The silence that Concieves
The vehicle cut through frost and silence like a silver artery threading through a sleeping beast. Its engines hummed low, breath visible on the windows, fogging the outside world into ghostlight.
Zelaine sat rigid in the back seat, petals faintly coiled around Atiya's wrist — not out of tenderness, but necessity. He slumped beside her, too pale, too still. His skin had lost its glow. His breath was shallow.
> "Stupid," she muttered under her breath. "Could've just said you were collapsing."
The silent man up front offered assistance, but she waved him off with a stiff glare. If she said yes, they might take him away. Worse — they might ask her to wait outside. And that would mean—
She shuddered.
> No. Yaishna would murder me. Then raise me just to scold me.
Then murder me again.
She gritted her teeth and stared out the frost-streaked window, desperate for a distraction.
And found one.
---
Outside, Ellejort unfolded.
The town was a marvel carved into survival. Structures rose on hydraulic stilts, elevated above the growing sea of snow — white bones atop metal limbs. Insulated tunnels linked building to building like arteries, glowing with a soft amber warmth. The ground-level roads were half-buried, but vehicles glided across them, sleek and autonomous.
Turbines turned slowly in the wind. Solar panels stretched wide like frozen wings, tilted to catch what little light crept through the aurora-stained sky. Drones darted between towers. Far below, a greenhouse flickered with blue photosynthetic light — growing food where nothing should grow.
Children ran between the legs of mechs in insulated suits. A projection dome played starlight across its roof, mapping constellations no longer visible. People thrived here.
> A city not built despite the cold — but in agreement with it. A citadel of ice and adaptation.
Zelaine blinked. Then shook her head.
> "Tch. Still looks like a refrigerator."
---
They reached the hospital.
A squat, angular dome with a honeycombed roof and walls of reinforced quartz. It looked more like a bunker than a medical facility — but it pulsed with light, breath, and life.
Attendants rushed out to help, but Zelaine raised a hand.
> "Whatever you're going to do to him," she said bluntly, "you do it in front of me."
She didn't meet their eyes.
Not because she was afraid for Atiya. No — it was the thought of Yaishna's voice in her head.
> "You left him? Alone? In a coma? While you watched the wall? Are you TRYING to die?"
A shiver ran down her spine. She held on tighter.
> "He's my… compensation project," she added weakly.
A nurse raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
"Nothing."
---
Inside the ward, they laid Atiya on a diagnostic bed. The walls dimmed automatically, shielding his eyes from the sterile glow.
The nurse — tall, pale-skinned, with hair like spun ice and calm, professional hands — got to work with quiet precision.
First, she ran a portable scanner along his chest and neck. Thin beams of light danced over his skin.
> "Cool skin. Weak pulse. Slight dehydration," she murmured. "No signs of internal hemorrhage or frostbite."
She rolled up his sleeve and attached a wrist monitor, tracking blood pressure at multiple angles — laying, sitting, and attempting to lift. The screen blinked data, calculating orthostatic responses.
> "Minor orthostatic hypotension. BP drop isn't alarming. Could be systemic fatigue…"
She checked his eyes with a penlight, then carefully palpated the radial pulse and carotid.
> "No arrhythmia. Temperature stable. No structural trauma. Breathing's slow but rhythmically even."
Zelaine just stood there, arms crossed — trying not to look like she cared.
The nurse leaned in. "Sir, can you hear me? Any palpitations, nausea, vision blur…?"
No answer. But a twitch at the corner of his lip — almost like protest.
She gently tilted his head, tapped lightly near the temple.
> "History of collapse? Anemia? Voiding episodes?"
Still no answer.
The nurse helped adjust his limbs, positioning him so the blood flow would remain steady. She added a soft, oxygen-filtered mask — not because he needed it, but just in case.
Then she turned.
> "He'll be alright. Seems like a standard case of overextension. High metabolic burn. Deep fatigue. Could be emotional or psychic overload."
Zelaine blinked. "That's… all?"
The nurse smiled. "Your boyfriend's just tired."
Zelaine's eye twitched.
> "He's not my—!"
