Kael hadn't slept. He couldn't.
The multiverse wasn't just theoretical anymore. It was bleeding into his world—through the sky, through a broken version of himself, and through a story that sounded like the plot of a movie… except it was all real.
He paced the lab while the man from Universe 9912 rested in a containment pod, stabilized with atmospheric filtration and neural dampeners. Reeva watched him through the reinforced glass, arms folded, lips tight.
"You okay?" she asked.
"No," Kael said. "I just met myself. From a destroyed universe. Who claims reality is coming undone. How do you even define 'okay' after that?"
She didn't answer. Neither of them could.
Kael turned back to the console. The data stream extracted from the visitor's suit was still decrypting, but pieces were becoming clear: schematics, chronometric displacement fields, multiversal drift vectors. Complex math—and worse—true math. It shouldn't work, but it did.
Suddenly, the room temperature dipped.
Reeva shivered. "Did the AC just—"
A hum filled the air. Low and resonant, like a pressure wave rolling through their bones. Lights flickered.
Kael turned sharply. "What was that?"
Reeva pointed toward the pod. The man inside was convulsing. His eyes snapped open—glowing now. The hum intensified.
Then, the glass shattered.
Kael threw himself in front of Reeva as shards blasted outward. Alarms screamed. The stranger stood in the center of the wreckage, hair raised, body vibrating with quantum energy.
But it wasn't him anymore.
A voice—distant and omnipresent—spoke from his lips.
"You shouldn't have brought him here."
Kael's blood ran cold. "Who are you?"
The stranger's eyes locked onto him. "I am the echo of broken timelines. I am the wound that remembers. I am the Architect's hand."
Reeva gasped. "Is he being possessed?"
Kael's mind raced. If the Architect could imprint himself across multiversal energy signatures, then proximity to a collapsed universe's survivor could act as a beacon.
They'd brought a virus into their world.
"Get back!" Kael yelled. He activated the emergency stasis net—an energy field that enveloped the possessed man. He screamed as the system locked him into suspension, the glow in his eyes dimming.
The hum stopped. The lights returned.
Kael stood over the sealed pod, breath ragged. "That wasn't him anymore."
Reeva whispered, "It was the Architect. A projection. Maybe even just a trace."
Kael nodded. "And now he knows where we are."
The rest of the downloaded data was suddenly unlocked, as if the interference had been keeping it encrypted.
One name flashed across the screen: Elara Vox.
Kael blinked. "I know that name. She vanished after the Dark Matter Crisis. Went rogue."
"She used to be part of Project Hyperion," Reeva said. "The last group that tried to map the multiverse."
Kael stared at the name. If anyone could help them survive this nightmare, it was her.
He clenched his jaw. "We find her. Before the Architect does."
Outside, thunder cracked—not from the clouds, but from somewhere deeper. Like reality was cracking again.
Time to move.