Kenton's eyes narrowed, his breath coming fast and shallow. The cult's words—"devour," "hunger," "marrow-boy"—gnawed at the edges of his composure, each syllable worming deeper into his skull. His temples throbbed from the earlier backlash, but the memory of that jagged vastness he'd brushed against still shimmered inside him like a half-buried shard of lightning.
No. Not helpless. Not this time.
The cave's air was thick with chanting, bodies swaying, candles burning crooked with flame that bent instead of flickered. Dani's blade half-drawn glimmered faintly, Myra's gaze stayed sharp and centered, but Kenton wasn't looking at them anymore.
He fixed on one of the cultists—a younger acolyte near the back, shoulders trembling as though their voice was forced into rhythm. Beneath the hood, Kenton caught the quick flicker of a mouth, lips torn between prayers and a silent plea to flee.
That was the thread. A loose end.
Kenton pressed—not with muscle, not with fire, but with precision. He imagined a hook of perception, a loop of recursion that folded inward. Not the sphere. Not reality. Just this acolyte. Just their faith.
You see what I see. You feel what I feel. You believe what I believe.
The acolyte's body jerked. The chant faltered. Heads swayed, confused, like puppets with tangled strings. The hooded head tilted back, and for the first time, a grin cracked across their face—unnatural, stretched too wide.
"Yes," the cultist rasped, voice jagged and wrong. "Yes, the sphere must return. The seed must not be devoured—it must be guarded!"
Gasps rippled through the assembly. A dozen hoods snapped toward the speaker, the chant fracturing like glass under pressure.
Dani froze, halfway through drawing her blade, her eyes snapping wide. Myra's calm cracked for the first time, suspicion slicing through her gaze as she turned to Kenton.
"Kenton… what did you—?" she began, low, urgent.
But the enthralled cultist surged forward, breaking formation. Their arms stretched out desperately toward the altar, toward the trembling sphere at its center.
The reaction was instant. The others shrieked, a hideous choir, and turned on their own. Fingers twisted into claws. Teeth too long tore free from lips. They fell on the defector with animal violence. The chanting became screaming, not words but noise, distorted like tape dragging in a broken recorder.
The cave itself seemed to buck. The air rippled like heat haze, but cold.
Kenton staggered, clutching his skull. Agony tore into him like rusted knives. He nearly crumpled. He had bent one mind, only one—but the weight of it pressed like dragging an entire ocean by hand.
And yet—he grinned. Wide. Bloody.
"It worked," he hissed, breath rattling. "My God—it actually worked."
Dani recoiled, staring at him like he wasn't human. "You—what the hell did you do?"
The cultist he'd bent screamed once more, but the mob consumed them. Flesh first. Then bone. Then everything. The body didn't fall—it unraveled. Gone, like meat scraped off bone and the bone itself dissolved.
And then the cave began to tremble.
At first, just a low vibration underfoot. Then it climbed into the walls, into the air itself, into their lungs. Candles guttered—not extinguished, but bent sideways as though dragged toward some unseen mouth.
From deeper within came a sound. Not footsteps. Not wind. An intrusion.
Like glass scraping bone.
Like whispers played backward through static.
Like a scream trying to replay itself through a throat that no longer existed.
The walls shivered. Carvings etched into stone bled, symbols twisting, lines crawling into shapes that resisted thought. Looking too long brought nausea, as though the mind itself rejected their existence.
The cultists convulsed. Hoods snapped back. Faces glitched, jerking between masks and nothingness, mouths filled with black static instead of teeth.
Except the leader.
The leader rose. Not by climbing. Not by stepping. He simply lifted, his cloak dragging like it had been dipped in oil. Gravity released him like a disloyal friend. His grin spread wider, a line of teeth that reflected too much candlelight.
And the sphere—it began to rise with him. Hovering, its surface fractured, spilling light in colors that did not exist. They bled into the cavern and snapped back, as though reality couldn't decide what it wanted it to be.
Dani stumbled back, her armor creaking. Her blade trembled in her grip.
"What the—what's happening?!"
