The shelter was collapsing around us.
Screams echoed through the old train station as the Nullwave sphere pulsed erratically, each surge splitting the air with a scream of static and light. Sparks rained from the cracked ceiling like angry stars. Pipes groaned. Dust fell like ash.
And in the center of it all—Booker was convulsing.
His body arched, tendons tight beneath his skin, muscles seizing violently. A scream tore from his throat, raw and animal. His eyes rolled back, and black-red veins rippled beneath his skin like something trying to crawl out from inside him.
"Get back!" Chase yelled. "Everyone back!"
People scrambled to the far ends of the shelter. Maddie grabbed a small group of children and shoved them behind a reinforced wall. Rev knelt beside the pulsing sphere, trying to trace the waveform, but even he flinched with every burst of power. Jacob threw up a kinetic shield between us and the civilians, hands braced against the weight of the energy bleeding into the room.
But I couldn't move.
I was frozen—eyes locked on my brother.
The hum of the Nullwave grew deeper. Almost alive. It wasn't just a machine anymore. It was awake.
And I could feel it.
Feel the signature crawling through my skin.
The same signature I felt when I lost control back at the gas station.
The same power I felt when I injured him.
"Kaleb!" Maddie's voice cut through the chaos. "We have to stop it!"
I shook my head slowly. "No… I think this is why we came here."
"What?"
I stepped forward.
My chest felt like it was caving in, my power thrumming at the surface of my skin. The Nexus inside me stirred again, whispering in vibrations and pulses. Not words. Just hunger.
"He's dying," I said, voice low.
Booker screamed again—louder this time. His body levitated a few inches off the ground, like the weight of gravity had given up on him. His mouth opened wider than it should've. Light poured from his eyes.
"No," Chase said, backing away. "That's not death. That's conversion."
I knew he was right.
The blight inside Booker—whatever the Harbingers had done to him—wasn't just a virus. It was a seed. And now it was trying to bloom.
"I can't let it take him," I whispered.
And then I stepped into the storm.
The pulse hit me first—raw, unfiltered antimatter distortion. It was like stepping into a furnace of broken timelines and screaming atoms. My vision blurred. My blood boiled.
But I held on.
Booker's eyes locked with mine for a split second. Behind the pain, there was still something there. A flicker. A glimmer.
"Kaleb…" he rasped.
"I'm here."
I knelt beside him, hands trembling. His body radiated red-black energy that scorched the floor and cracked the walls. He was being overwritten.
The Nexus inside me knew what to do.
It surged upward, eager—like a predator unshackled.
I reached for him.
"Kaleb, stop!" Jacob shouted. "You don't know what that'll do!"
"I do," I said quietly.
And then I touched my brother's chest.
It felt like touching a live wire soaked in gasoline.
The energy ripped through me instantly, a thousand screams in a single breath. My hands sank into the vortex, absorbing wave after wave of toxic, foreign power. I felt it burrowing into me, latching onto every nerve like a parasite.
But I didn't let go.
I forced the energy inward, pulled it into myself like swallowing knives.
Every cell in my body screamed. My vision flashed with red. The shelter vanished for a moment, replaced by some warped mental plane of shifting, fractured landscapes. Time bled sideways. Memories that weren't mine flashed in front of me—images of torture, of Harbingers chanting, of Vesper whispering into Booker's ear while he slept.
Then… silence.
I opened my eyes.
Booker collapsed, breathing hard, his skin paling as the last of the blight left him. The glow in his veins dimmed. His eyes fluttered shut.
He was safe.
But I wasn't.
I stood, every breath shaking.
Something inside me had changed.
The Nexus wasn't quiet anymore.
It was laughing.
The lights in the shelter exploded.
All of them.
Then came the screams.
People fled deeper into the tunnels as shadows twisted unnaturally against the walls. My shadow didn't move like it used to. It stretched longer than it should've. It rose against the walls like smoke, and then… like a figure.
A mirror of me.
But wrong.
My skin tingled. My eyes itched. My reflection in the shattered metal wall nearby pulsed with dark veins and flickering embers.
Jacob stepped forward, hesitant. "Kaleb?"
I couldn't speak.
I didn't need to.
The air warped around me. The Nullwave sphere behind us detonated in a silent burst of light—disintegrating into ash midair.
Chase fell to one knee. "Oh my god…"
Maddie stared. Her face was pale. "Your energy… it's—Kaleb, what did you do?"
I turned toward them.
And for a brief moment, they all stepped back.
Not because I was threatening.
But because they didn't recognize me.
I wasn't glowing like before.
I was absorbing the light.
Sucking it into myself.
The Nexus had always amplified energy—but now it consumed it.
It was feeding off of reality itself.
I stumbled back, clutching my chest.
"No," I whispered. "This isn't what I wanted."
But the Nexus didn't care what I wanted.
Visions crashed into my mind like tidal waves. Cities burning. The world fractured. And at the center—me, crowned in shadow and power. My hands stretched outward, tearing satellites from orbit. My voice is cracking the sky. People kneeling in fear.
The Dark Nexus.
A thousand futures where I was no longer the answer, but the problem.
"Kaleb!" Rev grabbed my shoulder. "You need to ground yourself—right now!"
I tried.
I closed my eyes. Focused. Breathed.
It didn't work.
The power surged again.
The ground split beneath me.
"Back up!" Jacob shouted. He launched an energy blast into the ceiling to release pressure. Rubble crashed down as a distraction, but it didn't slow me.
The Nexus was awake now. And it was hungry.
The rest of the shelter evacuated.
Just the five of us remained—Rev, Maddie, Chase, Jacob, and Booker, barely conscious.
"What's the plan?" Maddie said, tension in her voice.
Rev's energy pulsed in his palms. "If he turns… we put him down. Hard."
"No," Maddie snapped. "He's still in there."
"Is he?" Chase asked. "Because I'm seeing quantum shadows. Energy is bleeding from places that don't exist yet. That's not Kaleb. That's something else."
Jacob stepped forward, expression torn. "I don't know what's happening in there, Kaleb… but you gotta fight it. You hear me? You fight it, or I will."
I lifted my head.
I saw all of them.
My team.
My friends.
My family.
And still, the Nexus whispered: They're just in the way. You know what you are.
A surge of power detonated from my chest—energy spiraling outward like a nova. Jacob threw up a shield. Rev hit the deck. Chase shielded Booker. Maddie screamed my name.
I hovered three inches off the ground.
And then I fell.
Back into myself.
Back into my skin.
The glow dimmed.
The pressure faded.
My knees hit the floor.
I breathed.
Once. Twice.
The whispers receded—just for a moment.
"Kaleb?" Maddie asked.
I nodded slowly. "I'm still me."
"For now," Chase muttered.
The damage was done.
Booker lay unconscious but alive.
The sphere was gone.
And in its place?
A silence deeper than anything we'd heard before.
I stared at my hands.
Something moved just beneath the surface of my skin—like a storm waiting to be unleashed.
The others gathered near me, watching.
No one said it.
But I saw it in their eyes.
The Kaleb who entered this shelter was not the one who had emerged.
I had taken something in… and it had taken something back.
Chrono's prophecy wasn't just a possibility now.
It was a countdown.
And we had just passed the halfway mark.