Chapter 11: The Offer

Lucan sat quietly beside Lyra, watching the pulse monitor over her bed blink in soft cyan. Her breathing was steady now. She hadn't spoken in a few minutes—not since she warned him something else may have woken up inside him.

He wasn't sure if she was resting or just done talking.

He opened his mouth to say something—

Knock.

Knock.

Then med-bay door slid open, and two suited officials stepped in.

Both of them wore jet-black coats with golden Vein-thread insignias along the cuffs. Looked high-ranking, clearly.

One of them spoke, with polite tone.

"Mr. Vale. Director Selene would like a word."

Lucan blinked.

"Huh, She's awake?"

The official gave a single nod.

Lyra glanced at him, eyes narrowing slightly. "Be careful."

Lucan gave her a quiet nod and followed the men out of the room.

They led him down a side corridor—not the same route they'd brought him in earlier. This one was dimmer, less metallic. More humane. Eventually, they stopped in front of a door with a dark wood finish—strangely normal amid the sharp lines of HQ design.

One official tapped the door.

It opened with a soft hiss.

Lucan stepped inside.

Selene was seated comfortably on a modern white sofa—one leg crossed over the other, a cup in her hand. Her posture relaxed. Her skin looked unbruised. Her coat was clean and pressed.

No broken ribs.

No fractured cheekbone.

No Vein badge damage.

Not even a scratch on her.

Lucan stared.

Selene looked up and met his gaze. For a moment, her eyes were cold again—piercing and unreadable.

It felt like she was peeling through his thoughts one layer at a time.

Then, suddenly, she smiled.

"Relax. I'm just messing with you." she said, waving a hand. "Didn't want you thinking I'm about to start round two. My body still remembers the floor."

Lucan let out a short, forced laugh.

Selene gestured to the chair across from her. "Sit. I don't bite unless you start with it again."

Lucan sat.

She leaned back and set down her cup. "Tea or coffee?"

Lucan hesitated. "Uh… coffee?"

She snapped her fingers twice.

A moment later, an assistant walked in—silent, efficient—set down a fresh cup of black coffee in front of Lucan, and disappeared again like a ghost.

Lucan looked at it, then back at her.

Selene sipped hers, then said, "You're probably wondering how I'm walking around like nothing happened."

He nodded slowly.

She held her cup up, turning it slightly. "There's a serum. Only given to executive-level officers. You won't find it on any registry."

Lucan frowned. "A healing serum?"

"In a way." She set her cup down. "It's called Sirovant-9. Developed off samples recovered from a Forbidden Zone. It's not just regenerative—it forces a molecular reset before death triggers permanent trauma. Like rewinding flesh by a few hours."

Lucan blinked. "So… time-based healing?"

"Sort of. Experimental but Risky. And very, very rare." She leaned forward slightly. "We only have a few dozen doses left across the entire HQ network. Most of them are locked in cryo-security. It's not designed to be public. And it sure as hell wasn't meant to patch up something like you."

Lucan looked down at the coffee.

"…Sorry."

Selene raised an eyebrow. "Don't be. You gave my old bones something to do."

Then she smiled again.

"You and I are going to be having a lot of conversations going forward, Lucan Vale. You're not just dangerous. You're… interesting."

Lucan didn't answer. He just took a sip of the coffee.

Selene took another slow sip of coffee, then set her cup down with a soft clink.

"All the staff members injured during your incident—techs, guards, secretaries, analysts—they'll be retired."

Lucan's fingers tensed around the handle of his cup.

"Retired?"

"Most of them won't walk again. A few will never speak. Even the ones who survived… we can't patch what's missing." She folded her hands. "They'll be compensated, of course. But it's over for them."

Lucan's throat tightened.

Selene continued, her voice low and measured. "I assume Commander Veyren already told you this, but I'll say it again: awakened agents—especially Tiered ones—recover instantly under normal conditions. That's what The Vein mostly do in fights."

She leaned forward, narrowed eyes.

"But whatever happened in that chamber… bypassed it."

Lucan nodded slightly. "He told me. But… didn't you say there were other Tier-0s before?"

Selene exhaled through her nose. "Rare ones, yes. A few scattered reports over the decades—most of them isolated cases. And of course its not from our Safe Zone. But you're not like them."

"Why?" Lucan asked. "If we share the same tier—"

"You don't." Selene cut in. "On record, you do. But your abilities… it's different. Even if all officials would've fought a Tier-0 then The Vein will heal them instantly. No Tier-0's ever done this."

Lucan looked down, his mind spinning.

Selene stood up and walked to a nearby shelf, retrieving a tablet. She returned to her seat, set it on the table, and tapped the screen.

"Let me show you something."

A neural interface display flared—a body scan, outlined in cyan with shimmering threads of data flickering across it.

"This is Lyra's current scan." Selene said. "Taken ten minutes after she regained consciousness."

Lucan leaned in.

