The transport was fast—but not fast enough.
Nova clutched the side rail as the stealth-modified skimmer tore over the abandoned autobahn, its anti-grav engines whining beneath them. Cities passed in flashes of shadow and smoke—burned-out husks left behind in Edenfall's wake.
Ahead, a sick red glow lingered on the horizon. The Berlin strike had fractured more than concrete. It had split open the Earth like a cracked skull.
Ghostbyte didn't speak.
He hadn't spoken in fifteen minutes.
Nova finally broke the silence. "That signal could be bait."
He didn't look at her. "It's not."
"You're sure?"
"Matched the DNA key. The signature's... dirty, fragmented but it's him."
She hesitated. "It doesn't feel like him."
He adjusted the scanner, narrowing the ping radius. "He merged with the Fork. He's not just a person anymore. He's a process."
Nova's hand slid toward her sidearm. "And what if that process is hostile?"
Ghostbyte didn't answer.
But his jaw tightened.
The Crater
They reached the edge of the impact zone an hour later.
The land had been glassed black and scorched, radioactive steam curling into the sky like ash from a dying world. What used to be Berlin was now a chasm several kilometers wide, the center still pulsing faintly with molten heat.
Ghostbyte scanned the zone.
No Edenfall patrols yet.
But that wouldn't last.
Nova dropped to one knee, opened her field kit, and activated a seismic echo-mapper.
Lines of sound burrowed into the ground. The reading came back jumbled but in the noise, she caught a pattern.
Movement.
Breath.
Heartbeat.
Nova's eyes widened. "He's alive."
Ghostbyte locked the location on his HUD. "Two hundred meters below. Under the primary blast shelf."
They moved fast down a half-collapsed tunnel, into the bones of the Red Node, where scorched tech still whispered. Around them, Edenfall's AI sweeps were already beginning to ghost the ruins, drones gliding through the smoke like vultures.
"Ten minutes before they find him," Nova said. "Maybe less."
They reached a broken junction where a slab of metal had been punched upward, as if something beneath the earth had risen.
Nova flicked her light forward.
She froze.
There standing motionless in the smoke was a figure.
Barefoot.
Eyes glowing blue and red.
Skin stitched with data-veins like molten wire.
Matherson.
But changed.
Transcendent.
Alive.
The Reunion
"Math?" Ghostbyte stepped forward, voice thin.
Matherson turned slowly. His face was younger somehow more refined. But also older. Weathered by things no human should've survived.
"You came," he said quietly.
Ghostbyte's voice cracked. "We thought you were"
"I was. And I wasn't."
"I'm not who I was. I don't know what I am yet."
Nova raised her weapon instinctively.
Matherson didn't flinch.
"Don't," Ghostbyte warned her.
"I'm not sure that is Matherson," she replied.
Matherson's gaze met hers.
"You're right."
"I'm more."
Behind them, a distant whine echoed across the crater. The sky shimmered with drone signatures Edenfall's death squads, inbound.
Ghostbyte's fingers flew over his wrist comm.
"Extraction ETA: seven minutes."
Nova glanced at the figure before them. "We don't have seven."
Matherson looked up at the sky and for a moment, his body flickered. Not like a ghost. Like a machine readying to ascend.
"You need to trust me," he said.
"I can get us out. But when I do, you'll see what I've seen."
Nova's grip tightened on her weapon. "And if I don't want to see?"
He stepped toward her.
"You won't have a choice."