The Shell Beneath the City

Bastion wasn't a city.

It was a cage wrapped in glass and dressed like power.

Even from a distance, Elian could feel it: the sterile, humming core of ChronoCorp's regime. No smoke. No sound. No scent of life. Just towering spires of mirrored alloy and temporal antennas, pulsing gently like the breath of something enormous and sleeping.

Kaia kept low behind a broken ventilation rig, watching the patrol rotations.

"Still running the fourteen-minute loop," she muttered. "They haven't upgraded it since I left."

"You'd think the people running time would have better timing," Elian said, trying to keep his voice light. It didn't work.

Kaia glanced at him. "You sure you want to do this?"

"No," he admitted. "But I have to."

She nodded. "Then we breach through Sub-Level 6. It's a blind spot in the shell, but it leads into the old infrastructure—the foundation of the Vault grid."

"And from there?"

"We find your mother. Or we find whoever's keeping her there."

They moved in shadows.

Past silent drones. Past faceless guards whose eyes glowed faintly with retinal HUDs. Kaia moved like water, all muscle memory and instinct. Elian moved like a man in over his head—because he was—but he followed her anyway.

At Sub-Level 6, Kaia used a magnetracer to hack the old access lock.

It hissed open.

Behind it: a dark staircase winding down into the bones of Bastion.

The temperature dropped as they descended. The sterile gleam of ChronoCorp's upper world gave way to raw concrete, exposed cables, and the faint smell of something ancient. Elian's ears popped once, twice, as if the air was being subtly compressed.

"Feel that?" he asked.

Kaia nodded. "Temporal bleed. We're near a node. One of the big ones."

They reached a heavy security door. Behind it, Kaia said, was the old Cryo Access Hub, predating the modern Vault interface. It was supposed to have been decommissioned ten years ago.

It hadn't been.

Inside, banks of machines blinked with soft green lights. A thin mist hung in the air. Dozens of stasis pods lined the walls—smaller than the Vault units. More intimate.

Kaia checked a data slate on the wall.

"System's locked down. But we can piggyback off a dormant pulse."

She wired in the device.

It glowed blue.

Requesting Archive Access…

Fragment recognized. Welcome, Aelia Voss.

Elian blinked. "Wait. Aelia?"

The screen flickered.

Then her voice filled the chamber.

"If you're hearing this… Elian, my love, I hope you've survived long enough to understand what I couldn't explain before they took me."

Elian froze.

Kaia went still.

"They offered me a trade. My remaining years for your protection. I didn't trust them. But I saw what was coming, and I couldn't risk you being caught in it."

"So I gave up my time. Not just the years I had left—but the ones I'd borrowed. I thought they'd let me rest."

"They didn't."

The feed distorted.

A second voice cut in.

Colder. Mechanical.

"Archive Corruption Detected. Accessing Oversight Logs."

Kaia swore and tried to sever the link, but it was too late.

A new screen opened—an oversight terminal.

SUBJECT: AELIA VOSS

STATUS: STASIS INTERRUPTED (LEVEL 2)

RELOCATION ORDER ISSUED – NONPUBLIC EXPERIMENTAL ZONE 3

ASSIGNED PROJECT: NEURAL-ECHO SIMULATION – CASE CODE: 'SEREN_GHOST'

Kaia looked up at Elian.

"They moved her. She's not just in stasis. They're using her."

Elian's heart sank. "What do they want?"

Kaia exhaled. "They're building something. A shadow network of minds—stitched from memory, emotion, and raw neural patterning. Your mother… she's one of the cores."

Elian stepped back, as if hit.

"She didn't give up her time," he said. "They took it. Then they took her."

Kaia reached for the device.

But it was already glowing.

Brighter.

Overwhelming.

The room began to shake.

A low siren howled through the walls.

WARNING: TEMPORAL FEEDBACK DETECTED. ANCHOR POINT DESTABILIZING.

Kaia grabbed Elian. "We have to shut it down—now—or it's going to collapse this whole node!"

Elian hesitated.

"If we shut it down," he said, "we lose the signal. We lose her."

Kaia's eyes searched his. "If we don't, we lose everything."

And then—

From the far end of the corridor—

Footsteps.

Metal. Slow. Steady.

A figure stepped into view.

Not Lorne.

Dr. Seren Ivelle.

Alive.

And watching.