Myra's voice cut sharp, strained, her calm collapsing under pressure but not breaking.
"Destabilization. Kenton, whatever you did—it's unraveling their anchor. The cult, the sphere—they're stitched together. And now the stitches are ripping loose."
Kenton laughed, weak, blood threading from his nose and lips. He was barely upright, swaying, but his eyes were wild.
"Good. Let it rip."
The remaining cultists didn't vanish quietly.
They screamed as their bodies fractured into symbols, pixels, handwriting, static. Some clawed at their own faces until their hands sank in and came out empty. Some lunged toward Dani, Myra, Kenton—but dissolved mid-stride, leaving only streaks of ichor across the stone.
The leader floated higher, robes billowing, gaze locked on Kenton. His voice slid over the noise, calm and terrible.
"You bend threads you do not comprehend," he intoned. "You pluck at hunger with a toy string, and believe yourself a master. But every hook drags deeper into the marrow, child. And soon… soon the marrow will snap."
Kenton spat blood onto the stone, his grin a snarl of defiance.
"Funny. That's exactly what I was going to say to you."
The leader's laughter thundered through the cave—low, resonant, not contained within the walls but inside their skulls. As it shook the air, the sphere pulsed once—blinding, searing light—
—And then both the leader and the sphere were simply gone.
No explosion. No collapse. No collapse of stone. Just absence.
The cult's remnants followed, glitching forms winking out like snuffed embers, until the only sounds were Kenton's ragged breathing, Dani's armored panting, and Myra's controlled but trembling breaths.
And the distant drip of water in the cavern's silence.
The shadows seemed deeper without the sphere's glow.
Kenton wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing blood across his cheek. He swayed but forced himself upright. Dani stared at him, fury and suspicion battling in her eyes—an echo of rage tempered with something colder.
"You… you did that," she whispered.
Kenton's grin faltered, but he didn't deny it. His temples throbbed, thoughts burning like sparks in oil.
"Yeah," he murmured. "And I'll do it again if I have to."
Myra's jaw set, her calm fractured but her steel intact. She looked at him differently now—not as an ally, but as a weapon left in the room with its safety off.
"Then you'd better pray you learn control," she said quietly. "Because next time… it might not be them that unravels."
The silence after her words was heavier than the chanting had ever been.
And somewhere, where the cult had been—where the sphere had burned—the faintest hum lingered.
Like the last note of a song no one had ever meant to play.
Dani stayed pressed against the jagged wall, breathing uneven, her armored frame rigid. She didn't move to relax, didn't let herself fully exhale. Kenton was quiet, still swaying slightly, jaw tight, mind racing through theoretical contingencies like some internal simulation running on a fevered loop. Myra, steady and grounding, finally spoke.
"The cult… the sphere—it's gone," Myra said, voice calm, measured. "A cow-masked faction took it. They claim the sphere needs a story to anchor itself. Someone's story. Lance Mercer. That's the only way to prevent it from breaking. No one knows what happens if it does."
Dani blinked, cheeks heating, forcing a smirk. "Oh, fantastic. We just hand over a human to a cosmic cow cult because… narrative integrity? Makes perfect sense." She jabbed the tip of her blade lightly at the wall, humor tight and brittle.
Kenton exhaled, rubbing his jaw. His eyes narrowed but he said nothing. He didn't need to. Myra's words were enough: everything hinged on Lance.
They moved out of the cavern, careful but fast, the night air heavy and biting. No one spoke much. Dani's frustration was quiet, coiled in the set of her shoulders. Kenton's silence was analytical, theoretical, observing the world as if it were data points. Myra stayed calm, subtly guiding both of them with her presence.
By the time they reached the train station, Dani slumped against the cold bench, her armor scraping against the edge of the concrete. She let herself rest there, though every instinct screamed to straighten up, to stay ready. Myra sat beside her, knees drawn slightly inward, hands clasped loosely over them, a quiet calm radiating from her presence. Kenton leaned against the wall a few feet away, distant, still half in whatever calculations and contingency loops he had been running since the cavern.
