They didn't take Elias back to the same holding room.
This one was smaller. Darker.
The walls were plated with reinforced alloy, the kind used in containment bays rather than detention wings. No window to trick his sense of time. No clock to measure the hours. Just a cot welded to the wall, a bolted-down table, and the ever-watching red eye of a security camera humming softly in the corner.
The door had sealed behind him with such heavy finality that Elias almost swore the vibration echoed in his bones.
Commander Holt wasn't playing games anymore.
Hours bled into each other like spilled ink. Elias sat cross-legged with his back pressed to the cold wall, fingers steepled in thought. He refused to give Holt the satisfaction of seeing him pace like a caged animal. Still, beneath the mask of calm, frustration gnawed steadily at him, eating at his resolve with every passing second.
He had proven himself—twice now. He had demonstrated what the Core within him could do, had saved lives in front of witnesses, and Holt had data to confirm it. Yet still, Holt looked at him as if he were a bomb waiting to detonate.
He'll keep me here until it's too late.
The Core pulsed faintly in agreement, not with words but with a low vibration at the base of his mind, a reminder that it too was restless.
The hiss of the door startled him. Harsh light spilled in, cutting a wedge across the floor.
Lyra slipped inside like a shadow. She moved quickly, not sparing a glance at the camera until she had already tapped a small palm-sized device against the wall. The hum of the camera faltered. Its red light blinked, then dimmed to nothing.
Elias raised an eyebrow. "Jamming the feed?"
Her voice was a whisper, taut with urgency. "Two minutes." She cast a nervous glance at the sealed door.
"Risky," Elias murmured.
"Necessary." She knelt before him, datapad clutched against her chest as if it were something fragile. "What you did in the rig—no one could deny it. Holt's rattled. But that just makes him dangerous."
Elias gave a bitter smirk. "Tell me something I don't know."
Her dark eyes flicked over him, calculating, weighing. Then she leaned closer, lowering her voice. "I think you're telling the truth. About… feeling the anomalies. About stopping them. But if you keep letting Holt dictate the rules, he'll bury you under protocols until you're a ghost with a serial number. By the time you claw free, the war will already be lost."
There was fire in her tone, the kind that couldn't be faked.
Elias tilted his head, studying her. "And you're volunteering to help me cheat?"
Lyra hesitated. Something flickered across her face—conflict, guilt, maybe even fear. Then she steadied herself. "Let's just say I don't want to be caught flat-footed when the next Rift shows up. My father—" She stopped herself sharply, lips pressing into a line.
Elias filed that away. Her father mattered. Her father was leverage, or maybe a wound. Either way, it explained the edge in her voice.
"Alright," he said slowly, voice even. "So what do you suggest?"
She slid the datapad across the cold floor. The glow of its screen illuminated the confined space with pale light.
Elias bent over it, scanning lines of resonance curves, waveforms, and endless strings of time-stamped readings. His breath caught as the Core inside him stirred. The patterns were more than data—they were language. He could feel it tugging, aligning, whispering to him through instincts older than his memory.
"These aren't just fluctuations," he murmured, eyes narrowing. "They're signatures. Like fingerprints."
Lyra's breath hitched. "Signatures?"
He tapped the screen. "Every Rift carries its own unique pattern. And they're not random. Look—this spike here echoes that one three weeks earlier. And this harmonic resonates with another you marked in Sector 9. They're connected. Not accidents. Pieces of a larger design."
Her face went pale, a shadow of realization crossing her features. "Then this isn't a series of anomalies."
Elias exhaled slowly, the truth settling like a stone in his chest. "No. It's an invasion. The Rifts are doorways. Someone—or something—is opening them."
For a heartbeat, silence pressed between them, heavy and suffocating.
Lyra's hands trembled as she clutched her pad. "If that's true… Holt won't act until he has overwhelming proof. And by then—"
"It'll be too late," Elias finished.
The jamming device gave a faint beep, warning them of its fading cover.
Lyra's eyes hardened. She snatched the datapad back, hugging it against her chest again. "Then we get ahead of him. Quietly. Together."
Elias studied her. She wasn't naive, wasn't offering blind loyalty. This was pragmatism—an alliance of necessity. But she was willing to move against Holt, even in whispers. That made her dangerous. And invaluable.
"Deal," he said simply.
Her lips tightened in something like relief, though she gave no smile. She stood swiftly, reactivated the camera with a flick of her device, and glanced at him one last time.
"Stay alive, Kael," she said softly. "I'll find a way back in."
Then she was gone.
The silence rushed in again, heavier than before. The cell felt smaller, the air more recycled. Yet Elias no longer felt caged.
He had a key now—her.
And more importantly, proof that the Core wasn't just a weapon. It was a compass, pointing him toward the truth.
The next day, Holt made his move.
Two guards entered without speaking, their faces as unreadable as their visors. They shackled Elias's wrists in magnetic cuffs—cold metal that hummed faintly with suppressed current. His fingers tingled as the bonds locked, tiny pricks of electricity warning him not to resist.
The walk through the corridors was silent but suffocating. This wasn't the administrative wing he had been in before. The walls grew thicker, doors fewer, the air colder. Each checkpoint required coded clearance, soldiers in heavy armor confirming orders with clipped efficiency. Wherever Holt was taking him, it was deeper, more secure.
Finally, they arrived. The doors of the war-room slid open with a hydraulic groan.
Elias stepped into a chamber bristling with power. Rows of monitors covered the walls, each one alive with feeds—maps, Rift readings, encrypted communications. Around the long central table stood men and women in crisp uniforms and sterile lab coats, their faces carved from stone.
And at the head of it all stood Commander Holt.
His posture was military perfection, his voice clipped as ever. "Kael." He didn't waste time on greetings. "We're done with parlor tricks."
He gestured toward the table, where a set of restraints had been bolted down. "From now on, you'll operate under full military supervision. Every test, every anomaly, every breath you take—controlled."
Elias lifted his cuffed wrists slightly, letting the cold light catch on the metal. "So I'm your prisoner."
"No," Holt said, his gaze cutting like a blade. "You're our tool."
The words carried more weight than the humming machines. They echoed in the room, in the silence of the scientists, in the smirk tugging at one officer's lips.
Elias stared at Holt, calm on the outside but burning inside. A tool. That's all he would ever be to Holt. Something sharp to wield until it dulled, then discard.
But tools could break chains.
And with Lyra feeding him the pieces Holt didn't know he was missing, Elias would build something Holt couldn't hope to control.
Something the world would have to believe in—whether Holt allowed it or not.