From a distance, HelixCorp looked almost beautiful.
That was the lie.
Steel spires rose from the land like polished fangs, their surfaces alive with slow, pulsing veins of stolen Eden-light. Walkways arced between towers in elegant curves, shield-fields shimmering faintly as they bent moonlight around themselves. Drones moved in lazy, confident patterns, tracing the perimeter like predators that had never learned fear.
Standing on the ridge above it, I felt the Echo recoil.
Not scream.
Withdraw.
"This place hurts," Neris whispered.
"Yes," I replied. "That means it's working exactly as intended."
We lay prone in the tall, luminous grass, watching the complex breathe. Every structure hummed with purpose. Every light was deliberate. This was not a fortress built in panic.
It was built In certainty.
Orion knelt beside me, eyes already unfocused.
"I can get in," he said quietly. "But I'll have to split myself."
Zara stiffened. "How much?"
"Enough," he replied.
No one liked that answer.
Orion exhaled slowly, deliberately, the way Mara had taught him. His spirit horse lowered its head beside him, light dimming in shared understanding.
Then Orion reached inward.
I felt it through the Echo — a careful partitioning, like a river sending part of itself down a narrow tributary. His body remained kneeling beside us, breathing, eyes half-lidded.
And from his shadow, something slipped free.
A small spirit-creature formed — no larger than a rat, shaped of soft, silver-gray light. It had too many joints, too many ways to bend, its eyes bright with Orion's awareness.
"Can you hear me?" Orion asked aloud.
"Yes," I said. "Both of you."
The creature twitched its whiskers.
"Then I'm going," Orion whispered.
It ran.
The ventilation shaft was old.
Abandoned.
HelixCorp had built newer systems atop it, never bothering to seal what they believed Eden itself had already swallowed. The spirit-creature flowed through grates and bends impossible for flesh, clinging to walls, slipping through seams where steel plates didn't quite agree.
Through Orion, we saw.
White corridors.
Harsh lighting.
Air scrubbers humming with mechanical indifference.
No spirits.
Not even echoes of them.
Null-fields pressed in on the spirit-creature like deep water, but it persisted, guided by Orion's will and something else — a pull, faint but unmistakable.
Lyra.
The creature dropped silently from a ceiling vent into a long detention corridor.
Cells lined the walls.
Transparent containment fields shimmered faintly, each tuned to a different resonance. Children sat or lay inside them — some sleeping, some staring blankly, some pacing like caged sparks.
Then Orion saw her.
Lyra stood alone in her cell, wrists and ankles bound by thin bands of black metal etched with pulsing sigils. Cables ran from them into the wall, siphoning her fire before it could form. Her skin glowed faintly beneath the suppression, like embers buried under ash.
She looked smaller.
Angrier.
Alive.
Orion's breath hitched — both here and there.
"I see her," he said aloud. "She's… she's standing. They didn't break her."
Relief nearly dropped me to my knees.
"Lyra," Orion whispered — and the spirit-creature chirred softly.
Her head snapped up.
She scanned the corridor, eyes narrowing.
"Orion?" she said quietly.
"I'm here," he replied. "Not like before. But I'm here."
Her lips trembled once — then firmed.
"Took you long enough," she muttered.
I felt Orion smile through the Echo.
The spirit-creature scuttled closer, hugging the edge of the null-field where suppression weakened just enough for magic to breathe.
"Your bindings," Orion said softly. "They're draining you."
"I noticed," Lyra replied dryly. "Can you cut them?"
"Not fully," he said. "But I can confuse them."
The creature extended thin tendrils of light, sliding them along the sigils etched into the bands. Orion didn't force anything — he listened, feeling how the energy flowed, where it resisted, where it hesitated.
Then he plucked one thread.
The bands flickered.
Lyra gasped sharply as warmth surged back into her hands.
Not fire.
Not yet.
But potential.
"Enough?" Orion asked.
She flexed her fingers. A faint glow danced along her knuckles.
"It'll do," she said. "I'll save the rest."
That was my daughter.
Orion did not linger.
The spirit-creature slipped onward, following the thrum of centralized power deeper into the complex. He passed labs where Eden-creatures floated in suspension, their lights dimmed but not extinguished. Passed technicians who never looked down, too absorbed in data to notice a ghost at their feet.
Finally, the control room.
A circular chamber wrapped in holographic displays, security feeds cycling endlessly. One human sat inside — bored, distracted, utterly unprepared for what brushed past his shadow.
Orion acted quickly.
He did not destroy.
He misaligned.
He shifted timing protocols by milliseconds. Introduced contradictory signals. Looped door permissions just long enough to matter.
"Now," Orion said aloud. "Side access door. East wing. You have a window."
Zara was already moving.
"Pick him up," she ordered.
They lifted Orion's body carefully, settling him onto his spirit horse as the rest of us followed low and fast, slipping down the ridge toward the complex's shadowed edge.
The side door was there — exactly where Orion said it would be.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the lock clicked.
We slipped inside.
As the door sealed behind us, Orion's spirit-creature dissolved, its light flowing back into him in a soft rush. He gasped, eyes snapping fully open.
"I'm back," he said hoarsely. "But not for long. They'll notice."
I placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You did more than enough," I said.
Ahead of us, HelixCorp waited — corridors of steel, cages of light, and a truth it was not ready to face.
We moved as one.
Quiet.
Determined.
And for the first time since the children were taken…
We were inside the monster's ribs.