Andy didn't sleep for two nights.
He lay next to Kaila in the dark, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling like it held answers. She slept curled up beside him, breath warm, body healing from the wounds in Sector 3.
He watched her.
Counted every inhale. Every twitch of her fingers.
Skate still pulsed in her chest.
And every time it did, he felt his heart tighten.
Not in fear.
In craving.
Scene: The Quiet Room
The storage closet was cold.
The same place he'd hidden the bio-fragment. The same place he bled before.
Now he sat on the floor. Shirtless. Skin pale in the flickering light.
The corrupted Spinat was in a syringe. Half-black, half-red, glowing like an angry nerve.
He held it in his hand.
Shaking.
"You said I wasn't enough," he whispered. "But I'm still here."
The room said nothing.
He looked down at the needle.
"You love her more than I ever could. So maybe... maybe if I become you…"
He didn't finish the sentence.
He jammed the syringe into his arm.
And everything went white.
Scene: The Spiral
Andy screamed.
Not out loud. Not with his mouth.
His mind screamed.
Skate's echo roared through his skull, but it wasn't Skate.
It was something else.
Something darker. Like Skate's corpse left in a well, muttering forgotten prayers.
He saw visions.
Kaila — glowing, smiling, and then melting.
Harper — holding a gun to his head and crying.
Alaric — dissecting him while laughing, saying "We were right to leave you."
He saw Xin — not yet arrived, not yet real — punching through his chest.
Andy clutched his head, blood running from his nose. From his ears.
The wall pulsed like skin. The mirror in front of him warped.
In it, his reflection grinned back.
His eyes were glowing.
Scene: The Hallway
The next morning, Kaila woke up to an empty bed.
She searched the base.
Found Andy in the kitchen, arms wrapped in gauze. Smiling like he'd just woken from a dream.
"Where were you?"
He smiled.
"Just needed some time. Needed to think."
"You look... pale."
"I'm better now. I get it."
"Get what?"
Andy stepped closer.
"I understand what Skate really is. It's not power. It's love in its final form. The kind that never dies. The kind that doesn't ask permission."
Kaila took a step back.
"Andy... what did you do?"
"I made us equal."
She froze.
He smiled wider.
"I'm not gonna lose you now."
Scene: Blood on Glass
Later, Harper found the old mirror near the back hall shattered.
Blood smeared across it like a fingerprint trying to become a face.
Under it, someone had carved words into the metal frame with a knife.
"LOVE DOESN'T NEED CONSENT"