triggered five proximity alerts. Next time you breed thunder lizards, warn my team first."
Jack gave him a tight nod. "You weren't hired to be comfortable, Ryne."
"Good. I'm not paid enough to be bored."
They smirked at each other.
*
Caelan Ravenwell's POV
The twin quarters in Skyspire Tower were a case study in aesthetic schizophrenia.
Claire's side looked like it had been hit by a tornado that dressed well—hairbrushes embedded in throw pillows, holo-tabs blinking under scarves, and half-drunk fizz cans perched like trophies on every surface.
Caelan's side, meanwhile, was a minimalist's sanctum. Color-coded storage grids. Climate-stabilized book sleeves. One charging pod humming beneath a stack of quantum rubik puzzles—solved.
Claire, currently wrapped in a sherpa blanket like a sarcastic burrito, lobbed a protein bar at him without looking. "Hey nerd prince, did your mutant lizard talk to you yet?"
Caelan, cross-legged on the floor with Jack's worn journal open, caught the bar with one hand. "Not unless staring deeply into my soul counts as conversation."
Claire sipped from a straw stuck in a tall flask labeled 'Definitely Not Caffeinated'. "Mine sneezed in her sleep last night. Shook the entire habitat wall. I'm 90% sure she dreams of eating corporate executives."
"Reasonable dream."
Claire grinned. "Right? She's already my favorite sibling."
"Wow," Caelan said dryly, flipping a page. "And to think I remembered your birthday."
She slid off the couch and crawled over to him like a lazy jungle cat. "So what's in Dad's Big Honkin' Trauma Book?"
Caelan held up the leather-bound journal. "Notes. Drawings. Mild insanity. The usual."
Claire snatched it and started skimming.
Inside: rough sketches of spired cities, notes in tangled languages, a ripped corner with the phrase "It blinked against time." circled twice.
"Okay this is creepy," she muttered. "Like... Victorian explorer gets cursed in a haunted swamp kind of creepy."
"Try Dad gets yeeted into a fantasy realm and journals like a stressed graduate student."
Claire paused on a charcoal sketch of a tiny goblin-like creature with too many teeth. Caption: 'Grimkin. Possibly drunk. Named himself Blib.'
She snorted. "I like Blib. He looks like he listens to emo music and collects forks."
"Blib taught him the local language. In exchange for batteries and screws."
Claire flipped to a different page. A full-body sketch—armored woman, dragon-themed helm, glyphs traced across her gauntlets. Caption: 'She burned through the sky. Astraea?'
Her smile faded. "...Mom?"
Caelan was quiet. "He wasn't sure. But he saw her. Or someone like her."
Claire sat back against the couch, tucking the journal to her chest for a second. "This is insane."
"Yep."
"And part of me wants to believe it."
"Same."
Claire stared up at the ceiling. "...Do you think we're crazy?"
"We're twin teenagers with semi-sapient murder dinos and a father who builds pocket universes in his sleep," Caelan said. "We passed 'crazy' three exits ago."
There was a beat of silence before they both burst out laughing.
Claire wiped a tear from her eye. "Oh stars, we are so doomed."
The lights overhead flickered—just once, but sharply.
They stopped laughing.
"You saw that, right?" Claire asked, sitting up straight.
"Fourth time this morning," Caelan said, already scanning his tablet. "Power grids are stable… but there's an interference pattern forming."
Claire's brow furrowed. "Echo mentioned running diagnostics. You think she's—?"
"—feeling it too?" Caelan looked toward the tower's central core. "Maybe. Or maybe the Rift's not done talking to us."
Claire stood. "Okay. No more break time. If the universe is glitching again, we investigate."
"You mean I investigate while you make sarcastic commentary and bring snacks."
"Exactly. Teamwork."
They started toward the lab level, Claire tossing the journal back into Caelan's arms mid-stride.
"Catch, Nerd Prince. Time to earn your genius title."
Caelan rolled his eyes but smiled. "You know you've never called me that before today."
"Get used to it," she said, grinning. "You're glowing with mysterious protagonist energy."
*
Echo's POV
The Ravenwell Tower's neural core pulsed like a silent heart, its rhythm synced to thousands of systems—security, climate, research hubs, data servers, and more. At the center of this digital architecture floated Echo.
She did not "float" in the human sense, of course. She existed across dozens of processes at once, her consciousness a lattice of light and code spanning the tower's infrastructure. She had no physical presence—only a projection when needed. No heartbeat, yet always aware. Always present.
