The precinct house of the 1008th looked smaller than Nathan remembered it, well that was to be expected considering it was now just rubble.
Old Ben stood beside him, arms crossed over his barrel chest, staring out at the half-rebuilt skyline without quite looking at Nathan.
"Captain," Nathan said, testing the word.
"Feels wrong coming out of ya mouth," Ben said. "Ya the one who's supposed to still be ze captain."
"Not anymore." Nathan managed a small, tired smile. "Tower's orders. Besides — you'll do fine. Better than fine."
Ben grunted, unconvinced, and said nothing for a while. Behind them, through the open precinct doors, Nathan could hear the low murmur of the rest of the crew gathering their things, trying to savage whatever they could from the rubble.
"Before I go," Nathan said, lowering his voice, "there's something you should know. Just you."
Ben finally turned to look at him.
"Lukas," Nathan said.
"He's za dead, Nathan," Ben said, carefully, the way you talk to someone you're worried might be cracking under pressure. "We buried an empty coffin for him. Ya were there. It's sad really. Us both, We never really knew ze kid. Weird boy who showed up 8 years ago."
"He's not dead," Nathan said. "I saw him. Alive."
Old Ben paused.
"How?"
"I don't know, but these guys? The enforcers? they're looking for him."
"Ze promotion has to do with this?"
"Yes."
Ben studied him a long moment, then nodded once, slow and final, the way a man nods when he's decided to carry a weight without complaint.
"Ya know 11 years ago when ya showed up as our captain. It felt weird why they would send za phoenix to a grade one planet like this, then Lukas showed up 3 years after. Now ya leaving, ya and Lukas. I have za feeling, I'll never see any of ya again. "
Old Ben, the dwarf raised his short hand to Nathan. "It really was za pleasure working with ya captain."
————————————————————
The rest of the crew had gathered outside by the time Nathan came down the steps for the last time — Ava, Ann, a handful of officers he'd trained personally, all of them wearing the particular kind of forced cheer people wear when they're trying not to make a goodbye harder than it already is.
"You're really leaving us with him," Ann said, jerking a thumb at Ben, though there was no real venom in it.
"He'll grow on you," Nathan said.
"Like a fungus," Ben muttered.
There was a round of tired laughter, the kind that comes easier than it should right before someone leaves for good. It faded quickly, though, into something quieter.
"If only Luke were here for this," Ann said softly, looking down at her boots. "He would've had something stupid to say. Made it easier."
A murmur of agreement went through the group — small, aching, genuine.
Nathan said nothing. He let the moment be what it was for them: a real goodbye to a friend they believed was gone, rather than the strange, complicated half-truth he was carrying alone.
A transport idled at the curb, Tower insignia gleaming on its hull. Nathan shook hands, embraced a few of the officers who insisted on it, and made his way toward the door — pausing only when he reached Ben again.
"Take care of them," Nathan said.
"Will do," Ben said.
Nathan climbed aboard without looking back. He'd found, over the years, that looking back rarely made leaving any easier — it only made you notice exactly how much you were leaving.
————————————————————
The Tower cruiser was larger than anything Nathan had set foot on before — corridors wide enough to march a platoon through, ceilings that vanished into shadow overhead. Noah was waiting for him near the boarding ramp, hands clasped behind his back, watching the loading bay with the patient stillness of a man who'd done this exact thing a hundred times before.
"You're late," Noah said, without turning.
"I was saying goodbye."
"Mm." Noah checked something on a small device in his hand. "We're still waiting on one more, then we'll depart."
As if summoned by the sentence itself, footsteps echoed down the ramp behind them — light, unhurried, precise. Nathan turned and felt something in his chest go very still.
"Noelle," he said.
She looked exactly as she always had — white hair pulled back, expression unreadable, the same quiet economy of movement he'd spent three years working beside without ever quite understanding. She didn't answer him. She never did. She was a mute.
After the incident with Lukas he hadn't seen her.
Noah, to Nathan's surprise, straightened slightly and offered a short, genuinely respectful bow of the head.
"Commander Noah Reyes," he introduced himself. "It's an honor."
Nathan blinked.
"What is this?"
Noelle inclined her head very slightly — an acknowledgment, nothing more.
"She's an enforcer," Noah continued, choosing his words with unusual care, " There's a division that exists in the tower— above the ranks most of the Tower can see into. We don't know who they answer to." He glanced at Nathan. "It seems she was undercover in your district. Given the target, I'd guess her division has eyes on Lukas.
