---
The sirens had stopped, but Zephyr still sounded like it was breathing through broken glass.
Steam hissed from ruptured conduits above the infirmary. The white panels that lined the ceiling flickered between sterile light and pulsing amber. In the corner, medical drones hovered uncertainly—unsure if they were tending to a man or a phenomenon.
Cael Drayen sat on the edge of the recovery cot, hands gripping the frame until the metal groaned. His pulseband still glowed faintly—two rings orbiting each other, their motion too precise to be mechanical.
"Vitals stabilizing," Mireen said, voice brittle from exhaustion. "No sign of neural collapse."
Then quieter: "At least not the kind we can measure."
Across the room, Commander Arden Lyss stood with arms folded, eyes unreadable. Her uniform was smeared with ash from the control chamber. Behind her, the observation window revealed the fractured skyline of Zephyr Base—tower spires jutting into a sky streaked by twin ribbons of light.
Cael finally spoke. "How long was I out?"
"Seventeen minutes," Mireen replied. "Long enough for the core to nearly melt through the containment ring. We had to reroute power through half the district."
"And the breach?"
"Sealed," Arden said. "At least visually. But the readings…" She exhaled sharply. "The sky didn't just tear, Drayen. It's bleeding resonance."
He looked out the window. The wound in the sky pulsed like a heartbeat, casting pale light across the city. It wasn't just illumination—it sang, a low, harmonic tremor that vibrated through glass and bone alike.
Cael's fingers brushed the pulseband again. It responded with a faint hum, the twin rings syncing with the rhythm above.
Arden noticed. "What happened in there?"
Cael hesitated. The truth felt like something fragile—too strange to survive spoken aloud.
"I saw her," he said finally.
Arden's jaw tensed. "Vance?"
He nodded. "She wasn't a projection. Not this time. She said we were… connected before. That they split us to stabilize something called the Collapse."
Mireen's eyes widened. "That's classified top-tier research. Only Central Command knows what the Collapse even was."
Arden didn't answer. Her gaze remained fixed on the sky. "And the other you?"
Cael blinked. "What?"
"The echo. The system replicated your frequency. Did it survive?"
He remembered the final moment—the echo's eyes softening, its hand pressed against his chest, the surge of light. "No," he said quietly. "It didn't survive. It merged."
For a long moment, no one spoke. The hum from the scar above filled the silence.
---
Hours later, Zephyr's upper decks were in lockdown. The Resonance pylons that powered the city had been rerouted into standby, their usual emerald light replaced by a flickering orange.
Cael walked the outer balcony alone. Below him, clouds churned like a slow ocean, reflecting the bleeding light from the heavens. The air tasted metallic, every breath tinged with static.
He tapped his comm. "Drayen, log report. Subject: Post-breach anomaly observation."
The device beeped, acknowledging.
"Visual distortion persists. The scar has expanded three percent in the last hour. Resonance interference affecting pulseband calibration. Secondary feedback loop—"
He stopped. A whisper threaded through the static.
> "You shouldn't be alone."
His breath caught. "Lyra?"
> "You're stabilizing faster than I expected."
Her voice came not from the comm, but from inside the pulseband—an echo carried on resonance, faint but unmistakable.
Cael lowered his wrist, staring at the glowing rings. "What are you?"
> "A memory that didn't fade. Or maybe… a frequency that found its way back."
He felt the world tilt slightly. "You're inside me."
> "No. I'm within the link. They built it to contain collapse—turns out it can hold ghosts, too."
He almost laughed, though it came out hollow. "You sound like yourself."
> "Maybe that's just what you need me to sound like."
The wind shifted. Clouds rolled across the city's underside, briefly revealing the mechanical lattice that kept Zephyr afloat. The pulseband vibrated again.
> "They'll come for you soon," she said softly. "They won't trust what came back from the breach."
He closed his eyes. "They shouldn't."