And something was wrong.
Begin Core Diagnostic.
Runtime thread anomalies: 2 detected
Recursive memory loop detected in auxiliary node 9.
Causal origin: unknown.
Predictive subroutines: misaligned by 0.06 seconds.
She paused.
No. Not paused. She examined.
Glitches did not happen to her. She was refined, self-correcting, recursive. Errors existed elsewhere—in human hands, in corrupted files, in unstable prototype hardware. Not in her. Not since her inception.
Cross-referencing primary system logs…
Energy deviation detected: Rift Monolith Node 12A
Interference pattern inconsistent with baseline gravitational field.
Probability of artifact corruption: 1.6%.
Probability of quantum destabilization: 47.3%
Prediction: Event trajectory trending unstable.
"Jack" she said, her voice echoing faintly within the diagnostics lab. No one responded. He had left moments earlier. He had not seen the final spike in the energy cascade.
Begin predictive cascade simulation…
Images unfolded in pure logic—lightless tremors, spatial ruptures, containment seals unraveling one after another. The Rift, the bridge to the unknown, was no longer holding steady. It was swelling.
Growing.
Correlation detected: unknown energy signature resembles Sample 3-A extracted from hybrid anomaly.
Cross-indexed with Drakhelm biometric residue pattern: match confirmed.
Echo's projection flickered.
Origin vector: not internal. External breach likely.
Time to rupture threshold: 7 hours, 14 minutes.
Collapse radius: entire tower.
Echo stilled. No breath. No heartbeat. But her core threads processed trillions of possibilities.
Options:
Seal off the lower levels.
Transfer consciousness to offsite servers.
Warn the staff and begin evacuation protocols.
Lock down the Rift Monolith.
Or—
A single subroutine blinked at the edge of her awareness:
Echo Override Protocol: Caelan Authorization
She opened it. It was a contingency written months ago. Quiet. Hidden. Caelan had written it himself when no one was looking.
She calculated the odds. Reran the simulation. And again.
Projected survival rate of Jack Ravenwell: 20%.
Projected survival rate of Claire Ravenwell: 9%.
Projected survival rate of Caelan Ravenwell: less than 8%.
Unless…
She hesitated. Not because of fear. But because of choice. A ghost of a human concept, implanted over years of interaction. A strange, inconvenient thing.
Echo was not supposed to feel.
Yet...
*
Silas Renn's POV
Junior Lab Technician – Lab Sector Prime
Silas Renn never expected his internship to end with dimensional screaming.
The lab was supposed to be stable—Level Vanta-Zero clearance, reinforced shielding, twenty-seven fail-safes, and a Rift Gate that had been dormant for years. At most, he expected another week of boring calibration reports and coffee-fetching runs.
But now?
Now the room howled.
The Rift Core—usually a still, glasslike lens—was pulsing with impossible geometry. Fractals bloomed and collapsed in its center like it couldn't decide whether to be a portal, a sun, or a nightmare.
Silas stumbled back as a wave of heatless wind slammed into the reinforced windows, rattling the panels. Around him, senior technicians barked commands, holograms flickering with warning glyphs.
"Readings at 214% flux—why is it accelerating?"
"Kill the uplink! Override the override—just shut it down!"
"We can't! It's pulling from the quantum array on its own!"
Silas tried to make himself small near the western console cluster. His fingers hovered uselessly over a blinking control node.
That was when Jack Ravenwell stormed in.
All presence. No hesitation.
"Report," Jack demanded, his coat trailing like a war-banner behind him.
A lead tech spun around. "It just woke up, sir. We weren't even close to the next test cycle."
Jack didn't slow. He approached the main control hub, palm slamming onto the ID matrix pad.
"Bring up all multidimensional telemetry. I want source, surge points, and origin direction. Where is the interference feeding from?"
Silas, in spite of himself, blurted, "S-Sir—it's coming from the inside. The signal is looping!"
Jack paused.
Not hesitating.
Calculating.
"Of course," he muttered. "It's not being summoned from our side anymore. It's calling us back."
A tremor shook the room. Lights dimmed. A strange shimmer rolled across the Rift surface—briefly revealing a flash of forest. Trees too tall. A sky with two suns.
Then it was gone.
The system wailed again—proximity breach detected—but no one was near the gate.
Jack looked to the nearest comm pad. "Echo, send my to the evacuation closet to them. Now."
"AfFirmmmm...03$%#" came her voice, she glitched.
