Zane's eyes kept drifting towards Elias. For some odd reason, he felt uneasy. "Kaelen. Something's wrong." He couldn't tell what it was, but for some reason, something about Elias didn't sit right with him.
He decided to walk towards her. The heat in his body was slowly returning. "Elias? Are you okay?" He reached out a hand to her.
As Zane's hand hovered inches from Elias's skin, the air in the grotto didn't just turn cold—it turned hollow.
The moment his fingers made contact with her shoulder, a jolt of static electricity snapped between them, but it wasn't red or golden. It was a flickering, sickly gray. Zane recoiled, his heart—which he had worked so hard to silence—thundering against his ribs in a panicked burst.
"Kaelen!" Zane's voice cracked.
Elias didn't wake up. Instead, her body arched slightly, her small hands clenching into the fur blankets. Beneath her pale skin, her veins began to glow with a faint, rhythmic pulse, but it wasn't the fluid, blue light of her water affinity. It was a sharp, jagged strobe.
Kaelen was at the edge of the platform in an instant, his eyes wide. "Don't touch her again, Zane! Step back!"
"What is that?" Lyra gasped, wading out of the pool, her hair dripping and her face pale. "Is she having a seizure?"
"No," Kaelen whispered, his hand hovering over Elias as he scanned her energetic output. His face went grim. "It's a Harmonic Tag. The Specter didn't just try to kill her in the infirmary... it marked her."
The strobe beneath Elias's skin accelerated. It was a beacon, buried deep within her biological frequency, vibrating at a pitch that Zane could feel in his very marrow. It was designed to bypass the lead, the quartz, and even the dampeners. It wasn't a signal being sent out; it was a receiver waiting for a ping.
"The Resonance Array," Zane realized, his voice trembling with a mixture of fear and growing rage. "They aren't looking for the mountain. They're looking for the 'mark' they left on her."
Suddenly, the mountain groaned. It wasn't the sound of shifting stone or wind; it was a deep, psychic vibration that hummed through the quartz pillars. The first 'ping' of the Facility's Resonance Array had hit the Sanctuary.
Elias's body reacted violently to the frequency. Her eyes snapped open, but they were devoid of pupils, filled entirely with a shimmering, silver light. A low, distorted hum began to vibrate from her throat, perfectly matching the frequency of the mountain's groan.
"She's acting as a relay!" Kaelen roared over the growing hum. "She's amplifying their signal! Lyra, help me drown it out! Zane, you have to use the Void—not on yourself, but on her!"
Zane looked at the terrified, glowing girl. To use the Void on Elias meant pulling the heat and life-force out of her body, potentially stopping the signal, but also risking her life.
"I can't!" Zane shouted. "I'll kill her!"
"If you don't, the next ping will triangulate this room exactly!" Kaelen countered, his golden light flaring as he tried to erect a kinetic shield around the platform. "The Specter was the needle, Zane! She is the thread! Pull it out!"
The hum in the room grew deafening, the water in the pool beginning to vibrate into a fine mist. Elias's small form began to lift off the stone platform, suspended by the sheer pressure of the resonance.
Zane looked at Lyra, who was already channeling every drop of the pool's water into a swirling, pressurized sphere around Elias, trying to create a physical and energetic baffle.
Zane starts to spiral, his head pounding, his breathing slowly increasing in speed, rapidly coming in harsh, shallow and raspy gasps.
His pupils dilated as the full weight of the situation sinks in.
His thoughts drift to first meeting Elias, how he didn't care what happened to her after he'd escape, using her like a tool. Then he remembers the fear when she first got kidnapped, the immediate panic that set in and the protectiveness he felt when getting her back.
He couldn't do it.
The old Zane would've done it in a heartbeat, without a second thought. Anything to keep from being discovered. But it's different now. He couldn't bear the thought of anything permanent happening to Elias. She's like a little sister to him. The first thing closest to a real bond he's had in years.
"I...I can't....I can't I can't I can't I can't. I can't do it." He can barely get the words out with how bad his breathing has gotten.
The hum of the mountain intensified, a thrumming frequency that seemed to vibrate the very cells of Zane's body. The mist rising from the pool began to glow with the same sickly silver light emanating from Elias's eyes. She was no longer a child; she had been turned into a biological antenna, a homing beacon screaming their location to the sky.
Zane's vision tunneled. The sound of his own pulse was a deafening roar, competing with the psychic groan of the Facility's Resonance Array. Every gasp of air he took felt like swallowing jagged glass.
