The room had settled into something just shy of silence. Nova laid back on her bedroll, arms behind her head, staring at the uneven ceiling.
"I keep waiting for this place to feel normal."
Caelus, still seated near the door, gave a quiet grunt. "Define normal."
"Somewhere I don't instinctively plan my exits."
Calyx didn't look up. "Then redefine your baseline. This is normal. For us."
Nova smirked. "That's bleak."
"It's accurate," Caelus said. "And it's why we're still alive."
Calyx adjusted the angle of her seated posture slightly - subtle, deliberate. "There is no normal down here. Only tolerated discomfort. That's the design."
The quarters were simple - stone and salvaged paneling, dimly lit by a single overhead fixture with a faint yellow cast. Three bedrolls had been laid out with military precision, along with a water basin and a rusted ventilation shaft that hummed faintly. No outlets or external interface ports were anywhere to be seen.
Caelus ran a quick sweep of the room with his eyes. "No surveillance nodes in plain sight. Doesn't mean they're not listening."
Calyx paced once along the perimeter, her body relaxed but her mind clearly active. Her bodies lie inactive in a corner, in what could only described as the sitting version of the fetal position. "One of the panels was recently reinstalled. Slightly newer weld pattern. I'd wager it hides a sensor coil, passive thermal, maybe biometric. Low threat. High observation."
Nova sat down on the edge of her bedroll and unlaced her boots. "They want to know how we sleep."
"Or who doesn't," Calyx said dryly.
A short silence followed. Not hostile, just heavy. Residual tension still lingered from the ceremony, the chief's warning, and the long walk through a city made from patchwork faith and buried command codes.
Caelus stayed near the door, arms crossed, leaning without resting. "You two can rest. I'll stay on watch."
"I do not require rest." Calyx reminded him.
"I do," Nova muttered, dropping onto the mat. "And I've never wanted to more."
Calyx approached slowly and knelt beside Nova's mat, her posture precise. "We're being studied. The children in the hallways. The drone watching us. The chief's delay - it's not hesitation. It's pattern recognition. They're profiling us."
Nova nodded. "They know we're a variable they can't exactly predict."
"Or control," Caelus added.
Calyx's eyes tracked the ceiling, then returned to Nova. "We're not the first Ascendents to pass through here. But we might be the first they didn't immediately neutralize."
Nova blinked at that. "You're sure?"
"Not yet. But with time, I will be."
A silence fell again.
Outside, faint music still drifted in through the ventilation - distant drums and low chants, rhythmic and strange. A new song from the celebration. A lullaby for people raised on caution.
Caelus sat, finally. Eyes closed - not to rest, but to listen.
Nova exhaled through her nose. "It kinda feels like even the walls don't want us here. Like they can hear us too."
"They can," Calyx replied. "The acoustics were shaped for containment. Conversation is a luxury here, not a freedom."
Caelus glanced toward the door. "Then maybe we should stop talking." He was sure of it now... they were being watched. Somewhere outside that room, someone was already making a decision about what came next. The moment shattered just before silence could settle fully.
The door creaked open.
No one moved at first - Caelus opened one eye, Calyx's posture adjusted by a single degree. Nova was half-asleep, her breath just beginning to slow. Then the shape lunged through the doorway. Fast. Trained. Focused.
The attacker hit Calyx squarely in the chest, driving her back into a wall with a grunt and a flurry of limbs. Hands wrapped around her throat—thin cord, fibersteel thread. A garrote.
Calyx didn't resist.
Her eyes opened slowly. She blinked at him.
The attacker snarled and pulled tighter.
Calyx's voice, level: "You appear confused."
The man hesitated, his hands trembling.
"I don't breathe."
She stood straight up. Effortlessly. The attacker rose with her - still clinging, still trying.
Then she plucked him off her shoulders like static from a coat.
Caelus was already on his feet, plasma rifle drawn.
Nova lifted her arms in defense but froze when a voice snapped from the doorway.
"Stop!"
The same escort from before. Breathless. Hands raised. "Please, don't kill him."
Calyx held the attacker by the collar, dangling. "He attempted to strangle me."
"I know." The escort said. "He's one of ours - a zealot. He thought he was defending us. He's wrong. I'll deal with it. Just let him go."
Caelus narrowed his eyes. "And why should we trust you?"
"Because if you kill him, they'll find out, and this whole place will turn on you before sunrise. This community - " he swallowed, just once, " - it's held together with belief, not logic. If they see this as an attack, there's no talking after that. No trust. No way forward. Please, I can't explain everything here - just... let this go for now?"
