Chapter 15: Anchors Aweigh
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Zara Voss crouched behind a rusted hovercar, her neural implant throbbing as it synced with the chrono-signature of Elias Variant #7. The variant stood in the center of Neo-Pandora's abandoned transit hub, its form flickering between a lab-coated scientist and a shadowy enforcer.
"Two timelines fused into one," Zara muttered, uploading the data to Jax's wrist-com. "He's got Elias's brains and a warlord's reflexes. Fun."
Jax grunted, adjusting the jury-rigged plasma cutter where his prosthetic arm used to be. "Just keep him distracted. I'll gut his power core."
Zara lunged, hacking the hub's security drones to swarm the variant. It retaliated with a temporal shockwave, freezing the drones mid-air. "Predictable," it sneered in Elias's voice.
"Yeah? Predict this." Jax phased through the shockwave, cutter blazing. The variant's eyes widened—too human—before dissolving into static.
"One down," Zara panted. "Only six to go."
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Lila Kane circled the Core-Soren entity, the Fractured Hourglass shard glowing like a star in her hand. Soren's laughter echoed through the lab, his form blurring between a frail scientist and a titan of writhing chrono-tendrils.
"You're wasting time, Lila," he taunted. "The Core has already won. It always wins."
"Then why are you afraid?" Lila fired the chrono-pistol, the round piercing his spectral chest. Soren screamed, timelines unraveling to reveal Elara Veyra's face beneath his mask of static.
"She tried to stop me too," Soren hissed. "Look what it cost her."
Memories flooded Lila's mind—Elara's hands trembling as she injected the Core into her veins, Kael's screams as his code fractured, Soren watching, always watching.
"You let her sacrifice herself," Lila snarled. "Coward."
The Hourglass shard flared, and Lila struck.
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Nyx descended from a fracture, her mosaic-body glitching with stolen rage. Zara and Jax stood over the smoldering remains of Variant #7, unaware until the ground split beneath them.
"You took my brother," Nyx hissed, hurling a memory-shard of Kael's final moments. "Now I'll take everything you love."
Zara's implant overloaded—visions of her mother's death, Jax's prosthetic arm crushing her throat, Elias's eyes begging for mercy. She collapsed, blood trickling from her nose.
"Get up, Voss!" Jax tackled Nyx, his plasma cutter screeching against her chrono-shield. "We don't die here!"
Nyx laughed, phasing through his strike. "You already did. In every timeline."
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A hologram flickered to life in Zara's implant—Kael 2.0, his code stitched together from backup fragments. "Hey, Thief. Need a cheat code?"
"About time," Zara spat, syncing him to the hub's mainframe.
"Variant #3's hiding in the Mirage Market," Kael said. "But Nyx rigged it with paradox mines. Oh, and Vesper's hijacking the city's power grid. Happy hunting!"
Jax yanked Zara to her feet as Nyx's storm closed in. "We're not dying today."
"Today?" Zara grinned weakly. "I've died twelve times this week."
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Lila's strike severed Soren's tether to the Core, sending him crashing into a terminal. The lab trembled as Elara's voice pierced the chaos.
"Destroy the anchors… now."
The Hourglass shard pulsed, revealing the Core's true form—a black star anchored to seven Elias variants. "Zara! Jax! The variants are the keys!" Lila screamed into her comm.
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Zara and Jax cornered **Variant #1** in the Mirage Market, its form a child-sized echo of Elias. It backed away, eyes wide. "I don't want to disappear."
Jax hesitated, the plasma cutter dimming. "Kid…"
"It's not a kid," Zara said, implant flashing. "It's a paradox."
She fired. The variant dissolved, and the Core's scream shook the city.
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The Core collapsed inward, dragging Soren and Nyx into its singularity. Lila gripped the Hourglass shard, its light fading as Neo-Pandora's sky healed.
But in the silence, a new fracture opened—a door to a timeline where Elias Voss never existed.
And from it stepped Elara Veyra, whole and unbroken, her eyes burning with the Core's spiral.
"You missed one."
To Be Continued…