She's standing in the middle of a snow-covered courtyard.
But the snow isn't cold. It's like ash. Falling slow, soft, until it coats her skin like dust.
She's barefoot again.
Wearing a white dress, stained at the hem with red. In front of her stands a single white flower growing from the ground.
She reaches for it and when her fingers brush the petals
The ground splits open beneath her.
She falls hard into the darkness.
But she doesn't hit the bottom.
Instead, she lands inside a room with mirrored walls but the reflections don't follow her. They show her crying and creaming.
She sees herself as a child, hooked to wires.
She spins around, heart pounding.
The mirrors begin to crack and shatter.
Glass cuts her skin, but she doesn't bleed.
From the far end of the dream, she hears her own voice, soft and cold.
"You feel too much. That's why you're weak."
Then a man appears.
Not as a person, as a shadow in her reflection, watching her from behind the glass.
He says nothing.
Just looks at her with those unreadable eyes.
And behind him...
There's someone else.
A child.
Sunday recognizes her instantly.
It's her at six years old. Hooked to tubes.
The child doesn't speak.
Just watches her.
As the dream crumbles and the room floods with light, Sunday hears a whisper in her own voice.
"If you feel, you'll die. Like her."
Sunday jolted awake. For a moment, she couldn't move and breathe.
Her hands were fisted in the sheets, nails buried in her palms. Blood beaded along the crescent-shaped marks.
She sat up fast, pushing the blanket away like it burned her.
She ran both hands down her face.
Hard.
Like she could scrub the dream off her skin.
She rose, bare feet hitting the cold floor.
She went to the sink, turned on the water, and let it run until it was ice-cold. Then she splashed it over her face. Again and again.
Until the shivering started.
Not from cold.
From memory.
She gripped the edge of the sink and stared at herself in the mirror.
The dreams were different now. It's changing.
Her dreams used to be loops. Like someone had pressed rewind and play too many times on the same flickering memory.
But this one had progressed. New details. New setting.
Her heart beat faster.
For the first time in years, the dream moved. Like a story picking up where it left off.
Sunday went back to her bed.
No hum. No breeze. No sunlight.
No Ares.
Her hand moved instinctively to the side of the bed, where the lava lamp still glowed faintly. Its colors had shifted over the last week, soft pinks and greens melting into each other.
She hadn't turned it off.
She'd been waiting for Ares to come back and laugh about it.
But it had been a week.
Seven days. No communication. No sarcastic messages. No loud entrance or bad jokes or smug grins.
Just silence.
And the dreams.
The lullaby still hummed at the edge of her mind.
She stood slowly.
Ares was late.
He was never late.
She kept going over what little she knew.
Unclaimed sector. Station 9-K. Passive surveillance.
No fixed duration.
Except none of it added up. Ares hated surveillance. He hated missions that didn't involve action.
So why did he accept this mission?
And if they weren't going to tell her what the mission was really about, she'd find out herself
If no one wanted to give her answers, she'd take them.
Sunday stepped into the Tactical Bay.
It was a wide, hidden space buried deep in the lower levels of the facility. Cold, fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting harsh shadows across the segmented training zones. Shooting lanes, sparring mats, obstacle rigs, and weapons disarm stations.
The air smelled faintly of gun oil, sweat, and rubber flooring. Every surface was designed for efficiency, for endurance, for war.
As soon as she stepped inside, a few heads turned.
The shift in energy was subtle but undeniable.
Conversations stalled mid-sentence. The crack of a fist hitting a pad stopped. Someone at the shooting range missed their mark, muttered a curse.
She kept walking.
Her shoes clicking softly against the floor, her pace unhurried, eyes forward. Not looking at anyone, yet fully aware of the attention that followed her.
One agent elbowed another.
"Is that—?"
"Yeah. That's her."
Sunday passed them without a glance, like the whispers didn't exist.
Her eyes flicked across the room. Agents sparred on the mats, grunted over grapples, shouted corrections across the disarm lanes. Others loaded rounds at the far end of the shooting range.