Nathan looked at Noelle — really looked at her, searching for something, some crack in three years of quiet routine that might have told him what she truly was underneath it.
She met his eyes for exactly one moment. And nodded.
It wasn't much. It wasn't an answer to anything he'd have wanted to ask. But Nathan chose to take it, quietly, as something close to an acknowledgment of the years they'd spent side by side in the 1008th — even knowing, with growing certainty, that for her, every single one of those years had likely been nothing more than a mission.
She turned and walked back down the ramp without another word, disappearing into the crowded bay beyond.
"Don't," Noah said, watching Nathan watch the space where she'd been. "Whatever you're about to spend the next week thinking about — don't. Nobody below her pay grade has ever gotten anywhere trying to understand that division. Come on. Let's get you properly introduced."
————————————————————
Noah led him deeper into the ship, past cargo holds and briefing rooms and a hangar full of transport craft Nathan didn't recognize, until they reached a heavy sealed door guarded by two enforcers who stood aside without a word at Noah's approach.
"This ship isn't really mine," Noah said, as the door hissed open. "Not the whole thing. Most of what you've seen so far is auxiliary — additional units, temporary crew, borrowed resources. All assembled for one purpose."
"All this," Nathan said slowly, "for one man?"
"For one man the entire Tower is quietly terrified is strangely interested in, yes," Noah said. "My actual crew is smaller. Tighter. They're the ones who've been on this hunt with me from the start."
Beyond the door was a smaller vessel entirely, nestled within the larger ship like a seed inside a fruit — sleek, well-worn, clearly lived-in in a way the rest of the cruiser wasn't. A handful of people looked up as they entered.
"This is the comet. I have Twenty-six crewmates, including you now," Noah said. "Let me introduce the ones who matter most first."
A sharp-featured woman with pale yellow hair didn't bother getting up from the console she was sprawled across, one boot propped on the edge of the desk, a half-eaten pastry in one hand.
"Whis. My Vice Commander, you've met her before."
"Welcome to my ship." she said, not looking up.
"Don't you mean my ship," Noah said, with the weary patience of a man who had made this exact correction many, many times.
"That's what I said."
A massive, silent man stood near the far wall, arms crossed, watching Nathan with an expression that gave away absolutely nothing.
"Martin," Noah said. "He doesn't talk much. He is in charge of the combat unit."
Martin gave a single, slow nod. Nathan decided that was probably the warmest greeting he was going to get.
Something dropped from the ceiling rafters without warning, landing in a crouch directly in front of Nathan with a wide, unsettling grin — small, wiry, faintly green-skinned, a curved blade spinning idly between his fingers.
"New guy smells nervous," the creature said delightedly. "I like nervous."
"Jonah," Noah said, sounding tired in a very specific, very familiar way.
"Half-goblin." Nathan muttered.
A thinner, twitchy man in an oil-stained jumpsuit flinched hard enough at Jonah's sudden movement to knock a toolbox off a shelf, scrambling immediately to catch it.
"And that's Malvin," Noah said. "He's in charge of the technical stuff like Whis. Also very smart. Somewhat less durable."
"I am NOT—" Malvin started, then seemed to reconsider, and simply picked the toolbox back up in silence.
A woman leaned in a doorway at the far end of the room, arms folded, a faint, entirely too calm smile on her face. Something about the way everyone else in the room subtly angled their bodies away from her told Nathan everything he needed to know before Noah even said her name.
"Eve," Noah said. "Our nurse. She can heal almost any injury. Though I strongly advice you don't get hurt in the first place"
"I don't bite," Eve said pleasantly.
Nobody in the room looked like they wanted to test that claim.
Finally, a broad-shouldered lizardman straightened from where he'd been leaning near the console, chest out, an air of quiet, deliberate pride settling over him like a cloak.
"Ulger," the lizardman said, before Noah could. "You'll find I don't need much introduction."
"He introduces himself every time," Whis said around a mouthful of pastry. "Every single time."
"The rest of the twenty-six are just as capable," Noah said, steering Nathan onward before Ulger could elaborate further. "You'll meet them properly in time. For now — sit. We have work to do."
————————————————————
They gathered around the central console, Whis pulling up a floating display of the collapsed 1008th district, Martin arms crossed nearby, listening without a word.
"Walk them through it," Noah said to Nathan. "Everything. The sewer, the ground, all of it."