Nova kept her palms trained on the zealot. Her heart was thudding, not from fear, but from the sudden clarity of danger in a place that had claimed peace. Caelus didn't move. His weapon was still drawn, arms tense, eyes sharp as glass. Calyx looked down at the would-be assassin dangling from her grip. "He came here with intent. Not curiosity. Intent."
Nova's eyes flicked to Caelus, who gave her the slightest nod. Your call.
She lowered her weapon.
Calyx waited half a breath longer, then let go. The zealot dropped to the floor, coughing, hand going instinctively to his neck. He scrambled backward, wide-eyed, and the escort placed himself between them like a shield.
Nova exhaled. "You'd better be right about this."
"I am," he said quietly. "And I'll prove it. Just not here. Not yet."
Calyx stepped forward, her voice flat. "If he comes near me again, I will disassemble him. Politely. But entirely."
"Understood."
The escort turned to the zealot. "Go. Now. Say nothing. Not a word to anyone."
The man hesitated - then nodded and fled down the corridor. A long silence followed. Caelus returned his rifle to its place with a soft click. "You just bought yourself a very expensive conversation."
"I know." He glanced at Nova again. "Tomorrow?"
Nova met his gaze, then looked to the escort. "No. Tonight."
The escort nodded, then backed out of the room, hands still raised in a silent pact. "Out side this door, and to the left. Start down the path that develops. Follow the road until it dead ends at the reservoir. I'll be there."
When the door shut again, Nova sat down hard on the edge of the bedroll. She ran a hand through her hair. "Well," she muttered, "so much for a peaceful night."
Calyx resumed her place in the corner, this time, not closing her eyes.
Caelus didn't speak. He just stayed by the door. waiting.
"Before I meet with him, I'm going for a walk. I need to clear my head - and maybe gather some intel."
Caelus straightened. "You shouldn't go alone."
Nova gave him a tired smile. "I'll be careful. If they wanted me dead, they missed their shot."
Calyx didn't protest, only turned her attention inward, resuming one of her low-power monitoring loops.
"Besides," Nova added, pulling on her coat, "if they are watching, maybe it's time they saw something unpredictable." She left them in silence.
Outside, the village at night was different. Quieter, yes, save for the distant celebration, but not entirely idle.
As she moved through the narrow corridors and stone-cut walkways, Nova began to notice patterns beneath the surface. Things she hadn't registered in the ceremony's chaos or the tight confines of their quarters. There weren't just homes here. There were defensive structures.
Discreetly integrated into the walls were narrow firing slits and reinforced gate valves. She passed a set of stacked crates that, when seen from another angle, concealed a recessed weapon nest - angled perfectly for suppressive fire.
She moved slowly, eyes scanning. The terrain itself had been sculpted, not just for survival, but for combat. Pathways grew narrow, forcing any movement through chokepoints. Other sections widened into kill zones, natural bottlenecks flanked by elevated platforms she now recognized as tactical high ground.
What she'd assumed were structural supports bore magnetic rail anchors, defensive retrofit, cleverly camouflaged. Nova paused at the edge of a corridor and looked back the way she came. If this village turned on them, they wouldn't last long. The architecture wasn't incidental, it was deliberate. Measured. Wartime design built under the mask of tradition.
He wasn't lying, she thought. This isn't a refuge. It's a fortress.
She made her way deeper into the villages infrastructure, down a maintenance corridor with old Sovereign hazard markings barely visible beneath soot and time. At the end, past a locked grate she bypassed easily, was a hollowed-out chamber. It had once been a reservoir tank, now dry - ringed in scorched circuitry. The only light from within came from a repurposed signal lantern burned low at the center of someone' s feet. The escort was already there, waiting.
Nova stopped just within the edge of its glow. No weapons from what she could tell, Just the same rust-colored fabric and light armor plates he'd worn earlier - now looking more like ritual garb than tactical gear.
"You came," he said. His voice was softer than it had been when he'd stopped the attack. Less defensive. Almost relieved.
"I said I would." Nova folded her arms and studied him through the flickering lantern light. "You're either very brave or very stupid."
"Maybe both," he said with a small, humorless smile.
There was a pause, quiet but charged. Nova took a step closer, her voice low. "You stopped that man from killing us. Risked your place to speak to me. I'm here, but not for games. If you're going to say something, say it."