Sunday wasn't looking for just anyone.
She was looking for his people. The ones Ares used to train with, bicker with, drink too much coffee with in the early hours of deployment. People who might have slipped, even accidentally, about where he was headed.
Then she saw him.
Raziel.
Leaning against the shooting range, gloves half-on, wearing a cracked watch he refuses to fix, smirking like he always had a joke no one else heard. A tech-adjacent agent. He wasn't tight with Ares, but he liked knowing things he wasn't supposed to. Just useful enough.
She moved toward him with quiet purpose.
Raziel noticed her just as he was drying sweat from his brow. His eyes widened slightly. "Well, well. Look who clawed their way back from the grave."
Sunday leaned a shoulder against the railing beside him, ignoring his comment. "Rough match?"
He snorted. "Nah. Letting them win builds morale."
She gave a mild smirk. "Still pretending you're a benevolent god, I see."
"I have layers."
They stood in silence for a beat, watching the agents shift drills on the mat. Sunday let the moment hang, casual.
Then, smoothly, "Anyone interesting get shuffled out lately?"
Raziel shrugged, but she caught the flicker of recognition in his expression.
"Ares," he said after a second. "Supposed to run sim drills this week. Got pulled for something instead."
Sunday raised an eyebrow. Just enough to suggest curiosity, not concern. "Let me guess. Jungle drop, smuggling rings, overly dramatic extraction plan?"
Raziel chuckled. "No idea but I heard it's somewhere hot. Tropical. Real sweatbox. Probably regretting it already."
"South America?" she asked, voice casual.
He shook his head, distracted as he unwrapped the tape from his wrists. "Nah. Further. Pacific, maybe. Lot of water. You know like storms, unstable terrain, pissed-off locals."
That was enough.
Sunday kept her expression neutral.
Pacific region.
Humid terrain.
Unstable conditions.
Philippines.
So why hadn't Ares told her?
Sunday leaned against the nearby divider, watching Raziel silently.
Raziel stood at one of the shooting stalls, jaw tense, fingers fumbling with a half-loaded magazine. He raised his sidearm and fired twice. Both shots missed the target.
He tried again. Another click, another miss.
"You're consistent," she noted.
Raziel groaned. "Yeah, consistently terrible."
He tried to reload, but the mag slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor. He bent to retrieve it with an embarrassed mutter.
Sunday held out her hand. "Here."
He hesitated, then handed it over.
Without a word, she snapped the magazine into place and raised the weapon.
She fired the gun like it was muscle memory.
Center mass. Head. Throat. Heart. Left eye. Head again.
Six shots. Six hits.
Silence fell across the Tactical Bay.
A few agents stopped mid-combat. One guy actually lowered his weapon in disbelief.
Raziel stared. "Okay. That was rude."
Sunday handed the gun back like it weighed nothing.
"It was loaded wrong."
"Show-off," Raziel muttered, amusement in his voice.
She turned and started walking away.
The whispers were immediate.
One bold agent stepped forward, eyes still wide.
"You free later? I could use some one-on-one... target practice."
She glanced over her shoulder. "I don't babysit."
She exited the Tactical Bay without another word, leaving a trail of bruised egos and admiration.
She didn't head back to her quarters.
Not yet.
Her steps echoed down the corridor.
Dmitri lied.
She didn't know why. Not yet.
She'd been fed a story. Just enough truth to keep her still.
Station 9-K. Passive surveillance. Unclaimed sector.
Except Raziel just gave her a crack in the frame.
She thought of the silence that had replaced Ares' presence. The empty chair. The untouched coffee mug. The heat lamp she hadn't turned off because some stupid part of her was still waiting for him to walk through the door and start talking like no time had passed.
Seven days.
Seven days of nothing.
And dreams that felt more like memories.
Like someone was trying to dig her open from the inside out.
She remembered the voice from her dream, her voice.
"You feel too much. That's why you're weak."
But she wasn't weak.
And she was going to find out what he was hiding.
Even if it burned her alive.