Zane passed out from the excessive stress on his mental and physical state. He's leaning on the Quartz pillar with Elias in his arms.
The silence in the grotto was absolute, a heavy, velvet weight that pressed against the eardrums. The only light came from the dim, dying glow of the chemical sticks, casting long, dancing shadows against the lead-lined walls.
Zane sat slumped against the base of the central quartz pillar, his head tilted back against the cold stone. His breathing was so slow it was nearly imperceptible, a side effect of the Void he was still instinctively maintaining even in unconsciousness. Elias lay curled in his lap, her head resting against his sternum, her small form rising and falling in a rhythmic harmony with the man who had just swallowed a star to save her.
Lyra knelt beside them, her hands trembling as she checked Zane's pulse. It was a rhythmic, sluggish thud—one beat every twelve seconds.
"He's freezing, Kaelen," she whispered, her voice hitching. "His core temperature is dropping too fast. If he stays like this, the 'Knot' won't just hide him; it'll stop him for good."
Kaelen stood over them, his golden eyes scanning the darkness of the ceiling. He could still feel the phantom vibration of the Resonance Array sweeping the mountain peaks far above. "We can't warm him. Not yet. Any thermal spike right now would be like a flare in the dark. The Facility is still listening."
He looked down at the pair—the Subject Zero and the Prime Conduit, bound together by a silver thread of stolen energy.
"He's carrying the Tag now," Kaelen murmured, more to himself than to Lyra. "It's buried in his marrow. As long as he stays in this state of near-death, the signal is trapped. But the second he wakes up, the second his blood starts to move..."
"Then we don't let him wake up fully," Lyra said, her eyes flashing with a sudden, fierce determination. She repositioned herself, sitting cross-legged in the shallow water of the pool and pulling Zane's frozen hands into her own. "I'll stay in the Medium. I'll keep his temperature just high enough to keep his heart beating, but low enough to keep the Tag suppressed. I'll be his thermostat."
Kaelen hesitated, then nodded. "It will drain you, Lyra. You'll be fighting his own biological urges to wake up and heal."
"I don't care," she snapped, closing her eyes and beginning to channel the mineral-rich water around them, creating a gentle, circulating shroud of warmth that clung only to their skin, masking the heat from the air.
Inside Zane's mind, there was no grotto.
He was standing in a hallway of infinite white—the Facility. But it was distorted, the walls melting into silver static that hummed with the same frequency as the Resonance Array.
"Subject Zero," a voice echoed. It wasn't the cold, machine-hiss of the Specter. It was cultured, calm, and terrifyingly familiar. Dr. Alden. "You were always the most interesting failure. So much potential for rage, yet you choose the silence of a grave."
Zane tried to move, but his limbs felt like they were made of lead. He looked down at his hands; they were translucent, glowing with the jagged silver strobe he had taken from Elias.
"You think you've hidden her," the voice continued, sounding closer now, as if Alden were standing right behind his shoulder. "But you've only brought the needle closer to the nerve. Every time your heart beats, you whisper to me. I can hear the shape of your fear, Zane. I can feel the girl's pulse through your own."
In the dream, Zane saw a door at the end of the hall. It pulsed with a soft, blue light—Elias's light. He tried to run toward it, to protect it, but the silver static crawled up his legs, pinning him to the floor.
"Sleep, little wolf," Alden whispered. "Hold the silence. It only makes the eventual scream that much sweeter."
Hours passed. The Sanctuary remained in total blackout.
Up in the command center, Liam watched the seismic monitors. He saw the "pings" of the Resonance Array hitting the mountain—vast, psychic ripples that made the needles on his instruments dance. But the "Source" they had been tracking—the signal from Elias—was gone.
"They're confused," Liam whispered to a scout. "They had a lock, and now they're hunting a ghost."
But his relief was short-lived. On the long-range thermal scanners, a series of pinpricks appeared at the base of the mountain. Drop-pods.
The Facility wasn't going to wait for a signal. If they couldn't find the needle in the haystack, they were going to start taking the haystack apart, piece by piece.
Back in the grotto, Zane's finger twitched. A single, jagged spark of silver light flickered beneath the skin of his throat, gone in an instant, but enough to make the water around Lyra's hands hiss.
The "Void" was holding, but the prisoner inside was starting to dream. And in those dreams, the Facility was already knocking on the door.
Zane seemed physically and mentally distressed and Lyra noticed it.
Lyra's breath hitched as she felt the sudden, violent tremor ripple through Zane's frame. Beneath her palms, his skin—previously like cooling marble—was suddenly burning in localized patches. The silver spark at his throat hadn't just flickered; it had left a faint, singed mark on his skin.