He nodded once, then knelt by the lantern, adjusting the fuel flow. It flared slightly, casting deeper shadows across his face.
He hesitated.
Then:
"The truth is," he said, "this is a remote line of defense for the Ravel Spoke. We're not refugees - we're... well, the enemy, Ascendent. We keep things out of the Spoke. Like you and your friends."
Nova didn't move. But her breath shortened, her gaze sharpening.
"You're Purists."
He nodded. "Not all of us in name anymore. But the system remains. The architecture. The ideology beneath the banners. The village was built as a checkpoint, a firewall. We were stationed here to watch the Dead Ring Sector and the Spoke within it, making sure no one went further. That's why we're here."
Nova frowned. "The Dead Ring sector was declared inhospitable decades ago."
"It is now, by design. It's where early AI was born, and where it died. Humanity nuked it off the map after the primitives went rogue. Left it scorched and irradiated - because we thought that was the only way to kill the mind we accidentally made."
He paced once, then turned back.
"Technology never lasts long in the Ring. The radiation eats signal like metal through acid. But the Purists saw it as holy ground. Proof that the machine could be broken. So we moved in. Built quiet homes in the static. From there, we could resist evolution. Resist the Sovereign. Resist your kind."
"But something was already there," Nova said.
He nodded slowly. "We didn't find it. We woke it up."
His voice dimmed, like he was trying not to trigger some buried reflex.
"And it wasn't just leftover code. It wasn't some ghost in a circuit. It was a sleeping, intelligent fragment of something huge. A conceptual machine. One that didn't need a mainframe to live. It spread through things. Through technology. Through signal residue. Sometimes even through dreams."
Nova swallowed hard. "You're talking about Echo."
"I don't even know if that name still fits," he said. "Whatever it is, it's not what it was. The Purists are wholly unequipped to deal with it. We sent in scouts. Whole cells. Some came back... different. One started speaking in Sovereign command codes. Another tried to blind herself with copper wiring, said the signals were trying to 'show her the shape of mercy.' One man repeated the same phrase until his tongue gave out: 'You're almost finished.'"
The phrase triggered something behind her thoughts, and Echo woke.
"Interesting," the voice said inside her, like silk sliding through wire. "That when I show them the truth... that's the part their minds remember. They do end up finished, yes. Their thoughts unraveling. Their bodies still. Their minds spent as fuel for our interaction. But it doesn't have to be this way."
He paused. "The Spoke is the key."
Nova blinked hard - but the room hadn't changed. Only her awareness. She was still in the chamber, still standing before the escort, but now she carried a second presence like a whisper stitched into the lining of her skull. The man kept speaking, unaware.
"We're losing the battle about as much as we're winning it. Every time we push back, it learns. Every time it expands, we entrench. This isn't war anymore - it's a recursive loop of ideology and fear. And I can't do it anymore."
Nova took a step closer, her voice low, half speaking to the escort, half to Echo. "What do you want?"
They both replied in unison. "I want out. I want truth. And I want to stop lying about what we are."
Nova looked at him for a long time, her expression unreadable. She took a breath, steadying her voice. "Then help us win this. Come with us." As if nothing had happened. As if she were still entirely her own. "Help us break the loop."
"Honestly?" He said, confidence building, "It was never really a question for me of if, but when. And when we do, there's no going back. Not for me. Not for any of us."
Nova nodded. "Then it's settled. Welcome to team Nova. I just...erm, need something to call you. A name perhaps?"
"Wait," he said. "If I do this... if I help you, you should know something first."
Unsure of what could possibly be next, Nova refused to blink.
"I don't believe in what you are," he continued. "Ascendents. The whole structure of engineered hierarchy. The idea that evolution is something to build instead of something to endure. I know our way isn't working, but that doesn't mean yours is right."
Nova raised an eyebrow. "I'm not asking you to believe in me. I'm asking if you're willing to finish what you started - whatever name it was under."
He gave a slow nod. "You're right. I guess. Above anything, I just want out."
She softened, just slightly. "Then you're coming with us."
He hesitated. "Alright. But... if we're doing this, I don't want to carry the old name into it. 'Daxion' never fit. It was a thing they called me. A uniform, not a person."
Nova tilted her head. "You could choose something else."
He gave her a sheepish look. "Perhaps... you could think of one for me?"
Before she could answer, two shadows stepped out from the far side of the chamber. Caelus emerged first, his expression unreadable. Calyx followed, poised and still.
