Chapter Five: Her Time Bends
"She was a ghost wearing skin. Drifting through enemy lines with a heartbeat too loud to ignore."
Lira knew three things for certain:
• Trust no one.
• Hide your fear.
• Don't look back. Ever.
That last rule echoed now—over and over—as she sprinted through the narrow, blinking corridors of the Authority's Core Lab, blood soaking her shirt, the stolen vial clutched tight in her fist.
Alarms screamed behind her.
Security boots thundered.
The voice in her ear — her only contact from the outside — was gone.
She was on her own.
Again.
Four Hours Earlier
Lira stood still in a lab lined with glass coffins. Inside each one: children asleep. Or sedated. Or worse.
She didn't know.
She couldn't look too long. Couldn't break. Couldn't blink.
The scientist beside her — Dr. Ven — was mid-sentence, talking about Project Ascend. About the new serum that could "stabilize time-field anomalies in hybrid minds."
Lira smiled politely. Nodded once.
And stole the keycard right from his belt.
She'd been undercover for months — longer than any sane person would survive — feeding the rebellion scraps of intel and pretending she still believed the Authority's lies.
But what she found tonight?
This serum?
It wasn't stabilization. It was erasure.
The Authority was preparing to wipe time-bound abilities from hybrid minds.
Permanently.
She had to act.
Present – Core Lab Hallways
Lira ducked behind a surgical unit. Lasers hissed past her shoulder, barely missing flesh. Her ears rang. Blood pounded.
She didn't even know if the serum was real.
All she knew was it pulsed — literally — glowing blue in the vial like it was alive.
Her body felt hot. The floor tilted.
"You've been tagged," said a voice behind her.
She spun.
A mirror.
No — a reflection of herself.
But slower.
Lagging.
Moving milliseconds behind her real movements.
Time was bending.
And so was she.
Flashback: Her First Shift
She was thirteen. Locked in a detainment pod. The Authority wanted to test if fear could trigger time anomalies in children.
She screamed so hard her voice broke.
Then… everything froze.
The air. The guards. The very lights above her.
And her.
She floated for what felt like hours before collapsing.
The next day, they called her a "Temporal Split." A glitch. A weapon. A tool.
She called herself broken.
Present – The Escape
Lira hit the emergency lockdown. Red lights flared. Doors sealed.
The floor vibrated — a pulse. Her pulse. Everything slowed. Then snapped.
She bent time.
Not perfectly.
But enough to move faster than the guards. Enough to get out of the Core. Enough to reach the old tunnels beneath the Citadel — a forgotten escape route buried in maps only she had seen.
She ran until her lungs collapsed.
Outside – Glass Wastes
She emerged gasping, bleeding, blinking into the cold, stinging air.
Collapsing to her knees, she vomited and curled into herself.
That's when she heard a voice.
Low. Careful. Familiar.
"Lira."
She turned.
Kael.
Back at the Rebellion Base
Hours later, Lira lay on a cot. Her hands shook. The serum vial rested in Sora's palm as they ran tests.
"It's real," Sora confirmed, frowning. "But it's not safe."
Nyah sat in the corner, silent. Dez paced like a wolf in a cage.
Kael never left her side.
He said nothing. He didn't need to.
They'd both seen too much to need words.
Lira sat outside near the tunnel mouth, watching fog roll over the trees. Kael sat beside her.
"You left something behind," he said finally.
"I left everything behind."
A pause.
"If they come for you…" he added.
She didn't let him finish. "They will."
Silence.
Then she turned to him, eyes unreadable. "You still got that fire in you?"
He smirked slightly. "Why?"
"Because if they come…" She held up the vial. It pulsed faintly. "I'm going to burn time itself."
END OF CHAPTER FIVE