The train arrived, the metallic shriek of wheels against rails echoing in the station. They boarded without fanfare, the rattle and hum of the cars grounding them in the mundane, a fragile tether after what they had just endured. The violent surrealism of the cavern—the chanting, the fractures of matter, Kenton's overwhelming manipulation—was already a memory pressed deep into their minds, though its residue lingered like static.
Dani didn't speak. She didn't even let herself glance at Kenton or Myra. Her jaw was tight; her fingers, hidden beneath gauntlets, twitched with the residual adrenaline she couldn't seem to shake. Why do I care so much? she thought, the question gnawing at her. He's just… a tool. A human tether. That's all he is. I shouldn't… I shouldn't—
Her thoughts collided with another, almost insolent impulse. But… you're too clingy. You can't just admit it. You don't need him.
And then another voice: But what if he's not just a tool? What if he's… him? What if letting go breaks something you can't fix?
Dani swallowed hard, biting the inside of her cheek. Her mind spun arguments and counterarguments. I can't just hand him over. He's a person. He's… more than that. But if we don't, the sphere—everything—is at risk. It's… logic. Strategy.
The conflict twisted in her chest, tightening her ribs. She exhaled slowly, letting the words she didn't speak escape as silence. Her eyes flicked to the window, catching the blur of the dark tunnel streaking past. The rhythm of the train became a metronome, her thoughts looping over what had happened and what was coming. She clenched her fists beneath her armor, trying to ground herself against the surge of protectiveness she couldn't name, couldn't reason through.
Across from her, Kenton sat with his back to the wall, head tilted slightly downward, eyes scanning the floor as if reading every tile for hidden meaning. But his mind was elsewhere. He traced the possibilities like threads through the night. If we give the sphere Mercer….The sphere stabilizes. That is good. But what happens to Mercer? Could it rewrite him? Consume him? Preserve him as a narrative vessel… or destroy him entirely? Every possible outcome must be cataloged. Each probability accounted for.
His lips pressed into a thin line. If it breaks… if it fractures despite the sacrifice… the risk to the system, to everything, multiplies exponentially. But we have no choice. We only have one anchor. Subject Zero is… inevitable.
The silence between them grew, heavy but unspoken, broken only by the rhythmic clatter of wheels on rails.
Her hands clenched into fists beneath her gauntlets. I care too much. Damn it, I do. And that's weakness. That's stupid. I shouldn't. But I do.
Kenton, still silent, cataloged each word. Probability vectors spike with his involvement. Risk-to-outcome ratio is… unfavorable. But the anchor remains singular. Lance must be utilized. If not… we fail. But what is failure? Fractured reality? An unstable sphere? Mercer's destruction?
--
The cultist's eyes blinked—or tried to. It was impossible to tell. Light didn't behave here; it bent, pooled, and dissolved into shades that his mind couldn't name. He felt weightless and yet crushed, as though gravity itself was a lie, and he were merely a fragment of what it wanted him to be.
He had walked willingly into this chamber, chanting the syllables he once believed were sacred. He had knelt before the sphere, the object pulsing with soft, impossible rhythms, and—he thought—he had obeyed. But now… now he could not remember why. He could not remember the leader, the doctrine, the name of the brother beside him. Was it all gone? Was he abandoned, or had it never been real? The questions tore at the corners of his mind, and every answer he grasped dissolved like smoke through his fingers.
The sphere pulsed again, a slow, deliberate contraction, and he felt the first tendrils of unmaking. Not in the physical sense—his body remained, more or less—but inside, the scaffolding of memory, belief, and self collapsed. One by one, each conviction was pried from him. The doctrines he had memorized for years became soup—words without meaning, instructions without intent. The chants he had recited, trembling with devotion, looped endlessly in his skull like a broken record, but each repetition felt alien, almost mocking.
He tried to scream. The sound that left his mouth was wrong. Not silence, not quite air, not quite flesh—it vibrated against him as if mocking the sound of his own vocal cords. His tongue felt foreign, or perhaps it had always been so. The sphere seemed to taste it, pull at it, savoring the echoes of intent, the meaning behind his fear.
