Chapter 5: Blood and Ashes

The observatory's door creaked shut behind Liang Xu, rain dripping from his trench coat. His face was gaunt, eyes hollow—a ghost of the man Kai once knew.

"You're supposed to be dead," Kai said, his voice trembling. The storm outside mirrored the tempest in his veins, the Core's energy writhing like a caged beast.

Liang ignored him, tossing a bloodstained USB drive onto the dusty worktable. "Project Icarus. Blackthorn's blueprint for the Convergence."

Alice limped forward, switchblade still in hand. "Why the hell should we trust you?"

"Because I rigged the bomb," Liang said coldly. "And I missed."

The words hung in the air. Kai's fists clenched. "You killed Mom."

"I tried to save her." Liang's composure cracked, revealing a raw, festering guilt. "She discovered what Blackthorn was doing—what I helped them do. They were going to torture her. The bomb… it was a mercy."

"Mercy?!" Kai lunged, slamming his father against the wall. The Core's power flared, cracks spiderwebbing through the plaster. "You don't get to decide who lives or dies!"

Liang didn't fight back. "You're right. But I can tell you how to stop them."

The USB drive contained nightmares.

Security footage showed a subterranean lab beneath MIT, its walls lined with glass pods. Inside each floated a body—soldiers, scientists, children—their veins glowing blue. Dr. Voss paced between them, dictating notes: "Subject 23 exhibits telepathic resonance… Subject 41's cellular decay suggests temporal instability…"

"Human trials," Liang said, his voice flat. "Blackthorn's been injecting Core serum for months. The Convergence isn't an accident—it's their endgame. A unified timeline under their control."

Alice zoomed in on a map. "These coordinates… They're building something. In the Atlantic?"

"An anchor," Kai whispered. The word tasted like ash. "To stabilize the Convergence. If it activates, every alternate reality folds into theirs."

Liang nodded. "They're calling it the Ark. And Voss is leading the project."

Alice stabbed the blade into the table. "So we sink it."

"It's not that simple." Liang pulled up a schematic—a massive spire rooted in the ocean floor, its apex bristling with crystalline antennas. "The Ark's protected by phase-shield tech. You'd need a Blackthorn keycard to bypass it."

Kai's laugh was bitter. "Let me guess. You have one?"

Liang unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a jagged scar over his heart. Embedded beneath the skin was a microchip, pulsing faintly red. "The only way to deactivate the shield is from the inside. And only a living Xu can open it."

Alice stiffened. "Why?"

"Our DNA," Kai realized. "The Core… it's tied to us."

Liang met his son's gaze. "Because I was their first test subject."

The storm raged as they sped through Boston's corpse-gray streets, Liang's stolen van swallowing the miles. Alice crouched in the back, cleaning her wound with stolen whiskey.

"You're quiet," she said.

Kai watched the rain blur the city lights. "He knew. All these years, he knew what the Core could do. And he still fed people to it."

"People do fucked-up things for family."

"Is that an excuse?"

"No." She nodded to Liang, who hunched over the wheel like a man condemned. "But it's a reason."

The van swerved into an abandoned dockyard, its warehouses sagging like rotten teeth. The Ark's construction site glowed on the horizon—a jagged silhouette against the thunderheads.

Liang killed the engine. "The entrance is underwater. There's a submersible in—"

Bang!

A bullet shattered the windshield. Liang lurched, crimson blooming across his chest.

"Down!" Kai yanked Alice to the floor as gunfire shredded the van.

Blackthorn agents advanced, their rifles glowing with Core-powered plasma. At their head stood Dr. Voss, her cobalt eyes gleaming in the dark.

"Hello, Subject Zero," she called. "Let's finish this."

Chaos erupted.

Kai's power tore through the dockyard—containers levitated and smashed into Blackthorn's ranks, waves churned into ice shrapnel. But with every surge, the black veins climbed higher, his vision swimming with static.

Alice fought like a feral thing, her blade finding throats and arteries. "Kai! The sub!"

Liang slumped against the van, blood pooling beneath him. "Go… I'll hold them—"

"No." Kai hauled him up. "You don't get to die a hero."

They stumbled into the submersible, Alice sealing the hatch as plasma fire scorched the hull. The descent was a nightmare—pressure groaning, lights flickering, Liang's breath growing shallow.

"The chip…" he gasped. "Take it… before I—"

"Shut up." Kai pressed a hand to the wound, the Core's energy stitching flesh in violent bursts. "You don't get to leave me again."

The Ark awaited.

A cathedral of steel and crystal, thrumming with unnatural energy. They dragged Liang through sterile corridors, past labs where shadowed figures writhed in glass tubes.

"You're too late," Voss's voice boomed from unseen speakers. "The Convergence begins in ten minutes."

The control room was a nest of screens and machinery, the air vibrating with dissonant frequencies. Liang collapsed at the terminal, fingers flying across holographic keys.

"It's not enough…" he coughed. "The Ark's core… it needs a biometric lock. Only my—"

"No." Kai stepped back. "You're not sacrificing yourself."

Liang smiled—a fragile, broken thing. "You've become a better man than I ever was."

He slammed his palm onto the console.

The Ark shuddered. Alarms wailed.

And the world exploded.