ROLLER COASTER

Liora lay on the thin mattress, eyes fixed on the ceiling as the dull hum of the Bastion filled the silence. She tried to focus on the steady rhythm of the ventilation, the occasional distant voices, the low whir of unseen machinery.

Anything to drown out the weight of her own thoughts. And she was lucky enough that exhaustion eventually took her, pulling her into uneasy rest.

It started as nothing—a murky haze, shifting shapes without meaning. Then came the flickers. Bright white corridors. The scent of sterilized air. Shadows moving behind reinforced glass.

A voice, distorted yet familiar, murmured something she couldn't grasp. Panic clawed at her chest. She turned, but her body felt sluggish, distant, like she was wading through liquid metal.

A sharp, electric pulse raced through her limbs, and then—

A flower.

A single blue rose, vivid against the sterile white backdrop. She reached for it, but before her fingers could brush the petals, the world fractured.

She jolted awake, heart pounding hard. The Bastion's dim light met her eyes, grounding her back in reality. But something lingered—a cold, twisting sensation in her gut.

That flower. That place. She knew it.

A sharp knock on her door made her flinch.

"Hope you weren't sleeping too well," came Cipher's voice, dry as ever.

Liora exhaled, rubbing her eyes before dragging herself upright. "What is it?"

"Something weird."

That was never a good sign.

She pulled on her boots—a pair that Echo gave her—and followed him down the narrow corridors until they reached Cipher's workstation, a clutter of monitors and cables.

The glow from the screens bathed the space in cold blue light, casting shadows across his face as he leaned back in his chair, arms crossed.

"I was running a trace on your… whatever the hell is going on inside you," he started, motioning vaguely toward her. "And I picked up something. A signal."

Liora frowned. "A signal?"

"Well, a digital echo. At first, I thought it was just residual noise, but it's too specific. Almost like something—" He paused, choosing his words carefully. "—is searching for you."

A chill ran down her spine. "You're sure?"

Cipher tapped a few keys, bringing up a stream of shifting data. "It's fragmented, like it's trying to rebuild itself. But the pattern is there." His eyes flicked toward her. "And it started the moment you got here."

Liora swallowed hard. First the dream, now this.

"I don't know what it means yet," Cipher continued, his voice unusually serious. "But whatever it is? It's not looking good."

The air inside the Hollow Bastion was tense, again, the kind of silence that carried unspoken expectations. Shade and Nyx had just returned; their expressions dark.

The dim glow of the Hollow Bastion's monitors flickered against their faces as Cipher pulled up the decrypted fragments they had managed to retrieve.

"Whatever Liora was a part of," Shade started, tone sharp, "someone high up wanted every trace of it erased."

Nyx dropped a data drive onto the table. "We found mentions of X-Phenomenon buried in classified logs. All fragmented. Whatever it is, the people who touched it either disappeared or were made to disappear."

Cipher inserted the drive to his computer, and a corrupted video feed crackled to life on the screen. The image was barely discernible, heavy distortions masking the figures, but a voice, mechanical and warped, bled through the static.

Liora stepped closer, her breath shallow. There was something hauntingly familiar about the audio, though she couldn't place why.

Then, without warning, a new message appeared—sharp, cutting through the interference like a knife.

GIVE US THE BLUE ROSE.

The room fell into dead silence.

Liora's stomach twisted, her hands curling into fists at her sides. She didn't know who had sent it—but everyone in the room knew exactly who could have.

Only two groups knew that name.

And one of them was already hunting her.