"Zane! Look at me!" Lyra's voice was a distant anchor, barely audible over the vibration. She was straining, her arms outstretched as she maintained the water sphere around Elias, her face slick with sweat and spray. "You aren't killing her! You're isolating her! Think of the water—think of how I hold you!"
But Zane couldn't hear her. He was trapped in the frantic rhythm of his own panic. His hands were shaking, the crimson energy flickering at his fingertips like a dying candle.
"I can't!" he choked out, collapsing to his knees on the wet stone. "If I slip... if I pull too hard... I'll snuff her out! Kaelen, please, use your light, use anything else!"
"My power is external, Zane!" Kaelen shouted, his kinetic shield rippling like a flag in a storm as the second 'ping' hit the mountain. The quartz pillars sang with a mournful, metallic frequency. "I can block the stone, but I can't reach inside her cells! Only a Subject Zero can interface with that frequency! You are the only one who can speak the same language as that mark!"
Elias's body arched further, a silent scream frozen on her face. The silver veins beneath her skin were beginning to fracture, the sheer power of the resonance tearing at her physical form.
Zane looked up, his blurred vision settling on her small, suspended hand. He remembered her voice in the infirmary: "Your heart... it sounded like a drum. It was the only thing I could hear."
He realized then that Elias wasn't just a relay; she was looking for a rhythm to follow. Right now, the only rhythm she had was the Facility's cold, mathematical pulse. If he didn't give her a different one, she would be shattered by the resonance.
"Zane," Lyra called out, her voice breaking. "She's dying. Look at her."
The panic in Zane's chest hit a crescendo and then, strangely, it snapped.
The image of the monster—the red-masked demon—flickered in his mind and was replaced by the memory of the grotto's stillness. He didn't need to be the monster to save her. He didn't even need to be the stone. He needed to be the Sinkhole.
He stood up, his movements suddenly fluid, the frantic gasping slowing into a deep, rhythmic draw. He stepped onto the platform, ignoring the static that bit at his skin.
"I'm not going to pull the life out of you, Elias," he whispered, though she couldn't hear him. "I'm going to pull the noise out."
He reached out and, instead of a frantic grab, he gently cupped her face with his hands.
The silver light flared, blindingly bright, as the Resonance Array sent its third, most powerful ping. The mountain didn't just groan; it shrieked.
Zane didn't flinch. He triggered the Void.
Instead of pulling his own heat into his marrow, he opened his energetic circuit and extended it to her. He visualized himself as a vast, empty cavern—a lightless depth that could swallow any sound. He began to suck the silver frequency into himself, using his blood as a conduit to drag the alien vibration out of her nervous system and into his own pressurized loop.
The agony was unlike anything he had ever felt. It felt like his veins were being filled with liquid mercury. The silver light began to bleed from Elias's skin into his own, crawling up his arms like glowing parasites.
"ERASURE!" Kaelen commanded. "Now, Zane! Sink it!"
Zane roared, a sound of pure, concentrated will. He took the silver noise he had stripped from Elias and slammed it into the Knot at the center of his chest. He collapsed his internal pressure, crushing the silver signal into the same biological sinkhole he had used to mask his heartbeat.
He became a black hole.
The light in Elias's eyes vanished. Her body went limp, falling forward into his arms. The silver veins in Zane's arms dimmed and died, buried under the sheer weight of his suppressed vitality.
The hum in the room stopped instantly. The mist fell back into the pool. The quartz pillars went silent.
Zane slumped back against the stone, clutching Elias to his chest. He was freezing, his skin a deathly grey, his heart beating once every ten seconds. He had swallowed the beacon.
"Did... did it work?" Lyra whispered, her water sphere splashing back into the pool as she scrambled toward them.
Kaelen stood at the edge of the platform, his eyes scanning the psychic ether. He waited for a fourth ping. One minute passed. Two.
"The mountain is dark," Kaelen finally said, his voice thick with relief. "The array... it lost the lock. It's sweeping the range now, but it's blind. You silenced the thread, Zane."
Zane looked down at Elias. She was breathing—shallow, but her eyes were closed in a natural, peaceful sleep. The jagged strobe beneath her skin was gone.
"I have it," Zane croaked, his voice barely a breath. "The mark. It's inside me now."
Kaelen's expression shifted from relief to grim realization. "It is. And as long as you stay in the Void, it stays buried. But the moment you lose control, Zane... the moment you 'light up' again... the Facility will have a direct line to your soul."
Zane leaned his head back against the cold quartz, his arms still wrapped protectively around the girl who was more than a tool, more than a subject. He was the Protector, but now, he was also the prisoner of his own silence.
"Then I guess," Zane whispered, his eyes closing, "I stay dark."