A slithering nausea traveled up his spine. His hands flexed, claws he did not recognize forming from the flesh of his own palms. Fingers stretched, merged, separated, nothing quite as it should be. A smell, iron-rich and putrescent, filled his awareness. He knew it was him, but it wasn't. His body was not his own. The sphere had consumed him, not in body, but in truth.
Images flooded his mind—memories, or echoes of them—some real, some fabricated. Faces of strangers merged with his own, their eyes empty holes, their mouths smirking with the certainty of his corruption. He saw himself—no, someone like him—twisting into impossible shapes, sinew unbinding, skin liquefying, bones elongating and breaking in slow motion. Each twitch, each twitching thought, made the sphere pulse again, and the room—or whatever it was—resonated with the sick rhythm of entropy.
Was he abandoned? He could not tell. Perhaps the leader had left him. Perhaps the abandonment was the mechanism itself, a trap embedded in devotion. He tried to recall loyalty, faith, purpose—but every attempt triggered nausea, vertigo, the sensation of being ground through a conceptual mill. His sense of self flickered in and out, like a candle struggling in windless darkness.
He began to scream—or at least, he felt the primal, raw compulsion to scream—but the sound no longer escaped. Instead, it coalesced into black droplets of conceptual matter that the sphere consumed, pulsing once, then twice. And each pulse burned a little more of his identity away, until even the urge to resist was only a memory of resistance, an echo of thought bouncing in empty chambers of a mind that was no longer fully his.
The sphere fed. It was slow, patient, selective. A strand of his devotion, a curl of fear, a smattering of memory—each became nourishment, leaving behind only the husk of someone who once had a soul. He could feel the pull toward entropy, the skeletal cold at the core of his chest where conviction had once lived.
At the edges of perception, he became aware of the first changes that were not purely mental. His skin began to ripple, taut over unfamiliar contours. Veins bulged and twisted with a dark, liquid sheen. Limbs elongated; joints bent in impossible angles. Fingers fused, then split. He tried to stop it, to curl into a ball, to hide, but the body—or the approximation of it—was no longer his to control.
A smell rose, acrid, metallic, like a hundred fractured bones simmering together. He tried to vomit. His stomach twisted and the action had no effect, the expulsion itself consumed, converted, folded into the entity he was becoming. Consciousness split. Part of him screamed; part observed, detached, fascinated. A third part, alien and cold, realized it was already too late.
And then the final sensation: his mind recognized, with sick clarity, that he was not dying. He was unmaking, remaking, and being remade. A new form emerged from the fractured remains—a warped echo, a skeletal mockery of the man who had entered the chamber. Fingers elongated into claws tipped with blackened, viscous matter. Joints creaked with unnatural motion. The mouth, unhinged, clicked and rasped without sound, as though tasting the absence of him.
The sphere pulsed again, and the echo—or what remained—felt a strange alignment, a resonance with the void the sphere demanded. There was no loyalty, no doctrine, no memory. Only hunger, only the abstract pull of the anomaly he had become, a being defined by consumption, absence, and the procedural logic of a force that made humans obsolete.
And somewhere, buried deep beneath the remade tendrils of thought, a faint spark lingered: I was someone. Once. But the spark was fragile, flickering, unable to resist the tide that claimed everything else.
The sphere did not notice. It never noticed. It fed, unceasing, perfect in its detachment, and the cultist—no, the anomaly—became another echo in the feeding, another lesson in how devotion, perception, and identity could be twisted into something unrecognizable.
And in the silence that followed each pulse, the creature that had once been a man opened its hollowed eyes and began to move.
---
The train slowed, pulling into Sector Delta. Dani exhaled, trying to force the thoughts from her head as the corridors hummed with recycled air and ozone. They disembarked, the sterile facility a sharp contrast to the raw chaos they had left behind.
