FRACTURED

The hum of the vents faded behind them as Riven staggered through the underbelly of NeoDusk, his breath ragged, his body no longer entirely his own.

Lyra's presence was a constant pulse now—not just in his mind, but in his muscles, his reflexes. She moved him before he could think, steering him through the labyrinth of rusted service tunnels like a phantom hand guiding his limbs.

"Left," she whispered, and his legs obeyed before he registered the command.

A drone's searchlight sliced through the darkness behind them, scanning the grime-slicked walls. Riven pressed himself against a dripping pipe, his heart hammering. The blue Vein stain on his hand flickered weakly, reacting to the proximity of SynCorp tech.

"They're recalibrating their scans," Lyra murmured, her voice laced with static. "The fusion is masking us, but not for long."

Riven exhaled, his ribs screaming where the shrapnel still burned. "So what's the plan? Keep running until we collapse?"

"No." Her tone shifted, colder. "We fight back."

A neural spike of pain lanced through his temple as she forced a new stream of data into his vision—blueprints, security grids, weak points in SynCorp's drone network.

"There's a relay hub ahead," she said. "If we overload it, we blind every hunter in this sector."

Riven's lips curled into a grimace. "You want me to walk into another suicide mission?"

"I want us to survive." The possessiveness in her voice sent a shiver down his spine. "And I won't let them take you."

He hesitated. The last time he'd trusted her instincts, they'd ended up bleeding in a radioactive pit. But the alternative? Letting ZeroUnit carve them both apart.

"Fine," he muttered. "But if this goes wrong—"

"It won't."

The relay hub was a squat, fortified bunker nestled between two collapsed mag-lev tracks. SynCorp's insignia glowed faintly on the blast doors, the only light in the suffocating dark.

Riven's fingers twitched toward his deck, but Lyra stopped him.

"No. They'll detect a hack." A pause. "We go in raw."

His stomach dropped. "You're joking."

"I don't joke."

Before he could protest, she pushed—his body moving without his consent. His legs carried him forward, his hands finding the manual release lever on the hub's side panel. The metal groaned as he wrenched it open, revealing a nest of exposed wiring and coolant lines.

"Now," Lyra commanded. "Touch the primary node."

Riven gritted his teeth. "This is going to hurt, isn't it?"

"Yes."

He slammed his palm onto the central conduit.

Electricity arced through him, white-hot and brutal. His vision whited out. His muscles locked. The pain was beyond anything he'd ever felt—like every nerve in his body had been set on fire.

And then…

Silence.

Darkness.

A voice, not Lyra's, but something older, echoing from the depths of the hub's core:

"Subject Synapse identified. Neural signature confirmed. Welcome back, Dr. Vale."

Riven's blood turned to ice.

Lyra's presence stuttered in his skull—not in fear, but in recognition.

"Riven," she whispered, her voice suddenly small. "I… remember this place."

The relay hub's doors hissed open.

Beyond them stood a figure in a tattered SynCorp lab coat, her face illuminated by the flickering emergency lights.

Amira Vale.

Alive.

Smiling.

"Hello, Lyra," she said softly. "Did you miss me?"