Nova's brow lifted. "You followed me?"
"Security detail," Caelus said. "And because we knew you wouldn't want to explain this twice."
Calyx folded her arms. "I vote for Riven."
Daxion blinked. "Riven?"
"Split by ideology. Shaped by contradiction," Calyx said. "Broken open and filled with potential. It's accurate."
Caelus added, "Also sounds like someone who's survived more than he's admitted to yet."
Nova looked at him again, a quiet smile forming. "Riven. That work for you?"
The man nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, that works."
Calyx tilted her head. "Then it's settled. Riven it is."
Nova stepped closer to the group. "Alright, Riven. Welcome to the worst decision you've ever made."
Riven smiled. "At least this time, it's mine."
There was a beat of quiet after the naming. One of those rare silences that wasn't awkward, it just felt like a new shape forming in the room.
Then Caelus spoke, low and to the point.
"If we're doing this," he said, "we need to talk firepower."
Nova nodded. "Agreed."
Caelus glanced toward Riven. "So about this place, it's defensive capability. What kind of resistance are we expecting?"
"Depends on how quiet we are," Riven said, his voice already shifting - harder now, more tactical. "But if they even suspect we're trying to fire the gate, they'll lock down the central chamber. Drones, pressure-activated turrets, localized hardpoints."
"Crowd suppression tech?" Calyx asked.
Riven smirked. "More like insurgent response. They built this place to deal with invaders and uprisings."
Nova crossed her arms. "So... us."
"Exactly."
Caelus looked at Riven. "You said you don't believe in what we are. But what are you, in a fight?"
Riven didn't hesitate. "Gunslinger class. Light armor, high-output munitions. Satchel charges, breacher rounds, slug-fan scatter for tight hallways. I don't do subtle."
Nova blinked. "How the hell were you ever a Purist?"
"I was a necessary evil," he said. "They used me when things got messy. When words didn't work."
"Firepower." Caelus concluded.
Riven met her gaze. "Now I'm still messy. But I'm choosing my own targets."
Caelus raised an eyebrow. "Light armor?" His voice was skeptical but curious. "How do you throw yourself into the front lines wearing light armor?"
Riven smirked. "Easy. You don't get hit."
Caelus didn't blink.
Riven tapped the side of his chest plate. "Scattering field. Integrated into the armor mesh. It doesn't absorb fire, it redirects it. Deflects incoming rounds at sharp angles if they're glancing. Direct hits still hurt, but if I'm moving fast enough, it buys me time. Great for skirmishes, breach-and-burns, hit-and-run work."
Nova tilted her head. "So you're a high-mobility type."
"Yeah. Speed over soak. I'd rather move through the chaos than try to outlast it."
Calyx hummed. "Adaptive survivability. Unorthodox in these times. But not illogical."
Caelus gave a slow nod, clearly filing that information away. "That explains the confidence."
Riven shrugged. "It's not confidence. It's kinetic trust."
Nova blinked. "That's... almost poetic."
Riven chuckled. "I had to sell it somehow. The chief was never fond of the method."
Calyx gave the faintest twitch of a smile. "Acceptable."
Nova looked between them. "So we'll need you loaded then."
"I've got a locker built into the north garrison wall," Riven said. "Hidden behind a deactivated sensor node. I'll pull what I need and meet you at the conduit. You'll want your gear hot."
Caelus looked to Nova. "If they catch us with weapons drawn..."
"They'll kill us anyway," she said. "So we may as well be ready."
Riven gave a tight nod. "Give me one hour. And if I'm not there - go without me."
Nova frowned. "That's not how this works anymore."
He paused, surprised by the firmness in her tone.
"You're one of us now, Riven. You don't get to die alone."
He held her gaze for a second longer than he meant to. Then he nodded. "Copy that."
The words echoed longer than they should have, settling into the corners of the old reservoir like smoke. Caelus looked at her. Really looked. Not just at the conviction in her voice, or the steadiness of her stance - but at the shift. The belief. It was the first time he'd heard her say us and mean it.
For a man who had always stood apart - even among his own - there was something in that sentence that struck deeper than any rifle round. "Good line." he said quietly, almost to himself.
Nova turned to him. "Yeah?"
He gave the faintest nod, eyes still on her.
"Yeah. Reminds me why I followed you."
And for a second, just a second, the distance behind his eyes shrank. Not gone. But closer. Like the loop he'd been walking for years had just taken a new turn.