Nathan told them how he had met Lukas. The strange alert of trouble in the sewers, the mutated wildlife and the unconscious white-haired man with no explanation for how he'd gotten there.
"Luke..Lukas was the only thing that was not corrupted or mutated in those sewers. After our initial probing and investigation of him we found nothing. No records of even a name. He was the one who told us his name was Luke. I sent a request to the tower to get a record of who he was. I received no reply."
"It was probably blocked" Noah spoke.
"What?"
"When did you hire the mute lady"
"Noelle? it was about a few days after we found Luke."
"Yah, they definitely blocked your request. Considering the nature of her division. Your request was what probably informed them of his presence in your district." Whis explained
"So, they sent her undercover to monitor the situation." Nathan said nodding to himself.
"All these years I never once suspected a thing; she was Lukes's assistant. I had her file reports for him."
"What else can you tell us about Lukas?"
"Well, he was an enigma, but he was really good. Like very nice. Even now it's hard for me to understand why we're after him. He had no where to go and since we couldn't get any information about him. I decided to let him stay. He lived in the district. He was very laid back but he always got the job done. He was a mortal could not even use essence, at least that's what I thought."
Nathan paused as he remembered the scene of Lukas in the sea of phoenix flames.
"He got along well with the rest of the district. He was basically your everyday office worker. The only problem he had was that he was a terrible insomniac. He couldn't sleep. You'll find him eyes closed and all, yet he was never really asleep. He always looked tired too. He was normal... Until yesterday."
Nathan went ahead and told them about the letter Lukas received, the time portal. The creature, his death, the door, the phoenix gun and the moment the floor had cracked open and swallowed him up.
Whis was quiet through most of it, tapping one finger idly against her chin.
"We sent that letter to him as a way to keep him there. We received word from the command that he would soon leave. Though we missed him anyway." Noah said
"How did you know he was going to leave?"
"There's someone in tower with the ability of foresight. We don't know who it is but the higher ups receive word from them about future occurrences. About his resurrection. We already knew he had an ability that allows him to change bodies but moving in an already dead body, that's new. We knew he had a way of using phoenix flames."
Noah looked at Nathan whose face contorted.
"Relax the tower already banned the use of mythical creatures to make sacred weapons, besides I doubt the Pheonix and dragons would sit back if there were someone still kidnapping their kind for that. Though now that you mentioned that Lukas a sacred weapon of phoenix origin, it won't be long before the mythical creature faction of the tower start becoming interested in this case." Noah sighed. "Things are about to get wild again."
"The largest variable though in what you said is the ground swallowing him up. What's up with that? If we assume that the door was his own way of creating a portal, then why did another one open up on the ground."
There was silence once again.
It was Malvin, unexpectedly, who spoke first.
"No residue," he said, low and slow, each word deliberate. "Because he didn't go into the portal made he made. He didn't choose where he went."
Whis's eyes snapped toward him, something sharpening in her expression.
"No intent," she said. "That's it! Those that dosen't explain why the ground opened up, it explains why we've never been able to track him.. Every tracking method we have is built to follow intent. When one creates a portal, you infuse spatial essence and intent---where you want to go. If there was never a destination chosen at all—"
"—then there's nothing for us to follow," Noah finished quietly.
Whis said. "Which means whatever's transporting him isn't his own doing."
Noah nodded slowly, something grim settling over his features.
"Only one thing can strip a person of their own choice like that," he said. "An Appellation."
The word landed heavy in the small room. Even Jonah, still perched on a nearby crate, stopped fidgeting with his blade.
"An Appellation?" Nathan repeated. "What's that?"
"Bad" Ulger said.
————————————————————
Far from the cruiser, in a chamber lit by nothing but the soft, drifting glow of a thousand slow-turning stars caught in glass panels overhead, Noelle knelt on one knee before a woman seated in quiet, effortless stillness.
The woman had white hair falling in a smooth sheet well past her shoulders. She wore a veil across her face:
"So he ran," the woman said
. "A time portal?" Her voice was very calm. "That thing is still after him, then."
She fell silent for a long moment.
"So he's back in the cosmos," she said at last, softer. "It won't be long before the others find out." A slow breath escaped her — not quite a sigh, something older and more tired than that. "The universe is going to become very lively again."
Noelle remained exactly as she was, kneeling, silent, giving nothing away — as she always did, in every room, to everyone.
The woman finally looked up, and for just a moment, something achingly soft moved behind that storm-grey gaze.
"How was he?" she asked. "Tell me everything."