Chapter 19: Signal Fire
The spiral hadn't faded.
Not in the sky. Not in Mike's chest. Not in his dreams.
He'd gone silent for the last twenty-four hours, barricaded in the old station bunker below his apartment. The air was thin. The lights dim. But down here, he didn't have to pretend.
The Hive was louder now.
Not voices—memories.
Flashes of cities Mike had never seen but somehow knew. A woman with eyes like fire. A blade too heavy to lift unless your soul burned with it.
And flames.
So many flames.
He gripped the edge of the table, teeth clenched.
"I'm not yours."
The Hive didn't answer.
It didn't have to.
CPOA Blacksite – Talia and Lucas
A low-security vault beneath the Arcadian transit station glowed faintly with outdated shielding and half-dead lights.
Lucas wiped his forehead with a grease-stained sleeve, prying open the last firewall on a decrypted feed node.
"If this signal doesn't lead somewhere useful, I'm punching a server," he muttered.
Talia barely acknowledged him, eyes focused on the pulses flowing through her holo-interface.
"There," she said suddenly. "Three echoes embedded in the code. Not just one message. Three."
She isolated each pulse, slowed them down, fed them into the language filter.
1. "The Flame burns again."
2. "He remembers."
3. "Bring her back."
Lucas straightened. "Her?"
Talia's eyes flicked up. "Jessie."
Back with Mike
The relic on his desk pulsed again—softly, but in rhythm with his heartbeat.
He stared at it.
He hadn't told anyone what it revealed after the broadcast. After the Hive spoke.
It had opened.
Inside was a second layer—a fragment of an old map stitched with glowing memory thread. At the edge of it was a word burned into the corner:
"ASHENHOLD."
He didn't know the place.
But he knew it was real.
And the voice inside his head—the same one from the castle, from the visions—had said:
"Go there. The seal remains broken."
He reached for the relic.
And this time, it whispered:
"She is waiting."
Talia Crosses the Line
Back at HQ, Talia entered the central log room under a false access code. She knew the risks—Ysara's shadow was everywhere.
But she found what she needed.
A list of experimental files from Subject M. Callahan.
One was flagged "Never Accessed."
She opened it.
Video loaded.
A young Mike—age unknown—strapped to a table. Eyes glowing. Body shaking.
Offscreen, a man said:
"He's syncing with flame memory threads faster than we projected. He's absorbing battle data that doesn't exist anymore."
Another voice:
"Then he's not syncing… he's remembering."
The file cut off.
Talia stood in silence.
Then whispered:
"You're not just connected to it, Mike. You're what came before."
Lucas Makes a Move
Lucas, meanwhile, had left a burner message for Mike.
No encryption. No polite warning.
"We need to talk. Now. You're glowing on every cult radar, and HQ's lying to us. I think I know why."
He sent the ping to every known frequency Mike had used.
And waited.
The Cult Reacts
In a seared outpost beneath the Velmora Crags, Seras stood before a line of cult-born hosts—each wearing a stolen CPOA uniform.
Behind her, Jessie floated in stasis, her body still, her mind… awakening.
One of the hosts stirred.
"The signal is leading him to Ashenhold."
Seras nodded. "Good."
"Why not stop him?"
"Because there is one final memory he must recover before he will return to us willingly."
She stepped toward Jessie.
"The last face he saw before he was sealed… will be the one that unseals him."