ADAM POV
The silence in the beach house was heavier than Lyra's gravity had ever been. It wasn't just the absence of sound; it was the absence of the man we thought we knew. Father—the Doctor—was in the kitchen, the rhythmic clink of a glass against the faucet the only proof he still existed in the same physical plane as us.
I knelt on the floor, the shattered remains of the living room window crunching beneath my boots. Eve was sitting on a crate, his head slumped. The Black Impulse that usually crackled around him like a wildfire had retreated, leaving him looking smaller, younger.
"Hold still," I said. My voice sounded foreign to my own ears—hollow, like the wind through a cave.
I took a damp cloth and reached for the gash on Eve's shoulder, the one where the "Cold Light" had muted his skin. He winced, a sharp intake of breath hissed through his teeth.
"I can do it myself," Eve muttered, though he didn't pull away.
"You can't even lift your left arm, Eve. Don't be a fool."
I began to wipe away the blood and the residual white frost. As I worked, I watched the way the salt-crusted skin began to knit back together under the influence of my Divine Light. Usually, I would find the biology of it fascinating—the way the cells divided, the efficiency of the healing process. But tonight, all I could see was the math.
Calculated. That was the word Father had used.
He hadn't fought Lyra out of a desire to protect us. At least, that's not how it felt. He had fought her because she was an anomaly in his equation. He had moved her like a piece on a board.
"Adam," Eve whispered, his eyes darting toward the kitchen door. "Did you see his eyes? When he caught the blade?"
"I saw them," I replied, my fingers steady as I applied pressure to a deeper cut.
"He looked... like you," Eve said. He looked up at me, his gaze searching. "Not the 'good kid' version of you. The version of you that talks about the mice in the field. He looked like he was bored, Adam. Like Lyra was just a bug he had to flick away."
I stopped moving. The cloth in my hand was stained a dark, messy red. I looked at the blood—human fluid, iron and salt—and then I looked at my own hands.
"He said I inherited my logic from him," I said, the words feeling like stones in my throat. "He called it a curse."
"Is it?" Eve asked. For the first time, the bratty, arrogant brother was gone. He looked genuinely afraid. "If you become like him... if you become that cold... will you still be my brother? Or will I just be another 'variable' you've solved?"
I looked at Eve. I saw the fear in his pupils, the slight tremor in his chin. Logically, he was my secondary unit, a biological counterpart designed to balance my energy. But as I looked at him, I felt a strange, jagged friction in my chest. It wasn't logic. It was a pressure that didn't fit into any equation.
"You aren't a variable, Eve," I said, though I wasn't sure if I was lying to him or myself.
I finished cleaning the wound and stood up. I looked toward the kitchen. I could see Father's silhouette against the moonlight—still, distant, and terrifyingly perfect. He had reached the Pinnacle. He had become the "Constant."
And in doing so, he had lost the ability to be a father. He had traded his humanity for a Golden throne of absolute certainty.
"I won't be like him," I whispered, more to the shadows than to Eve. "I'll find a different way to solve the equation."
But as I picked up the broom to start sweeping the glass, my mind was already running the numbers. I was analyzing Father's footwork, the frequency of his Golden Lattice, the way he had manipulated Lyra's nervous system. I was learning. I was evolving.
I was becoming a masterpiece.
"Eve," I said, not looking back. "Go get some rest. We leave at dawn."
"Adam?"
"Go," I commanded. My voice had slipped back into that cold, tectonic register.
Eve hesitated, then stood and walked away, his boots dragging on the floorboards. I stayed in the dark, sweeping the glass into neat, orderly piles.
One pile for the broken windows. One pile for the shattered pride.
I looked at the Golden glow still faintly radiating from the kitchen door. Father was right about one thing: the logic was a curse. Because now that I had seen the Pinnacle, I knew exactly how far I had to climb to surpass it.
And I knew that on that mountain, there was only room for one Constant.