Grant lay motionless on the reinforced cot. His chest rose and fell in shallow rhythm, each breath humming faintly against the restraints.
Kudin hunched over the monitors, fingers twitching across dials. His breath came sharp, shallow. "Pulse is steady," he muttered, almost convincing himself. "No fluctuations. He'll… he'll wake soon enough."
On the opposite side, Aldus dragged a hand across the primary console, summoning a lattice of scans into the air. Bones. Tissue. Veins lit in cold white light. Each flicker painted Grant's still body in skeletal silhouette. Her voice was curt, flat: "Run the full body. I don't want partials. I want everything."
Slha sat half-slouched against the wall, arms crossed. Sparks jumped occasionally from a shredded cable beside her. "Half our gear's dead. Static cooked it." She gestured toward the humming bed. "You're lucky the frame even powered up."
The projection stabilized, washing the room in pale glow. Ribs. Spine. Skull. All perfectly ordinary.
Kudin leaned closer, whispering relief. "See? Structure's fine. Normal density. Clean rhythm." He tapped a key, his nerves bleeding into overconfidence. "Whatever storm burned through him, it's not showing here. He's intact."
Aldus zoomed along the chest cavity, narrowing her eyes. "Scan again. Deeper layers this time."
The image rippled and redrew itself. Bones stretched long and lean, no fractures. Organs, intact. Muscles, overdeveloped but human. Her frown lingered, though nothing concrete appeared.
"Odd," she murmured. "Nothing stands out. No mutations. No irregular growth. For someone who nearly brought down half a mansion…" She trailed off, pressing her lips tight.
Slha smirked, kicking at a broken panel. "Guess your storm-god's just flesh and blood after all. Bedside drama's over."
Kudin nodded quickly, eager to agree. "Just a Gifted, overcharged sure, but still within the norm." He tapped again, lines of data scrolling too fast for anyone else to parse. His voice carried a nervous triumph.
The hum of the machinery filled the silence, steady and low.
The door hissed open.
Acuent entered without hesitation, boots clicking against the steel floor. A datapad dangled from her hand, but she didn't look at it. Her eyes locked immediately on the projection. She froze mid-step. Her jaw tightened.
The shift in her face was immediate—focused, razor-sharp.
Nobody spoke.
She set the datapad aside with quiet finality and crossed to the display. Her hand rose slowly, pointing not at the chest, not at the spine, but lower. The arms.
"There," she said.
The others followed her gesture. Nothing leapt out. White bone. Shadowed veins.
Kudin blinked, squinting. "That? It's just artifacting. Ghost lines. The scan was barely holding together."
Acuent didn't look at him. Her voice dropped, precise, each word like glass shattering. "Those aren't artifacts. Look closer. Along the ulna. See the ridges? Parallel. Twinned."
The silence was absolute.
Slha leaned forward despite herself, eyes narrowing at the faint jagged marks etched into the projection. Aldus stiffened, crossing her arms. Kudin swallowed, leaning back from the console.
Acuent's finger traced the pale outlines. Her tone was calm, but the weight behind it pressed into the air.
"This isn't his scan. It's Brakkon's."
Grant's eyes fluttered open, red sparks twitching across his lashes before fading into exhaustion. His breath hitched, chest rattling, and his stomach groaned audibly in the sterile quiet.
Kudin nearly jumped out of his chair. "About time." He grabbed a pack from the counter and hurled it onto Grant's chest. "Eat before your system eats itself."
Grant fumbled, tearing clumsily at the wrapper. The first bite was desperate, almost animal, crumbs spilling down his chin.
Anna was already leaning forward. She hadn't moved from her seat by the cot, eyes fixed on him with quiet, stubborn intensity. She caught the crumbs with a cloth, her hand lingering on the frame as if anchoring him.
On the far side, Nullis kept stealing glances, her face unreadable—drawn between fear and fascination. She hugged her arms tight against her chest, her body half-phased into the wall as though she could retreat at any moment.
Xylo smirked, crossing his arms. "Glad to see our resident blackout machine can still chew. Thought you'd gone full vegetable." His tone was light, but his eyes didn't match—restless, studying.
The silence didn't last.
Aldus stepped forward, her voice sharp. "What happened in there, Grant? With Taskforce V. Start talking."
Grant froze mid-chew. He looked at them one by one, then down at his hands—still trembling faintly, faint arcs crawling along the veins.
"I wasn't… here," he said slowly. "Not really."
The room leaned closer.
Grant's voice turned fragile. "While I was in the coma, I was also in the void. Nothing but white. No air. No ground. Just… me. And a shadow."
His throat bobbed. "He put me through it—training, fighting, breaking me down. Every blow I landed, he landed harder. Every move I learned, he'd already mastered. It felt endless. It was endless." His voice cracked, breaking against the weight of memory. "And then… he told me who he was."
No one breathed.
Grant's fingers curled into fists. Sparks flared faintly. "He said… he was me. My future. A version of myself that never stopped fighting. That never stopped bleeding. That never stopped killing."
A ripple of unease spread through the Ampers. Even Xylo's smirk faltered.
Grant's next words came in a hoarse whisper: "Before he vanished, he left me with one thing. 'Never be weak.'"
Nullis' breath hitched audibly. Aldus' gaze darkened. Slha swore under her breath.
But Grant wasn't finished. His eyes sharpened, locking on Anna. "And one more thing. The Shadow told me something."
The sparks around his arms flared red.
"He's the one that brought Rook back to the present."
****
Colonel Veynar stood at the head of a war room, walls of screens replayed fragments of corrupted battle feeds—grainy frames of Grant ripping through Taskforce soldiers.
His voice cut through the static, sharp as a blade:
"Red Tempest is not a child. Not a threat. Not a myth."
He leaned into the light of the feeds.
"He is a weapon. And weapons can be built, broken, and bent to serve."
No one spoke. He tapped a control, and new schematics flared across the holo-table.
"Phase I—Silencers." Silhouettes of human units filled the air, armored troopers with dampener rigs strapped to their spines. "Effective, but fragile. They crumbled against him."
The image dissolved, replaced by hulking outlines twice the size of a man. Reactor cores glowed in their chests, caged coils spiraling around their frames like harnessed thunder.
"Phase II—Juggernaut Protocol."
Gasps slipped from the table. One officer's hand trembled against the light. "Sir, those things—deployed in a dense zone—they'll flatten blocks before they suppress a target."
Veynar's gaze slid to him. Cold. Unyielding. "Cities can be rebuilt. Order cannot."
A heavy silence settled. The Juggernaut schematics spun slowly.
Veynar's hand hovered over the feed controls again, freezing the corrupted footage on a single frame: Grant's face half-lit in lightning, eyes glowing red through the distortion.
The colonel's lips curved.
"Begin Juggernaut production," he said, voice steady as stone. "When the Red Tempest rises again…" His smile sharpened. "It will rise in our command."