The shelter pulsed with chaos.
Screams echoed from the corners. Lights flickered, failing against the flood of energy now radiating from the sphere. Sparks danced like fireflies. Dust spilled from the trembling ceiling. For a moment, it felt like the city above us had collapsed—but no. This came from within.
"Shut it down!" Jacob yelled, slamming his gauntlets together, readying a pulse.
"I can't!" Chase shouted back, his tablet struggling to keep up with the data streaming across it. "It's pulling energy from every line I cut—it's evolving!"
"Then cut the damn power to the shelter!"
"It's not just drawing power, it's creating it!"
The white pulse of the sphere deepened—turning red, then violet. That humming, metallic frequency returned, vibrating in my skull like the world was being unraveled, one atom at a time.
Everyone backed away.
Except me.
My body pulled forward—energy responding, resonating. The sphere called to me like a lost piece of myself.
"Kaleb—wait!" Maddie stepped forward.
I looked at her once, just long enough to silently say I had no choice.
Then I stepped in.
One breath.
One touch.
And the world cracked.
I was nowhere.
And everywhere.
The space around me was fragmented—a kaleidoscope of burning cities and frozen stars, spinning on impossible axes. It smelled like ozone and old memories. My heartbeat echoed like cannon fire.
Two figures stood at the center of it all.
One: a tattered silhouette wrapped in warped chronal threads.
Chrono.
The other: a mirror of me, twisted and crowned in obsidian-red energy, smirking like a god watching insects burn.
The Dark Nexus.
"You again," I said.
The other me tilted his head. "Still fighting the inevitable?"
"Still believing I'm not you."
"You are me," he said, stepping closer. "You're just earlier."
I turned to Chrono. "Is this your doing?"
Chrono didn't answer. Instead, he opened a rift in space, exposing another vision.
Aaliah.
Suspended in a lab not built by Sentinel or Harbingers—but something older. Her body arched in pain, tangled in wires and light. The same symbols I saw in earlier visions—ancient, shifting—carved across the walls around her.
She turned toward me.
"Kaleb," she whispered. Her voice cracked like glass. "It's not just them. It's me. They've linked me to something ancient. I can feel it… waking."
The illusion shattered.
I fell.
Back in the shelter, I gasped and hit the floor hard. My skin glowed with excess energy. Maddie was the first to my side, helping me sit up.
"You were out for five minutes," she whispered.
Across the room, Booker stirred.
His eyes were open.
And glowing.
"She's alive," he said softly. "Aaliah. I saw her. She's trying to hold it back."
"What is?" Rev asked.
I looked at them, my voice hollow. "Something buried beneath the city. A vault. A lab. I don't know exactly—but they're using Aaliah to power it. That sphere? It's a lock. One of many."
Chase's face was pale. "That's why it synced to you. It's not a weapon. It's a key."
"To what?" Jacob asked, already bracing himself.
"To me," I said. "And to whatever they buried inside Booker."
That's when the sphere exploded with light.
Not outward.
Inward.
Folding space into itself as a small rift cracked open in the far wall—silent, pulsing, impossibly cold.
From within it stepped a figure.
Towering. Hooded. Eyes like dim, dying stars behind a glass mask. Metal veins ran up his arms, and a slow ticking sound echoed with each step.
The Grand Calculus.
I didn't know how I knew.
But I knew.
Two Harbinger androids followed at his side, weapons drawn and glowing.
He tilted his head slightly, his voice like wind scraping across broken machines.
"You've seen the gate," he said. "Touched the echo. Good. Saves me the trouble of dragging it out of you."
Jacob took a step forward, arms raised. "Kaleb—"
"I know," I said. "We're not running this time."
Because behind the Grand Calculus… I could feel the thing inside me awaken.
And beneath our feet…
The lock had already begun to turn.