Harrow was waiting, tall and imposing, eyes glinting with controlled intensity. Dani felt her stomach tighten, her thoughts colliding again. Do I say something? Do I argue? I can't. I have to obey. But why is obedience twisting me inside? Why am I already bracing for him to decide he can… replace him? No. Don't think that. Focus.
"Report," Harrow said, voice even, precise, commanding attention like gravity.
Myra stepped forward, steady. "We confronted what that took the sphere. It was.. a cult. The sphere requires a narrative to stabilize itself. Lance Mercer, apparently, is that anchor. Without him, the sphere cannot be returned safely."
Harrow's gaze hardened. "Subject Zero. Mercer is the only reliable anchor. We have no choice. Give him to the sphere. Put it back."
The words slammed into Dani's chest. She didn't speak. She only felt the pressure coil inside her, a quiet, simmering heat of anger, frustration, and helplessness. No. I won't let them. I can't. I can't just… give him.
Kenton tilted his head slightly, silent, theoretical. He cataloged every possible outcome, every chain reaction, every scenario where giving the sphere Lance might work or fail—but he didn't argue, didn't express outrage. Compliance was implicit. Survival of the system dictated it.
Before the oppressive silence could grow, a small, hesitant voice broke through.
"How… how did it go?"
Reese's voice cracked as he stepped forward, the uncertainty of a rookie trying not to sound like one.
Dani glanced at him, her shoulders slumping as though gravity had doubled. The silence stretched, heavy, until she finally let out a breath that was half a laugh, half a groan. A tired, wry smirk tugged at her lips.
"Didn't really go well," she admitted, her voice rough around the edges. "We got the sphere, but…" She trailed off, shaking her head. The rest didn't need to be said.
Still, she pushed herself upright, smirk deepening just enough to show it was real. "But hey—" she gestured lazily toward the Refractor Blade at his hip— "I did promise to teach you a thing or two, didn't I?"
Reese blinked, then lit up, relief breaking through his worry.
"Lesson one," Dani said, her tone dry but carrying that same rare warmth as before, "don't grip it like it's gonna bite you. You'll wear your hand out before you even swing."
Despite the fatigue etched into her face, Dani managed to chuckle, the sound low and weary, but genuine. "See? Told you I keep my promises."
Harrow stood near the bulkhead doorway, his presence enough to pull eyes from every corner. "Dani. Kenton. Myra. Step forward. We are not finished speaking.
Dani exhaled hard through her nose, muttering, "And there goes the break." She gave Reese a half-pat on the shoulder before pushing off the rack and moving to join the others. Kenton wandered in late, as though he'd been summoned from some deep train of thought he wasn't eager to leave. Myra straightened her posture, sharp and attentive in a way the others weren't.
Harrow's voice cut through the stillness.
"Next order. Lance Mercer."
Dani's brow twitched. Reese looked up. Kenton blinked out of his wandering thoughts.
Harrow folded his hands behind his back, pacing once across the length of the table.
"Sector Delta wants him. His contact with the sphere, and the anomaly signatures around him are no longer ignorable. He is not coincidence. We will take him in."
A heavy pause hung like a weight.
Kenton leaned forward slightly, voice measured.
"And if we don't?"
Harrow stopped pacing. His head tilted toward Kenton as though the question itself were absurd.
"You will. This is not up for debate."
Dani chuckled dryly, shaking her head as if she'd been waiting for this moment.
"Not happening."
Harrow's gaze locked on her, hard as steel.
"You don't have the authority to refuse."
"I don't need authority." Dani stood slowly. Her tone was casual, but Reese noticed the tightness in her jaw beneath her tired smirk. "I'm not dragging Lance into this cage."
Harrow's steps carried him closer, unblinking.
"You mistake this for choice. Lance is not your project. He is a vector of instability. You're compromised. Emotionally compromised."
The words cut sharper than intended. Reese flinched. Myra shifted uneasily, her shoulders taut.
Dani folded her arms, leaning forward.
"Compromised? Maybe. But Lance isn't one of your anomalies to box up and file away. He's still human."