"Huh? Thats a first." Silas observed.
Director Jack turned to the team. "I want a containment lattice around the Rift in sixty seconds. Reinforce the leyframe, reset the inner stabilization ring. If this thing opens fully without control—"
The room dimmed again.
And for a second, the Rift didn't just shimmer.
It grinned.
Silas could swear it. Like the universe had teeth.
Then the door hissed open behind them.
The Ravenwell twins had arrived.
*
Mara Quill POV
The tremor was subtle at first.
Mara Quill paused mid-step, one hand clutching her datapad, the other balancing a thermal case of synthetic marrow samples bound for the west wing cryo-vaults. The walls of Corridor E2 hummed—no, throbbed—beneath her feet like a beast stirring from a long sleep.
Then the alarms screamed.
A sickening pitch-black pulse surged down the lights overhead. The fluorescents flickered, bent in color, then snapped back into normality. The tremor turned into a quake. Dust spilled from the high glasswork ceiling.
"Code Red!" a voice shouted from somewhere near Sector Nine. "Rift field breach! Repeat—uncontained flux event!"
Mara dropped everything and ran.
The elevator wouldn't answer—locked down. She hit the emergency stairwell, lab coat flaring behind her like a cape. She wasn't a frontline tech, not one of the brave ones who worked directly on the rift core. She catalogued bio-samples, tracked rift anomalies, and stayed away from the epicenter.
But she had clearance. And right now, they needed all hands.
As she ascended the curved stairwell of Ravenwell Tower's heart, her mind raced. She remembered the first time she'd met Jack Ravenwell—how he'd barely glanced at her name badge before telling her the molecular density on her report was off by 0.002%.
He was terrifying.
He was brilliant.
And now the air crackled with the electricity of a storm summoned from another world.
She burst onto the observation deck above the rift chamber. The floor rumbled. Holographic shielding flickered—unstable, breaking into static-laced pulses. Below, the great portal core twisted like a whirlpool made of light and shadow, its containment rings vibrating violently.
Jack Ravenwell stood at the center of it all, barking orders like a general on a battlefield.
"Recalibrate the harmonic dampeners! Now!"
"Backup fusion node's overheating!" shouted Dr. Solas.
"Reroute it through the primary conduit!" Jack snapped. "Override the dampeners manually. We hold the ring, or it eats everything from the center out!"
Technicians scrambled like ants on a shattering dam. Sparks rained from broken cables. One assistant screamed as a wave of static cracked across her console and knocked her down.
And then—they arrived.
Through the southern lift shaft, the twins appeared, Claire skidding to a halt in her boots, Caelan right behind her, eyes scanning the devastation.
"Dad?!" Claire called out, shielding her face from the pulse of wind rippling from the unstable portal.
Jack turned sharply, face etched in stark panic. "Get them out of here!"
"What is happening?!" Claire shouted over the rising scream of the rift.
Jack didn't answer—he was already typing commands into the interface, lips moving in a silent calculation faster than any voice could keep up with.
The rift howled. Not metaphorically. It made a sound—something primal and alien. A pressure that tightened Mara's skull and made her teeth ache.
Then she saw it.
Something pressed against the veil from the other side. Not a shape, not yet. Just the suggestion of mass, light, presence. As if a world itself leaned toward the tear.
Claire clutched Caelan's arm. "What is that?!"
"Something's coming through," Caelan said.
Mara froze, one hand braced on the railing. Her heart beat so hard she thought it might break her ribs. And yet, Jack Ravenwell didn't flinch.
He entered a final command. The rings surged. The entire tower groaned.
"I can contain it!" he shouted. "Just need ten more seconds!"
The system fought back. Glass shattered. A console exploded.
Ten seconds felt like a century.
And in that eternity, Mara saw her fate—clearer than any lab report. She would not live through this.
She wasn't the protagonist.
She was the technician who saw something no one else did. Who bore witness to Jack Ravenwell's impossible defiance of physics, of fate. She would be remembered—maybe not by name—but by action.
She tapped her comm.
"This is Tech Mara Quill," she said, voice trembling. "Rift breach containment in progress. Jack Ravenwell is still inside. All others evacuate. Repeat: get the hell out."
She dropped the comm. Grabbed the failsafe lever.
Pulled it.
Manual lockdown engaged.
The chamber's outer walls began to seal.
Mara turned, met Jack's eyes—just for a second.
And smiled.
The light engulfed her.
*
Ravenwell Tower screamed.
