Dr. KWAME POV
The "hideout" wasn't a bunker or a laboratory. It was a weather-beaten beach house on the jagged edge of the Ivory Coast, perched on a cliff where the Atlantic spray rose high enough to coat the windows in salt. It had belonged to me long before the boys were even a thought in a petri dish.
I stood on the porch, watching the tide roll in. Adam was standing by the railing, his eyes fixed on the horizon as if he could see the curvature of the earth. Eve was inside, complaining about the lack of high-speed internet in "this graveyard."
The air suddenly turned heavy. The sound of the crashing waves didn't stop, but the vibration changed. The salt in the air began to crystallize mid-drop, turning into tiny, violet-tinted shards of glass.
"Adam, get your brother," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "Now."
Adam didn't ask why. He felt the shift. He was inside the house and back out with Eve in a heartbeat. Eve looked annoyed until he saw the color of the dust at my feet. It was turning purple.
"Well, Kwame," a voice rasped from the shadows of the overgrown sea grass. "You haven't changed. Still hiding in the damp, waiting for the world to forget you."
A woman stepped onto the gravel path. She was draped in scarred leather, a monolithic blade strapped to her back that looked like it had been forged in the heart of a dying star. Her eyes were a swirling, toxic violet—the kind of Purple Impulse that didn't just radiate power; it demanded submission.
"Lyra," I said, my hands tightening on the porch railing. "The Council must be desperate if they're letting you off your leash."
"The Council is terrified," Lyra replied, her gaze sliding past me to land on Adam and Eve. She tilted her head, her nostrils flaring as if she were catching their scent. "So these are the miracles. One smells like a funeral, the other like a cathedral. And both of them... they taste like the Harvest."
Eve stepped forward, his Black Impulse beginning to coil around his ankles like hungry snakes. "Who's the lady with the oversized butter knife, Dad? Another 'Sentinel' for the scrap heap?"
"No, Eve," I warned, stepping in front of him. "She isn't a Sentinel. She's a grave-robber. And unlike Vance, she won't hesitate to kill you just to see what color your blood is."
Lyra laughed—a dry, hacking sound. "I taught your father everything he knows about the 'Dark' side of the spectrum, boy. Before he was a doctor, he was a scavenger, just like me. We used to hunt the rifts together, didn't we, Kwame? Until you got soft. Until you decided to start 'playing God' instead of just surviving Him."
The boys looked at me, stunned. They had only ever known me as the scientist, the creator, the father. They didn't know about the years I spent in the Dead Zones, bleeding for every scrap of knowledge.
"That was a different life, Lyra," I said. "I found a way to create. You only ever found ways to consume."
"And look what you created," she said, her Purple Impulse suddenly surging. The gravel beneath her boots disintegrated into fine powder. "Two walking contradictions. Two cores that shouldn't exist. Do you have any idea what a Black-Divine hybrid core would do for my standing? I wouldn't just be 'The Exile' anymore. I'd be the one who owns the sky."
She reached back and gripped the hilt of her blade. The air hummed with a low, tectonic frequency that made my teeth ache.
"Adam! Eve! Defensive formation—Zero-Sigma!" I commanded.
"Zero-Sigma?" Eve muttered, his eyes wide. "That's the one for—"
"For a Pinnacle threat," Adam finished, his body instantly igniting with that terrifying mix of Divine Light and dark intent. "She's not here to talk, Eve. Look at her feet."
The ground wasn't just cracking; it was sinking. Lyra was increasing the localized gravity of the entire cliffside. She wasn't aiming for the boys yet—she was pinning the entire house to the earth so we couldn't flee.
"Kwame," Lyra said, her eyes locked onto mine with a twisted sort of nostalgia. "I'll give you one choice, for old time's sake. Walk away. Let me take the brats. I'll make the harvest quick. They won't even feel the void when I pull their cores."
"You were always bad at math, Lyra," I said, my Golden Impulse beginning to leak from my fingertips, forming a protective dome over the boys. "You think you're the predator here. But you've never seen a storm like the one I've spent fifteen years brewing."
Lyra's grin widened, revealing a row of sharp, white teeth. "Then let's see it. Let's see if your 'miracles' can handle a woman who's been eating gods for breakfast since you were still wearing a lab coat."
With a roar of violet energy, she drew the blade, and the entire cliffside groaned under the weight of her first strike.