Chapter 86: After the Vault
The first breath was a gasp—sharp, wet, and too sudden for her lungs to understand.
Kira's body jolted upright, shoulders slamming back against the curved metal of the cryo-pod as frost cracked beneath her palms. Her chest heaved once—twice—as she sucked in air like it had been stolen from her.
Her vision blurred.
The world tilted.
Everything was too loud—the beeping of the monitors, the scrape of boots against metal, the silence in the room where something should have been.
Then—hands. Gentle. Steadying her.
Quinn's voice, low and calm.
"Easy. You're safe. You're alright."
Her eyes darted, wild, confused.
She was freezing.
Her skin tingled like electricity was threading through her veins. Her fingers were stiff with residual cryo-burn, her throat raw, lips chapped and splitting.
Kira blinked against the haze. "...Where...?"
Rowan stepped into view—face pale, eyes red at the edges, his hands trembling faintly as he clutched the edge of the console beside her. He didn't speak. His mouth moved like he might—but nothing came out.
She looked around slowly. The vault loomed in fragments—glass pods, lights dimming, strange forms blinking out one by one like stars going dark.
Her gaze returned to Rowan. Her voice was a rasp.
"Where is Nolan?"
The silence after that hurt more than the cold.
Mira turned her back.
Lucian didn't move.
Quinn lowered his eyes.
And Rowan—
He knelt beside her pod. Not touching her. Just close enough to hold her in presence.
He couldn't meet her eyes. His throat worked silently.
Kira's brows drew together.
"Rowan?"
Rowan looked up slowly.
His voice was barely audible.
"He... brought you back."
Rowan's voice was soft, breaking mid-syllable.
The words didn't make sense to Kira—not immediately.
They floated somewhere above her comprehension, echoing without landing.
She stared at him, trying to read his face—trying to deny what she already knew by how everyone refused to look at her.
Quinn. Mira. Lucian. Even the silence of the Vault itself.
"No," she whispered.
Rowan lowered his head.
"No," she said again, louder this time—sharp with disbelief. "No, no—what does that even mean? Where is he?"
She tried to stand. Her legs buckled.
Quinn caught her just in time.
But she was shaking now—more from within than from cold.
"He said he'd find me—he said—he said—"
Her hands dug into her uniform, clutching her own ribs like she could hold the unraveling in. Her breath hitched violently in her throat.
Then: silence.
And then the crack of memory.
Memory Flash – The Last Team
Smoke.
Blood on her hands.
Trent's body, slumped against broken console glass.
Vance's scream fading behind the hiss of a ruptured containment field.
She had tried to carry them both.
She remembered the frost that had already begun forming on Vance's skin before his last words left his mouth.
"Kira—go."
She had locked herself in the inner chamber.
Had cried herself numb.
Then froze everything—herself included—because there was nothing left to save.
Kira fell to her knees now, arms wrapped tightly around her torso.
"I told him not to do anything reckless," she choked out. "I told him—I just needed him to wait. I didn't ask him to—"
Her voice cracked, warbled, collapsed into herself.
Mira turned away sharply.
Rowan moved toward her—but Quinn lifted a hand subtly. Not yet.
Kira pressed her forehead to the edge of the console where she'd woken, eyes wide, staring at nothing.
"Why is it always me?" she whispered.
Her voice trembled.
"Why do I always wake up alone?"
The Vault Responds
But time had no intention of slowing.
A deep pulse rolled through the Vault—subsonic, like a world-sized heartbeat skipping a beat.
Above them, the ceiling dimmed.
Glass pods along the walls began to flicker erratically. Some glowed white-hot, others blinked out like failing stars.
The system's voice returned, sterile and final:
[SEED CHAMBER RESOLUTION COMPLETE.]
[ALL REDUNDANT THREADS DELETED.]
[SITE STABILITY AT 4%.]
Lucian's voice, tight:
"It's collapsing—"
Quinn caught Rowan's eye. "We have to move. Now."
The floor beneath them shuddered, the smooth obsidian fracturing with spiderweb veins of deep crimson light.
A roaring wind began to stir—not from above, but within the Vault walls themselves, as if the entire structure was exhaling its final breath.
"Get her up!" Mira barked, snapping from stillness.
Quinn hauled Kira to her feet. She was limp at first, dazed, her grief still forming words she hadn't yet spoken.
Then Rowan stepped beside her, pressed his hand over hers.