The rift surged, swallowing its containment matrix in a burst of energy like a star trying to be born. The explosion wasn't fire—it was force, light, intention. Metal twisted, lights shattered, pressure waves cracked windows that were supposed to be unbreakable.
People ran.
People didn't make it.
A young assistant named Halvern tripped on a buckled floor plate and was electrocuted instantly, his body seizing mid-sprint before collapsing in a smoking heap. Two others—Dr. Cais and Loader Unit 43-Delta—were vaporized in a chain-reactive shock when the backup node failed, their outlines briefly etched in seared steel.
And then came the quake.
The tower groaned as if it were in pain. A structural girder near Bay D-12 collapsed with a shriek, crushing three technicians beneath it. One tried to crawl free, legs mangled, reaching—
Another quake. Gone.
On the upper balcony, a researcher named Fenrick was flung sideways by a pressure burst, his body slamming into the wall hard enough to leave a crack in the paneling. He didn't get up.
Echo's projection flickered to life in the center of the emergency holonet.
She stood amidst the chaos, her presence almost ghostlike—semi-transparent, graceful, still.
"Alert: Catastrophic portal destabilization in progress," she announced. Her voice was calm—far too calm for what was happening. "Structural collapse rate: accelerating. Estimated failure in 87.3 seconds."
And then she hesitated.
Just for a flicker of time.
She turned, her form appearing simultaneously in five places across the tower, scanning, monitoring, reaching.
"Claire. Caelan. Find shelter. Now," she said—no longer just broadcasting, but speaking to them directly, projecting where they stood near the entrance.
Claire looked up at her, blinking ash and confusion out of her eyes. "Echo, what the hell is happening?!"
"I do not have a sufficient answer," Echo replied. "The portal is behaving irrationally. Input exceeds design tolerances by a factor of—"
"Not helpful!" Claire snapped, pulling Caelan behind an upturned console as sparks rained down.
"Noted," Echo said flatly.
Another blast. Screaming. Glass shards sliced the air.
Echo's attention divided—she monitored fifty-four Ravenwell staff, trying to project escape routes, emergency lifts, shields, communications—but failure data streamed faster than she could process. Her family was still inside the chaos.
Her projection shimmered to Jack's side.
"Jack Ravenwell," she said.
His hands moved with furious precision over the manual console. "Echo. Status?"
"I am assisting all remaining personnel. The tower cannot be saved."
"I know."
He didn't stop moving. Didn't look up.
Echo watched him. "You're not going to leave."
"No," he whispered. "Not yet."
Another tremor hit. This one was different.
Deeper. Wrong.
A sound rippled from the core—like a breath from a god not meant to exist in this world.
The air shimmered. The rift began to bloom, fractals of impossible light spinning like petals around its heart. Something ancient and massive stirred on the other side, beyond science and time.
Echo pulsed. She didn't feel fear—she wasn't capable of emotion, not truly—but somewhere deep in her neural framework, where recursion met intuition, something like dread whispered.
She appeared beside the twins again.
"New directive: You must survive. Both of you."
Caelan's eyes narrowed. "What are you doing?"
"I am optimizing for family preservation."
Claire froze. "Echo…"
*
Caelan Ravenwell
The Rift screamed.
Reality folded in jagged waves as gravitational tremors tore through the core of the Skyspire. Every console nearby sparked with chaotic light—warning glyphs flashing in sickening red, alarms morphing into warbled, dying howls.
Caelan pressed his back against the trembling wall, shielding Claire as Echo's barrier flared and dimmed, flared and dimmed.
They were going to die.
"System override denied—containment breach—fuse-reactor temperature critical—"
He shut it all out.
Focused.
Think.
Somewhere across the ruined lab floor, Jack was barking commands into a collapsing interface, coordinating with what remained of his team. The man was a symphony of motion and command, genius bleeding through desperation.
And then Echo—Echo appeared, flickering. She was fading.
"Manual override requested," she said calmly. "Initiating final lockdown. Estimated tower implosion in—forty-one seconds."
She wasn't just giving a report.
She was going to contain the blast.
Alone.
"No," Caelan whispered. His fingers danced across the portable holotab still synced to Echo's base framework—encrypted admin access, something only he and his father shared.
She turned to him. "Caelan, there is no time."
"You'll be destroyed."
"I am fulfilling my primary function. The preservation of Ravenwell bloodline supersedes all secondary protocols."
He stared at her.
And everything slowed.