"Initiate zoom." Selene commanded.

The image focused on a section of Lyra's spine. Near the center, glowing faintly, was a tiny dark orb—embedded like a seed.

Lucan's eyes narrowed. "What is that?"

"It's what's stopping her from accessing more than thirty percent of her abilities." Selene replied. "Every time she draws power, this… thing absorbs it. And sometimes if she try hard, it gives her an unbearable pain."

He looked up, alarmed.

"Can you remove it?"

Selene shrugged. "It's not surgical nor physical. It's something even the Vein can't isolate—because, technically, it doesn't exist. We also took a bunch of different scans, but it is only visible in Neural scan."

She swiped through a few more scans—different patients, different body parts—but always the same orb, just lodged in a different location.

"Everyone whom you've injured has one of these." she said calmly. "Even I had it, right here." She tapped her side. "But the serum kinda removed it."

Lucan's jaw clenched. "Then give her the serum."

Selene tilted her head, observing him.

She didn't answer right away.

Then—slowly—she raised one finger.

"One thing." she said. "You do one thing for me, and I'll make sure Lyra gets a dose. No tests. No waiting. No protocol delays."

Lucan's eyes locked onto her hand, then back up to her face.

Her smile returned—slight, sharp and unsettling.

"You want to save her?" she said, voice quiet. "Then earn it."

Lucan felt it—the chill crawling down his spine. Not from her words.

From the way she said it.

Like she already knew what he'd say.

[Location: Inner Sanctum – High Council Division | 2 Hours Earlier | 16:42 HQ Standard Time]

A low hum vibrated beneath the obsidian floor of the Council chamber. Eight elder officials sat in silence, arranged in a perfect circle around a massive round table forged from black crystal composite. In the center, a transparent digital interface hovered above the surface, projecting rotating Vein metrics and recent zone breach reports.

Each elder wore a high-collared coat embedded with faint white threading—no emblems, no names. They didn't need identification. Their presence alone made the air heavier.

The only sound was the ambient chime of data feeds and the occasional page shift on someone's digital scroll.

Then suddenly—

[EMERGENCY COUNCIL PING – RED PRIORITY / SOURCE: DIRECTOR SELENE – OVERSIGHT]

The center interface flared crimson, rotating the alert until all eight could read it in sync.

Every official paused.

"An emergency ping?" one murmured.

"She hasn't contacted us like this in over a decade." another said, frowning.

One of the elders, a sharp-eyed man with silver tattoos along his jawline, tapped the interface.

"Open it."

A static ripple passed through the air—and then Selene's projection appeared above the table in clean, high-resolution hologram.

She bowed slightly, her voice carefully composed.

"Elders. Thank you for accepting this emergency relay. I bring immediate, critical information regarding a subject from yesterday's Vein-trigger scan."

The elder seated directly across from her image leaned forward, his voice like cracked thunder.

"What did you do this time, Selene?"

Selene hesitated.

"There was a DNA match." she said carefully. "Fifty percent alignment. With a sample you archived twenty-four years ago."

The table shifted. Several elders straightened. One of them—tall, with ghost-white irises—slammed his hand onto the table.

"WHAT?"

Selene visibly tensed.

"Yes, sir. The match was to [Sample ID: V-Δ-One]. The subject from the Fold-border anomaly."

"You didn't notify us immediately?" the elder roared.

"I—I was hoping to establish trust first." Selene said, more rattled now. "We had reason to believe he was abandoned at the age of five. No known handlers. We didn't want to risk alerting dormant protocols if he was being monitored externally."

Another elder spoke up, voice quiet but sharp:

"Abandoned?"

"Yes, Elder Vran. According to our surveillance backtrack and archived zone data—his guardians vanished, and he was relocated to Nirvenn under false credentials. Likely by his own parents. We believe they suppressed their Vein Magnitude."

One of the more analytical elders, a woman with wire-thin implants lining her scalp, spoke next.

"So. You invited him."

"Yes, to the HQ. I intended to reveal his father's past gently. We showed him footage of [The Vale]."

"And?"

Selene swallowed. "He blacked out."

She flicked her fingers off-screen, sending a synchronized data packet to the Council core.

Elder Kaedran's fingers tapped once against the crystal table.

No one spoke. 

Then the interface pulsed.

[ATTACHMENT RECEIVED – INCIDENT FEED | AUTH: DIR. SELENE]

A blinking icon hovered above the table.

Play Clip? [YES / NO]

No one touched it.

Elder Vran stared at it.

"You said… he blacked out?"

Selene nodded, her voice quieter now.

"Yes, sir."

Kaedran looked up from his folded hands, his eyes cold.

"And what we're about to see?"

Selene hesitated. Then:

"…Is what happened after he blacked out."

The room went still.

One of the elders—silent until now—finally said, "Play it."

As the feed began loading, the screen faded to black.

[End of Chapter 11]