Chapter 17 – Echoes in the Veins
The med-bay smelled of antiseptic and static.
Machines hummed in the corners, sterile and steady, their blinking lights pretending that order still existed.
But the air—
the air carried something else.
A faint charge that crawled beneath the skin, like the breath of a storm waiting for the first strike.
Liora sat on the examination bed, her jacket folded neatly beside her, her thoughts anything but neat.
The white med-gown clung to her shoulders, paper-thin against the mark that pulsed like a secret heartbeat beneath her collarbone.
Every beat of it whispered the Rift's name.
Every throb reminded her that she was no longer entirely human.
The memory of the breach returned in flashes:
the violet ocean of light, the voice older than stars, the impossible choice.
Even now, the words coiled through her mind like smoke.
You returned to undo the end. But endings are doors. And doors must open.
She had come back to stop the apocalypse.
Instead, she'd become the key.
---
"Vital signs normal," the med-bot chirped, its voice cheerful enough to be cruel.
"Elevated cortisol. Mild cellular resonance detected. Recommend further scans."
Commander Seryn's boots clicked against the polished floor as she entered.
Her silver eyes were as sharp as ever, though a faint shadow clung to the edges of her composure.
She dismissed the med-bot with a curt gesture and turned her attention fully to Liora.
"You contained the breach," Seryn said.
Not a question.
A statement laced with suspicion.
"I stabilized it," Liora replied carefully.
"Your soldiers bought me enough time."
Seryn's gaze flicked toward the faint glow beneath Liora's skin, where the mark pulsed like a second pulse.
"That light," she said softly.
"It wasn't there yesterday."
Liora forced herself to remain still.
"A side effect of containment exposure."
"Containment exposure doesn't rewrite DNA," Seryn said flatly.
"What are you not telling me?"
The question cut like a blade.
Liora met Seryn's eyes and lied with a steadiness that surprised even herself.
"Nothing that changes the mission."
The silence that followed was a taut wire ready to snap.
Finally, Seryn exhaled, the faintest hint of frustration cracking through her icy exterior.
"You're valuable, Kane," she said.
"Don't make me choose between protecting you and neutralizing you."
Then she turned and left, the door sliding shut with a hiss that felt far too final.
---
The instant she was gone, Aron emerged from the shadowed corner of the room, where he'd been leaning against the wall with all the subtlety of a cat waiting for the right moment to pounce.
"Neutralizing you," he repeated with a crooked grin.
"Well. That's one way to say I care."
Liora shot him a dry look.
"You were supposed to be waiting outside."
"And miss the part where Commander Ice-Queen basically threatened your life? Not a chance."
He stepped closer, his grin fading as his eyes settled on the faint glow of her mark.
"Liora," he said quietly.
"What's happening to you?"
She hesitated, fingers curling around the edge of the bed.
Aron wasn't Seryn.
He wasn't the Spiral.
He was… safe.
And yet the truth felt too dangerous to give away.
"It's… changing me," she admitted finally.
"The Rift. The shard. I can feel it under my skin. Like it's rewriting something I can't see."
Aron's jaw tightened.
"Then we need to figure out what it's turning you into."
Liora almost smiled at his stubborn certainty.
Always we.
Even when she tried to carry the burden alone.
---
A low chime interrupted them.
Her comm-link flashed with an encrypted signal—no name, only a single, spiraling icon.
The Black Spiral.
Liora's pulse quickened as she accepted the transmission.
The voice that emerged was calm, layered with faint distortion.
"You opened the door," it said.
"Good."
Liora stiffened.
"What do you want?"
"To guide," the voice replied.
"To warn. The Authority will not protect you from what comes next.
The Rift is awake. The next threshold is near."
"What threshold?" she demanded.
"The Convergence," the voice said.
"Three nights from now. Sector Nine.
Follow the pulse, or be consumed when the sky turns violet."
The signal cut out before she could respond, leaving only the faint hiss of dead air.
---
Aron frowned.
"They really know how to make a girl feel cozy, huh?"
"Sector Nine…" Liora whispered, her mind already spinning.
The name stirred memories of her first life—a sector long abandoned after a failed containment decades ago.
In her previous timeline, the Convergence had been the event that cracked the sky.
It had marked the beginning of the end.
Three nights.
The future was accelerating faster than she'd feared.
---
Later, when the med-bay released her, Liora returned to her quarters with Aron shadowing her like a restless echo.
The city outside her window gleamed with its usual artificial calm, but she no longer trusted the quiet.
She stood before the mirror, studying the faint lines of violet that now threaded beneath her skin, weaving outward from the mark like delicate circuitry.
The pattern pulsed softly, a rhythm that felt both alien and achingly familiar.
Her reflection looked back at her—
same face, same eyes—
and yet, not the same.
Something older stared out from behind the irises, something that belonged to both worlds at once.
A single thought rose unbidden, heavy as gravity:
What if stopping the apocalypse means becoming it?
---
A sudden knock at the door shattered the silence.
She opened it to find Kai standing there, his combat jacket damp with evening mist.
His eyes—storm-gray and unflinchingly direct—swept over her in a single, assessing glance.
"You weren't at training," he said quietly.
"They said you were in med."
"I'm fine," she replied, though the words felt fragile in the air.
Kai studied her for a long moment, then stepped closer, his voice dropping to a near whisper.
"You're changing."
It wasn't a question.
It was a truth spoken aloud.
Liora opened her mouth to deny it—
but the mark beneath her skin flared in response, glowing faintly in the dim light.
Kai's eyes widened.
He reached out, fingers hovering just above the glow, not quite touching.
"What… is this?"
Her breath caught.
This was the moment she had avoided since the day she returned.
The line between secrecy and survival.
Between keeping him safe and pushing him away.
She closed her eyes.
"It's the reason I came back," she said softly.
"The reason everything is about to change."
---
Far above the city, unseen by the human eye,
a thin ribbon of violet light threaded through the night sky,
curling like a promise that only one woman could hear.
The door is ready.
And this time,
the Rift was no longer waiting.
It was calling.