"And how long do you think that lasts?" Harrow's voice rose—not a shout, but the kind of thunder that rumbles through stone. "Sector Delta does not hesitate. We do not wring our hands over sentiment. He is a risk. And risks are neutralized."
For a flicker of a moment, Dani's face broke—anger, fear, guilt all crashing at once. She masked it quickly with that same tired smile, though it looked thinner now.
"I'm not bringing him in," she repeated, quieter but firmer.
The air grew taut. Reese had never seen anyone stand against Harrow without flinching.
Kenton shifted, exhaling slowly.
"Director. If I may…" He adjusted his glasses, tone deceptively calm. "I have business of my own. A lead I intend to pursue. Which means, conveniently, I'm not your hound for this errand either."
Harrow's eyes narrowed, sliding to Kenton.
"You think to set your own pace? Do not mistake my patience for weakness."
Kenton smiled faintly.
"And don't mistake my refusal for rebellion."
Harrow let the silence stand like a hammer. No one mistook it for retreat.
Finally, Myra stepped forward.
"I'll go."
The others turned. Myra straightened her stance, voice steady.
"If Dani won't, and Kenton won't, then I will. He is tied to this. He deserves… to be brought in properly. No one will need to get hurt.
Harrow studied her for a long, cold moment before giving the faintest nod.
From the edge of the room, Voss finally spoke. His sleeves were streaked with graphite dust, smelling faintly of hot metal. The drills had clearly kept him busy.
"Guess that makes two. My drills are done. I'll help Myra track him."
And then a new voice joined—wry, accented, with the faint slur of someone for whom English wasn't first tongue.
"Make it three. If Lance has touched that sphere, your scanners will fry like cheap toasters. You want him safe, you want me."
Orin Volkova leaned against the wall, dark hair pulled into a lopsided knot, her fingers twitching like she was scrolling invisible screens. A small device spun idly in her palm—half drone, half jury-rigged toy. A faint scar curved behind her left ear where her auditory implant glinted.
Harrow's gaze swept over her.
"You volunteer?"
"Da," she said simply, shrugging one shoulder. "My implant screams at me when anomalies hum. Very inconvenient for sleep. Very useful for hunt." She tossed the spinning drone from one hand to the other, smirking faintly. "Besides, Voss swings hammer. Myra keeps heart. I keep you alive."
The weight of the room shifted. Without raising his voice, Harrow claimed the moment.
"Good. Then it's settled. Myra, Voss, Orin—you will bring in Lance Mercer. Alive."
He turned his back to Dani and Kenton, but his voice cracked like a whip.
"And understand this: refusal does not absolve you. I expect results from you both elsewhere. Test me again, and I will remind you why I am Director."
Dani bit her tongue, jaw clenched. Reese's eyes darted nervously between them, but he said nothing.
As Dani moved toward the door with Reese trailing behind, Harrow's voice caught her again.
"Dani."
She froze. Slowly, she turned.
Harrow's stare was sharp enough to carve her open.
"You think your refusal makes you noble. It does not. It makes you predictable. And predictability can be used. Do not think yourself above the machine you serve."
For an instant, Dani nearly snapped back. But she didn't. Instead, she forced that same tired smile, raised a hand in half a wave to Reese, and walked out.
When the door closed, Harrow turned back to Myra, Voss, and Orin.
"You will not need to search blind. Lance Mercer carries a locator I placed on him when I met him at He is at his residence."
Myra stiffened.
"You put a tracker on him?"
Harrow's expression was unreadable.
"I prepare for inevitabilities."
Voss muttered, arms crossed,
"Guess that makes the job simpler."
Orin snorted softly, flicking her drone into the air and catching it again.
"Or harder. If he is at home, he may already know we are coming. Cornered man, dangerous man." She tapped her implant with a crooked grin. "And if anomaly whispers to him, I hear it first. Lucky me."
Harrow didn't flinch. He gathered his gloves neatly on the table.
"Then you will find out. Go."
The three exchanged wary glances—Myra steady, Voss grim, Orin almost amused. Then they filed out, leaving Harrow alone, the shadow of authority unmoved.