But the nurse was already chuckling, glancing at a colleague and whispering something. Zelaine didn't catch it, but she knew the tone.
> Great. Now they think I'm a creeper who stalked him through space and time.
> Do I LOOK like some tragic wartime girlfriend? Gods above…
Zelaine's ears turned slightly red. She looked away.
The nurse grinned wider, clearly enjoying this too much.
> I should destroy this whole hospital.
But instead, Zelaine slumped into the nearby chair with a dramatic sigh.
> "Tired," she muttered to no one.
Atiya slept.
And for now, she watched.
Because even if she didn't admit it out loud, she wasn't ready to walk out just yet.
---
Some hours earlier—
The scream of wind over steel merged with the roar of Yai-beasts. Snow, ash, and crimson mist danced across the battlefield outside ANSEP's high-security research center.
Kael descended like a storm.
Flanked by the 4th Corps and Bashanta, he surged forward to relieve the overwhelmed ANSEP soldiers. Blades spun. Yai cracked. The shrieks of the corrupted beasts were drowned beneath the thunder of his arrival.
> "This shouldn't have gotten this bad," Kael muttered, kicking a twisted hound-beast off his blade. "Where the hell are Atiya and Zelaine? These things aren't even a warmup for them."
One officer, bleeding and barely upright, responded hoarsely, "They vanished hours ago. No one knows where."
Kael's eyes narrowed, but he shoved the thought aside. "They'll survive," he muttered. "They always do."
Bashanta sheared down a charging brute, her saber leaving arcs of green flame in the air. "Any news on the director?"
The soldier pointed weakly. "Last seen... running toward Lab 41."
Kael turned sharply.
> "What's in Lab 41?"
No one answered.
The wind howled louder.
---
Lab 41.
Or what was left of it.
They entered through a torn bulkhead that barely hung from its hinges. Once reinforced with alloy plating and yai-etched seals, the doors now gaped like a mouth blasted open by something immense.
The damage was apocalyptic.
> Walls: split down the middle, blackened and seared. Cracks bloomed like spiderwebs, some wide enough to see the next floor through.
Equipment: supercomputers lay in slagged heaps. Magical arrays flickered intermittently, runes half-erased. Crystals pulsed weakly on ruined altars.
Hazards: fumes curled from exposed conduits. Floating sparks arced from hanging wires. Pools of unknown fluid steamed in places they shouldn't exist.
Evidence of struggle: Claw marks along the consoles. Scorch trails. A heavy burn in a perfect ring — as if something once hovered, then vanished in an instant.
Bashanta's voice came quietly. "Something was unleashed here."
Kael didn't answer. He was too busy scanning the floor, eyes darting.
> "Anyone alive?!" he called out.
Silence.
Then—
A rasp.
Faint. Like cloth dragged against stone.
Kael froze. Looked down.
> A hand.
Pale fingers curled weakly around his boot, reaching from beneath a fractured support beam.
He dropped to one knee, tossing the debris aside.
> Cerejeira.
Face bloodied, uniform torn, eyes half-lidded and unfocused — but alive. Barely.
Her lips moved, but no sound came. She blinked slowly.
Kael's brows pulled together. He slipped a hand under her shoulders, lifting her gently.
That's when he noticed it.
> A faint shimmer along her forearm. Shinsu traces — glowing red — flickering in time with her pulse.
And her left eye, barely open, caught his reflection. But not all of it.
Just for a second—
> —he saw something else staring back.
Not her. Not him.
Something watching.
Then it was gone.
Kael stiffened.
> "What the hell happened here…" Bashanta murmured behind him.
Kael stood, holding Cerejeira steady.
His gaze drifted to the far end of the lab.
A vault was embedded into the wall — one of the few untouched structures.
> Or so it seemed.
Kael squinted.
> Its biometric lock was severed — not broken, not melted. Cleanly sliced.
The door hung open.
Inside: emptiness. A faint trace of scorched air. A lingering pulse, as if the vault had once held something that bent reality slightly around itself.
And now it was gone.
Kael's mouth tightened.
> "Whatever they came for," he said quietly, "they took it."
And the entire lab had fallen to protect—or unleash—it.
---