Selene did not bother with protocol.
The corridors blurred as she moved, boots striking stone with enough force to set dormant wards trembling in her wake. She tore through layers of security that would have stopped anyone else, her authority overriding locks before they could fully engage, her presence bending systems that recognized her not as a visitor but as something written into their hierarchy.
By the time she reached the containment wing, the headquarters was no longer pretending nothing was wrong.
Low-level alerts whispered through the structure, subtle and controlled, the kind meant to avoid panic while summoning those who understood exactly how bad things had already become. Sigils along the walls flickered between stable and strained, reacting not to an external threat but to something resonating from within.
From her.
Selene skidded to a halt outside the reinforced chamber, breath sharp, senses flaring as the pressure hit her full-on. The air vibrated, humming with restrained force, and she could feel the girl's presence like a storm compressed into a single point, furious, terrified, and unmistakably alive.
"Open it," Selene snapped.
There was a pause, barely a heartbeat.
"My lady," came a controlled voice from the system, carefully neutral. "Containment protocols are active. Entering the chamber may—"
Selene's eyes narrowed, she did not know what was speaking to her, only that it was connected to the girl and she did not care much.
"Open it now."
The girl's body glowed brighter, releasing a wave of energy that crashed against the wards that hesitated, then yielded.
The door slid aside and the heat hit her like a wall.
Inside, the room was barely holding together. Cracks laced the stone floor beneath the girl's knees, light spilling through them in pulsing veins that matched the frantic rhythm of her core. Energy shackles burned bright as they strained to keep her in place, their constructs screaming under the load as suppression algorithms cycled faster and faster, compensating for a power they had never been designed to handle.
The girl was suspended half off the ground now, back arched, restraints digging into glowing skin as her scream tore through the chamber, raw enough to make Selene's chest tighten painfully.
And her eyes, when she saw them, Selene froze.
They were not just glowing, it felt as though something else was watching as well.
Something layered behind reality, peering out through her as if her body were a window that had finally been forced open. The sigils rotating in her gaze were not random patterns but sequences, old and deliberate, turning with the slow certainty of mechanisms older than the city itself.
"Enough," Selene said, her voice cutting through the chaos with command honed by years of battle and blood. "Disengage suppression. Now."
Alarms spiked instantly.
[WARNING: CORE DESTABILIZATION IMMINENT.]
[SUPPRESSION REQUIRED TO PREVENT BREACH.]
"I said disengage," Selene repeated, stepping fully into the chamber, ignoring the way the air clawed at her skin. "You are hurting her."
[SUBJECT IS THE SOURCE OF THE BREACH.]
Selene's jaw clenched. "No. You're panicking because you don't understand what you are containing."
She moved closer, every instinct screaming at her to stop, to reassess, and bring more reinforcements, but she didn't. She reached the girl just as another surge ripped through her, the restraints flaring blindingly bright as the girl sobbed, the sound breaking halfway into another scream.
"Selene—" her voice cracked, eyes locking onto her at last, just for a moment. "It's—pulling—I can't—"
Selene grabbed her face, bare hands against burning light, grounding her with physical certainty despite the pain that flared up her arms.
"Listen to me," Selene said fiercely, forcing the girl's attention back into the room, back into herself. "You are here, whatever it is, it cannot get to you easily, you are not alone."
The energy surged again, but this time it faltered and the shackles groaned.
The rotating sigils in the girl's eyes stuttered, their motion slowing as her breathing hitched and then, slowly, painfully, began to follow Selene's.
"There is nothing beneath you," Selene continued, voice low and relentless. "Nothing above you that gets to claim you without your consent. Whatever you are seeing, whatever is calling to you, it does not own you."
For the first time since the visions began, the girl's core responded not with resistance, but hesitation.
The glow dimmed slightly.
Just enough.
The system reacted immediately.
[OPPORTUNITY DETECTED.]
[FORCED SEALING INITIATED.]
"No," Selene snarled, spinning toward the wall as new sigils flared violently into existence, heavier, darker, meant to lock, not stabilize. "You will not seal her."
[SUBJECT EXCEEDS SAFE PARAMETERS.]
"Then your parameters are wrong," Selene shot back.
She turned back just in time to see the girl gasp as the new sigils began to descend, pressing down on her presence like a lid slamming shut. Panic surged again within her, wild and desperate, her body thrashing against the restraints as the eyes within her vision widened, not surprised, but eager.
Something was waiting for this.
Selene acted without thinking.
She reached into the girl's core with her own power, not forcefully, not trying to dominate, but aligning, the same way the arena had responded earlier. Her energy threaded into the girl's rhythm, steady and unyielding, giving her something to anchor to that was not fear or pain.
The reaction was immediate.
The descending sigils shattered mid-formation, exploding into harmless light as the room shook violently. The shackles flickered, then vanished, collapsing into fragments of energy that evaporated before they hit the floor.
The girl fell forward and Selene caught her, absorbing the impact as the glow finally receded, leaving scorched patterns etched faintly into the girl's skin before fading into nothing.
The chamber fell silent as the girl clung to Selene, shaking, breath ragged, eyes closed now, mercifully human once more.
Selene held her without hesitation, one arm wrapped firmly around her, the other braced against the cracked floor as she looked up slowly at the walls around them.
She could feel it now, the echo of whatever had looked through the girl had not been sealed.
It had been noticed.
And somewhere far beyond the city, beyond its wards and its contracts, something had shifted its attention fully toward them.
Selene tightened her grip, her expression hardening.
"This," she said quietly, to the system, to the city, to the unseen watchers beyond, "is exactly why I told them you were not an asset."
The girl stirred weakly against her chest, fingers curling into Selene's sleeve as if afraid she might disappear and for the first time since bringing her here, Selene understood the full scope of the mistake they had made.
They had not brought danger into the city, maybe... Just maybe they were triggering something that could not be controlled, something written in time.