"Kaelen!" Lyra's voice was sharp with a rising panic. "He's spiking! It's not just a dream—the Tag is reacting to something."
Kaelen was at their side in a heartbeat. He didn't use his golden light; he relied on his raw, sensory attunement to kinetic vibrations. He placed his hand a few inches above Zane's chest, sensing the chaotic swirl of energy within.
"His subconscious is fighting the Void," Kaelen hissed, his brow furrowed in concentration. "Alden's Resonance Array isn't just a sonar ping anymore; they've switched to a low-frequency carrier wave. They're 'broadcasting' to the Tag. They're trying to wake the cell up from the outside."
Zane's head thrashed once against the quartz pillar, a low, guttural moan escaping his lips. In his mind, the white hallway of the Facility was cracking, the silver static turning into jagged shards of glass that sliced at his translucent form.
"Lyra, listen to me," Kaelen commanded, his voice a low, steady anchor. "You can't just be a thermostat anymore. You have to be a dampener. Reach into the water in his system—his blood, his cellular fluid. You need to find the silver frequency and smother it. Don't fight it with heat; fight it with inertia."
"I... I've never gone that deep," Lyra whispered, her eyes wide with the weight of the task. To manipulate the water inside someone else's body with that much precision was a master-level feat, one that risked internal hemorrhaging if she slipped.
"You have to," Kaelen said, looking toward the ceiling as a distant, muffled thoom echoed through the mountain. The drop-pods had landed. The physical breach was beginning. "If his heart rate hits eighty beats per minute, that Tag will flare bright enough to be seen from orbit. They'll drop a kinetic penetrator right on our heads."
Lyra took a deep breath, her wolf ears pinning back against her head in intense focus. She leaned forward until her forehead pressed against Zane's.
"Zane," she whispered, her voice a psychic thread cast into the white storm of his mind. "Stay in the dark. Don't look at the door. Look at the water. Follow the deep current."
In the white hallway, Zane heard her. The silver shards slowed their descent. The cultured voice of Dr. Alden distorted, sounding like it was being dragged underwater.
Lyra? Zane's thought was a fragile thing.
I'm here. We're in the grotto. You're the Sinkhole, remember? Sink deeper, Zane. Let the silver go cold.
In the physical world, Lyra's hands began to glow with a soft, pulsing violet light. The water in the pool responded, rising in thin, capillary-like tendrils that began to weave around Zane and Elias, forming a living cocoon of heavy water. She wasn't just masking his heat now; she was creating a pressurized, kinetic buffer that absorbed the Resonance Array's carrier wave before it could reach his marrow.
Zane's breathing slowed. The silver strobe beneath his skin dimmed to a dull, leaden grey. The localized heat faded, replaced by the uniform, artificial chill of the Void.
"It's working," Kaelen breathed, though his expression remained grim.
"How long?" Lyra rasped, the effort of maintaining such a high-precision shroud already carving lines of exhaustion into her face.
"As long as it takes," Kaelen replied. He stood up, looking at the heavy copper doors of the grotto. "Liam just reported the first breach team is at the primary airlock. They aren't using explosives; they're using molecular cutters. They're trying to be quiet too."
Kaelen reached into his belt and pulled out a small, obsidian-colored stone—a Kinetic Relay. "I have to go to the upper levels. I can't leave the defense entirely to the Sentinels. They don't know how to fight Specters."
He looked back at the three of them—the broken boy, the sleeping child, and the girl holding them both together.
"If the door opens and it isn't me," Kaelen said, his voice as cold as the mountain stone, "you take Elias and you go through the sub-level drainage pipe. It leads to the underground river. It's a death trap for anyone who isn't a hydrokinetic, but it's the only path they can't track."
Lyra nodded once, her eyes never leaving Zane's face. She was the heartbeat now. She was the silence.
As Kaelen vanished into the shadows of the exit, the mountain groaned again—a physical shudder this time. The Facility was no longer just knocking; they were starting to tear the mountain apart.
Inside the Void, Zane drifted. He was no longer in the white hallway. He was in the deep, dark water of the grotto, floating in a space where Dr. Alden's voice couldn't reach. But even there, in the perfect silence, he could feel a new vibration.
Not a ping. Not a wave.
Steps. Footsteps, vibrating through the quartz pillar he leaned against. Someone was in the sub-levels. And they weren't moving like a soldier. They were moving with the heavy, rhythmic thud of something built, not born.
Zane's eyes didn't open, but a single tear of frozen blood escaped his closed lid.
They're here, he thought, the message vibrating through the water to Lyra. They're in the walls.