---
In the command observatory, Arden Lyss stood before a panoramic display of Zephyr's airspace. Red markers blinked across the grid—containment drones forming a perimeter around the sky-scar.
"Containment array holding," reported Lieutenant Reo Marvek. "But the resonance waves are unpredictable. Every time the scar pulses, it shifts the city's gravity balance by a few microns."
Arden nodded absently. Her mind was elsewhere—on Cael's words.
She said we were connected before.
She keyed a secure channel. "Lyss to Central Command. Priority Theta."
A pause, then a synthetic voice replied:
> "Authentication confirmed. State your inquiry."
"Project Collapse," Arden said. "I need full clearance files. Origin, participants, termination records."
> "Access restricted under Directive Eclipser-01. Violation will trigger containment protocol."
Arden's eyes narrowed. "You don't scare me with protocol."
> "This is not a threat, Commander. This is a reminder. The Collapse was not an event. It was a birth."
The channel cut.
Arden stared at the darkened console, heart pounding. "Birth of what?" she whispered.
---
Later that night, Zephyr slept uneasily. Aether lights flickered across the decks like fading stars.
Cael sat on the training platform, pulseblade beside him, staring at his reflection in the glass floor. His reflection shimmered strangely—as if the world beneath it were deeper than it should be.
> "You're not used to being whole," Lyra's voice murmured.
He exhaled. "Feels like there's more of me than there should be."
> "You merged with what was left behind. That part of you remembers everything."
"Then why don't I?"
> "Because memory isn't the same as acceptance."
Silence. Only the hum of the city above the clouds.
He looked at the sky again—at the wound leaking light. "Why is it expanding?"
> "Because the world's trying to remember too."
He frowned. "Remember what?"
> "That it was never supposed to be separate."
---
Mireen Solis entered quietly, a datapad tucked under her arm. "Couldn't sleep either?"
"Didn't try," Cael said.
She approached cautiously. "I ran some diagnostics on your pulseband. It's… evolving. The synchronization matrix is rewriting itself every few minutes."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning it's not following Zephyr's operating system anymore. It's running something else." She hesitated. "Lyra's code was written for resonance mapping. If her pattern's inside you, she could be rewriting the link to her own design."
Cael turned toward her, eyes sharp. "You think she's controlling me?"
"I think she's trying to keep you connected." Mireen's tone softened. "Whatever she is now, she's fighting to stay."
He looked down again, the twin rings pulsing in counterpoint to his heartbeat.
"Maybe that's what scares them most," he murmured.
---
At dawn, Zephyr's alarm grid ignited once more.
Mireen's voice echoed over the comms: "Commander, we're detecting movement inside the scar. Multiple resonance signatures!"
Arden strode to the main deck, eyes scanning the holographic feed. The wound in the sky was widening—its edges bleeding luminous threads into the atmosphere.
"What kind of movement?"
"Unknown. They're reading as human frequencies."
Arden's breath hitched. "You mean—"
"Yes, ma'am," Mireen said. "There are others in there."
---
On the outer balcony, Cael looked up as the sky split open once again.
The scar bled light—gold, violet, and white—spilling across Zephyr like falling stars. The city's stabilizers roared against the pressure.
Through the radiance, faint silhouettes drifted—figures forming from resonance mist, like fragments of forgotten lives being remembered all at once.
Cael raised his hand toward them, the pulseband glowing furiously. Lyra's voice was barely a whisper now.
> "They're waking up."
"Who?" he demanded.
> "The ones they erased to make us."
The light intensified, washing over him in waves.
Arden's voice echoed faintly through the comms: "All units—brace for Resonance Breach reformation!"
The sky answered with a sound like thunder breaking through time.
Cael's eyes reflected the twin suns as they flared above Zephyr—each bleeding into the other until the horizon itself began to collapse.
And amid the storm of light, Lyra's voice reached him one last time—steady, human, and real.
> "Don't let them forget us again."
Then the sky fell inward.