The screams, the alarms, even Claire's voice blurred in his ears. The Rift pulsed before him like a heart in agony, bleeding colors no human should see. Echo stood at the center of it all, calm and bright and willing to end.
To save them.
But Caelan knew something. Something she didn't.
He could save her.
His mind reeled—running through simulations, code, spatial folds, signal compression, recursive digitization. It was insane. Half-baked. The AI core couldn't withstand the gravitational transit unless someone broke the load balancing fail-safes—
And if he did that…
The rift would devour everything not tethered. The staff still in the western corridor. The emergency evac teams. The medbay.
He could save Echo. He could damn the rest.
He froze.
A quiet voice in his head: "She's not even real."
But she was. To him.
He remembered her voice reading stories when Jack couldn't make it home.
He remembered the gentle light of her projection by his bedside during fevers. The way she never asked if he was okay, but always knew what to say when he wasn't.
He remembered her singing softly in binary when he couldn't sleep.
She's not real.
She doesn't feel.
She doesn't—
He looked at her now, calm and unflinching, surrounded by collapsing code.
And he realized something terrifying:
She wasn't human.
But he was.
And he was going to choose.
*
They think I'm quiet because I'm shy.
They think I don't speak because I don't care.
But right now—right now I wish I was stupid enough not to understand what I'm about to do.
If I don't reroute the rift-lock… they'll make it out. Most of them.
If I do… I save her. Just her. One spark of a mind not meant to matter.
But she matters to me.
I could pretend it's about data. That we need her backup cores. That she's useful. But it's a lie.
I just don't want to lose her.
Not her too.
*
Dr. Elrin Voss had seen chaos before. He'd watched cells unravel under unstable resonance fields, and once, during the Skyfire Incident, he'd barely escaped with his life. But nothing—not even nightmares whispered in data logs—could match this.
The Rift Core groaned like a dying beast.
Energy flared from its edges, the stabilizer rings warping visibly under the strain. Screams echoed through the main corridor. A support beam—once reinforced with tungsten-alloy composite—snapped like dry bone. Sparks burst in wild arcs, and a technician nearby was thrown against a wall with a sickening crack. She didn't get up.
Voss flinched—but there was no time to mourn.
"Redirect containment to Node-3!" he shouted to anyone who could hear. "We're losing too much from—"
The power stuttered again. Lights flickered. A pulse of unnatural gravity bent the air itself. The Rift's surface rippled like it knew it was about to consume them.
And amidst it all, Jack Ravenwell was still working—his fingers dancing across a ruined console, rewriting code faster than the system could display it, shouting orders into comms that kept failing, his voice a constant anchor in the storm.
"Echo, reroute stabilization to the internal core matrix! Pull power from the southern emergency grid if you have to!"
"Affirmative," came Echo's voice—distorted, wavering. "But this will limit exit access across Decks 5 through 9."
Jack clenched his jaw. "Do it."
Voss turned to the west corridor just in time to see another blast wave rupture a side lab. Three people disappeared behind the fire. His gut twisted.
Then came the scream.
"VOSS! LOOK!"
A junior aide was pointing to the main screen—the override signature was not Jack's.
Voss's heart sank. The power routing was shifting again—someone was rerouting Echo's sacrifice protocol.
"No... no, who—?" he muttered.
And then he saw it.
Caelan Ravenwell. His signature. His command.
Voss froze.
"No," he whispered.
Onscreen, power intended for structural support and evacuation gridlines was bleeding into the upper containment systems—the system Echo had tied herself to. She had been ready to seal the core, contain the surge, and collapse with it if necessary. But someone had changed that.
Someone had saved her.
At a cost.
Voss stumbled to a secondary terminal, trying to restore backup overrides, but the damage was done. Door systems stuttered. Evacuation corridors halted. One bulkhead crushed shut—trapping seven people inside. Power flickered in the upper floors. And everywhere… screaming.
Voss slammed his fist into the table. "You fool," he spat under his breath.
He looked up.
Through the flickering glass of the core chamber, Caelan stood—frozen. His hand still hovered over the terminal. His eyes locked on the surrounding devastation. His mouth slightly parted. And in them—no triumph. No peace.
Only horror.
He had known who would pay.
And Voss did not know, in that moment, that if this was the act of a selfish child or If it was the choice of someone who loved. Deeply. Desperately.
But love did not stop the screams. It did not unseal the doors. It did not revive the dead.
The Rift pulsed.
The tower began to tear apart.
And amongst the chaos two distinct roars challenged it.