Not to stop her pain. Just so she wouldn't bear it alone.
[EJECTION SEQUENCE PRIMED.]
[STAND CLEAR OF COLLAPSE RING.]
Rowan shouted to the others. "Grab onto something—NOW!"
A sound like splitting metal and breaking air swallowed the room—
And the Vault detonated outward in a flash of white resonance.
The Vault erupted.
Not in fire, not in noise—but in force.
A bloom of pale light ignited beneath their feet, and then the floor was gone, yanked out from under them like a trapdoor had opened in the fabric of space. The chamber cracked apart in clean concentric rings, a controlled demolition of memory and machine.
There was no time to scream.
No gravity to grab.
Only—
Wind. Cold. Light.
Rowan saw Mira's hand stretch toward him—then vanish in a flare of distortion.
Lucian spun through white static, his coat flaring around him like broken wings.
Kira gasped—a cry without sound—her eyes wide, locked on something only she could see in the blur.
And then—
Impact.
They hit solid metal. Hard.
Bodies slammed against the polished floor of the upper chamber—just beneath the access elevator shaft they'd descended hours ago.
Everything was dim now. Glitched light strips flickered overhead. Dust filled the air like snow.
Rowan rolled onto his side, coughing violently, his ribs shrieking.
Mira was already on one knee, blood at her temple.
Lucian staggered upright—then immediately dropped back down beside Kira, who lay curled, stunned and trembling, arms wrapped protectively over her middle.
Quinn, breathless: "Everyone—roll call—sound off—"
"Here," Mira rasped.
"Alive," Rowan muttered.
"Lucian," came the reply.
"Kira… is breathing," Quinn confirmed.
There were no injuries they couldn't walk with. But none of them moved.
They just… sat there.
Still caught inside the echo of something that had ended, even if they didn't know how to name it yet.
VTOL – Upper Atmosphere
"We have visual!"
Sharon's voice cut through the cabin like a whip.
The resonance monitor she manned flashed red across every diagnostic field—multiple spikes, two total signal erasures, and now, a stabilized pulse from the core of Site V.
"Something ejected them. Signature readings confirm: Mercer, Vaughn, Mendez, Reyes, Kael—all surfaced at secondary uplink pad."
Vespera leaned forward, eyes locked on the live telemetry.
"What's the state of the Vault?"
Sharon's hands moved quickly across the interface.
"Gone. Dissolved. No spatial remnant, no dimensional echo. It didn't collapse—it resolved. Like it was never built to last."
Sloane, from the copilot seat, muttered under his breath.
"Built to show something. Then seal it forever."
Sharon's voice softened, unsure.
"Ma'am… resonance patterns in the last 10 seconds included one extra frequency."
Vespera glanced sharply at her.
"Extra?"
"One that matches Nolan Voss' signature.
But only during the merge event.
After that—it's blank."
Vespera exhaled, slow and heavy.
Her voice was quiet.
"Mark it. Burn it to our encrypted logs. And when we touch down—don't tell anyone unless I say."
She paused, fingers steepled.
"Especially not Kira."
The walk back was slow.
Not because of injury—though Mira limped, and Rowan's ribs still ached with every step—but because of everything else.
Because they didn't know how to move faster.
Because silence pressed down like gravity.
Because behind them, the place that had unmade them still lingered in the back of their vision, like an afterimage burned into the soul.
The extraction pad waited just ahead, VTOL floodlights cutting through the haze of lingering dust and pale fog. The landing gear had extended, boarding ramp lowered.
Sloane stood at the edge, silent as they approached. No questions. Just the tilt of his head, the brief flicker of recognition—and sorrow—in his gaze as he counted them.
One missing.
Everyone knew who.
Kira walked with Quinn at her side, one hand wrapped tight in the folds of the emergency thermal blanket she'd been given. She didn't speak. Didn't cry. Just… looked ahead. Eyes dull. Shoulders tight.
Lucian's coat dragged at the edges, caked with fine white ash that hadn't been there before. His gloves were scraped raw. He said nothing as he matched pace with Rowan.
They reached the top of the ramp.
But Rowan paused.
At the edge of the platform, he turned.
Lucian stopped beside him.
And together, they looked back.
Site V stood distant but visible.
A scarred plateau surrounded by fractured steel and old stone. The vault entrance—what was left of it—smoldered with soft red light. Not active. Not threatening.
Just… finished.
The air around it shimmered faintly, like heat over pavement—but cold.
