Eva woke to the smell of woodsmoke and the sound of wind. Not the sterile hum of the facility, nor the groans of a dying city, but a clean, cold wind hissing against glass. She opened her eyes.
She was lying on a musty, but dry, rug before a stone fireplace. A real fire crackled within, painting the room in dancing orange light. The room was part of an old, half-broken house. The ceiling sagged in one corner, showing exposed beams and a patch of twilight sky. The wallpaper was faded and peeled, depicting tiny, repeating flowers now stained with water and time. Snow was falling outside the grimy window, a soft, silent blanket covering a dead world in temporary white.
She sat up slowly. The hollow, wrong feeling was gone, replaced by a deep, pervasive ache and the quiet hum of her Prime biology maintaining baseline. She was whole. For now.
Across the room, sitting in a tattered armchair, was Maya. She was awake. Her eyes, both a normal, exhausted blue now, were fixed on the flames. A thick woolen blanket was wrapped tightly around her shoulders, but her mouth hung open just a bit, slack with a vacant, thousand-yard stare. She looked empty, a vessel recently occupied and now scrubbed clean, but fragile.
The door to another room opened, and Derek stepped in, carrying an armload of broken chair legs for the fire. He saw Eva awake and a relieved smile touched his face.
"You're up. How do you feel?"
"Alive," Eva said, her voice rough. "Where are we?"
"An old ranger's station, we think," Derek said, feeding a leg into the fire. "High in the mountains, miles from the facility. Jordan found it on scans. It's hidden, defensible. For now."
Leo clomped in from outside, brushing snow from his shoulders. "Perimeter's clear. For about five miles, it's just snow, trees, and quiet." He glanced at Maya, his expression unreadable. "How's Sleeping Beauty?"
"Awake," Eva said softly. "But not… here."
Jordan entered last. He moved differently. The hyper-efficient, robotic precision was softened. He walked to the fire and warmed his hands, his movements almost… human. When he spoke, his voice had lost its flat, digital cadence. It was lower, with a faint, gravelly texture, like a radio tuned slightly off-station.
"The statistical probability of immediate pursuit is low, given the blizzard conditions and the significant structural damage we inflicted on their primary ingress points," he said. He rubbed the back of his neck, where his hair still stubbornly stuck up in places. "But it is not zero. We require a plan."
The four of them—five, if you counted Maya's physical presence—gathered around the fire. The other survivors they'd freed were resting in the other room, a handful of hollow-eyed hybrids grateful for any sanctuary.
"First things first," Leo said, crossing his arms. "We're a mess. We need a leader. Someone to make the calls when the bullets fly or the universe starts unravelling." He looked pointedly at Wolfen, who was leaning in the shadows of the doorway to the kitchen, cleaning his nails with a sliver of Umbralite.
"Don't look at me," Wolfen said without looking up. "I'm not a 'leader.' I'm a… consultant. A very armed, very grumpy consultant. My advice is usually 'set it on fire' or 'leave it behind.' Not great for group morale."
"Then who?" Derek asked, looking around.
Jordan's newly humanized gaze settled on Eva. "You located us in the facility. You coordinated the secondary extraction. You faced the Superior directly. Your… condition… is stable, for now. The logical choice is Eva."
Eva blinked. "Me? No. I'm not… I just did what I had to."
"That's what a leader does, dummy," Leo said, but there was no bite to it. "You don't want it. That probably means you're the right person. The ones who want power are always the worst."
Derek nodded. "I trust you, Eva."
They all looked at her, even Maya's vacant eyes seemed to drift in her direction. The weight of it settled on her shoulders, heavier than any Umbralite. She thought of the calm Prime, the unchangeable constant. That wasn't a leader. That was a rock. But the woman who'd fought, who'd come back for Maya, who had fire in her blood… maybe she could be something else.
"Fine," Eva said, the word tasting of ash and responsibility. "Unwillingly. But fine."
"Good," Wolfen said, snapping the Umbralite sliver in two. "Now that the committee meeting is over, next agenda item: the elephant in the room. Or the maybe-god, maybe-monster in the armchair." He nodded at Maya.
A tense silence fell. Maya didn't react.
"We can't keep her," Leo said quietly. "You saw what she is. What she can become. She's a walking extinction event having a nervous breakdown. We have others to think about now." He gestured to the next room.
"We're not abandoning her," Eva said, her voice firm, leaving no room for argument. "We did that once. It's what broke her. She's one of us."
"She tried to eat you," Wolfen pointed out helpfully.
"She also saved us from the Superior," Derek countered. "There's still something of her in there. We have to try."
"Try what?" Leo demanded. "What's the plan? Group therapy? A hug? The next time she 'wakes up,' she might not stop at eating an Architect. She might decide this whole mountain range is too 'noisy.'"
"We contain the risk," Jordan said, his new voice thoughtful. "We do not abandon the asset. We find a way to communicate with the core consciousness, or at least predict the triggers for the transformation. We treat it as a tactical problem, not an emotional one."
Eva looked at Maya, at the blank face, the open mouth. The white dot in the black eye was gone. For now. "We protect her," Eva said, finalizing it. "We protect everyone from her, and we protect her from… whatever is hunting her from the inside. That's the mission."
The decision was made. It felt fragile, stupid, and absolutely necessary.
Wolfen pushed himself off the doorframe. "Well, since you've got it all figured out," he said, dusting his hands. "I'll be leaving tomorrow."
The statement hit like a physical blow.
"What?" Derek said.
"Leaving? To where?" Leo asked.
"To find my sister," Wolfen said, his tone casual, but his golden eyes were chips of hard amber. "The Architect wasn't bluffing. They know where she is. Which means they have her. Or had her. I'm going to find out which."
"We can help—" Eva began.
"You have a flock to shepherd," Wolfen interrupted, nodding at the group, at Maya. "And a mountain to hide in. My path is a solitary one. And frankly, you'd just slow me down."
He walked toward the front door, pulling it open. A flurry of snow swirled in.
"Wait—" Derek started.
"I'm hungry," Wolfen announced to no one in particular, stepping out into the white void. "Going to see if I can find a yeti. They're usually gristly, but in a stew…"
The door swung shut behind him, cutting off the rest of his sentence and leaving the four of them in the sudden, heavy quiet of the firelit room, the weight of leadership, the burden of their broken friend, and the absence of their most powerful ally settling around them like the falling snow.