Quiet.
The kind of quiet that followed goodbyes never said aloud.
Rowan's throat worked, but he didn't speak.
His eyes were glassy, rimmed red, lashes still coated in grit. He let his arms hang loose at his sides—helpless. Unmoored.
Lucian, beside him, didn't look at Rowan.
He just stood, posture heavy with exhaustion, his hands clenched at his sides, jaw tight.
They didn't speak.
They didn't need to.
The wind picked up gently, rustling the edges of their coats.
A distant beep from the VTOL signaled departure prep.
But neither moved.
For just a moment longer, they stood together at the threshold of what had been lost.
At the edge of what couldn't be undone.
The hum of the engines barely masked the sound of ragged breathing.
The VTOL cabin was dim—only the emergency strips lining the walls cast any light, cool and distant, like everything else had faded with the Vault. The team sat scattered, broken in posture, bruised and blank-eyed.
Rowan sat near the rear, slouched in his seat, a strip of gauze pressed gently to the side of his ribs. His fingers were still shaking, barely moving as he watched Lucian, who sat across from him—silent, back straight, hands limp on his knees. His coat was dusted in fine ash. His eyes… hollow.
Mira sat by the door, legs stretched stiff, a wrap of blood-stained gauze around her thigh. She stared at the floor.
Quinn, sitting between Kira and Mira, was tightening the last strap of a pressure bandage around his wrist, his gaze flicking between the two every few seconds.
Kira was silent at first.
Wrapped in a thermal blanket, her posture rigid, spine straight and unmoving. Her hair hung damp over her shoulders, strands plastered to her temple, still stiff with residual frost.
She hadn't spoken since the Vault.
But her jaw had been clenching.
Her fists had been tightening.
Her shoulders were beginning to rise with shallow, fast breaths.
Quinn's hand moved, instinctively reaching toward her.
"Kira—"
And then she snapped.
"You."
Her voice was a blade.
Everyone looked up—startled.
Kira's head turned, slow and deliberate, and her eyes locked on Lucian like iron magnets.
"You—selfish bastard."
Her voice cracked—not from weakness, but from restraint she no longer had the strength to hold.
Lucian didn't move.
"All this time. All of it," she spat, shoving to her feet. The blanket fell from her shoulders. Her skin steamed slightly in the cold air of the cabin, her breath visibly rising. "You built it. You built it and broke it and rewrote it—and we're the ones paying for it."
Rowan stood slowly, hand up. "Kira—he—"
"NO." she roared.
The VTOL's lights flickered.
Her powers surged—not violently outward, but concentrated, the air around her warping with freezing condensation.
Her fists shimmered with a ghost-frost, her skin glowing faintly along her collarbone, veins pulsing with pale blue resonance.
"Trent. Vance. Gone.
Nolan? DEAD. Because of you."
She took one step forward—hair lifting slightly from the power running under her skin. Each breath came faster. Shallower.
Lucian remained seated.
His eyes didn't lift.
His hands stayed open, relaxed.
"Say something," she snapped, her voice shaking. "Say something, you goddamn coward—"
Rowan stepped in front of Lucian.
His arms raised slightly—not aggressively, but firmly. Protectively.
"Enough."
"Get out of the way—" she hissed, trembling.
Rowan's voice, low but solid:
"He's not the enemy."
"Then what is he, Mercer?" Her teeth were clenched so hard her voice splintered. "What do you call someone who rips holes in time and gets to keep breathing while the rest of us drown?!"
She took another step forward.
Quinn stood now too—silent, but close, ready.
Mira's hand slid to her sidearm. Not drawn. Just… ready.
"He broke the world," Kira whispered. Her voice cracked—not from power, but from something far more human. "And I still woke up alone."
Lucian finally looked up.
His eyes met hers.
No anger.
No resistance.
Just grief.
And shame.
"I'm sorry," he said softly.
That was all.
The lights dimmed again, her power faltering—not from fatigue, but from the weight of everything pressing into her chest at once.
She let out a ragged breath, and her knees gave out.
Quinn caught her.
She didn't sob. She didn't scream again.
She just buried her face in her hands, curled in on herself, her power receding like a tide.
Silence took the cabin again.
Rowan lowered his arms slowly. Sat beside Lucian. Their shoulders touched.
Lucian stared ahead, jaw tight, breath shallow.
The hum of the VTOL continued.
Above them, the stars turned coldly in the dark.