---
The pier erupted into shouts and scrambling footsteps as everyone turned toward the voice. The floodlights flickered, struggling to recover from the first sniper hit, shadows stretching across the dock like spilled ink.
Mara whispered, stunned, "It can't be…"
But it was.
A figure stepped into partial view at the end of the pier, framed by broken light. Long coat. Confident stride. A rifle slung across one shoulder like it weighed nothing.
Serena Hale.
My former handler.
My mentor.
The one who vanished six months ago after a mission went bad—so bad the department listed her as KIA.
But there she was, alive, eyes sharp and fixed on the Messenger.
"Serena?" I breathed, disbelief cracking my voice.
She raised her rifle again and fired—clean, precise. Another of the Messenger's people dropped before they could react.
"Move!" she barked. "Both of you!"
Mara broke free from her captors in the confusion, delivering a vicious elbow to one of them before sprinting toward Serena. I tried to push myself upright, but the earlier pulse had scrambled my balance. My vision swam.
Serena saw me faltering and didn't hesitate—she sprinted forward, firing as she moved.
The Messenger ducked behind a cargo crate, pulling Kade with him. "Secure the detective!" he shouted.
Two men lunged for me. Serena closed the distance, cracked one across the skull with her rifle's stock, and dragged me to my feet.
"You always were a magnet for trouble," she muttered, half-laughing, half-furious.
I stared at her. "You're supposed to be dead."
She smirked. "So are you if you don't move."
She hauled me toward cover just as a hail of stun rounds peppered the pier.
Mara slid behind another crate, breathless. "Serena, how—where have you—"
"No time," Serena snapped, shoving a backup pistol into my hand. "You want answers? Survive first."
Shots cracked. The Messenger stepped out again—calm, composed, unshaken.
"Kade," he ordered, "retrieve the detective."
Kade obeyed instantly.
He moved like a machine—no hesitation, no recognition in his eyes. He was faster than before, stronger, like someone had reprogrammed the instincts right out of him.
Serena cursed. "He's been mapped."
"Mapped?" I asked.
"Mind override protocol. Illegal. Off-books," Serena said. "Someone's resurrecting the old lighthouse project."
Mara's eyes widened. "I thought that was dismantled years ago."
"It was," Serena said. "Or so we were told."
Kade leapt over a crate, landing directly in our path.
Mara raised her weapon. "Kade, don't—"
He backhanded it out of her grasp with inhuman force.
I stepped between them, heart hammering. "Kade, listen to me. You know me. You know us."
For a split second—just a flicker—his expression shifted. A glitch. A crack.
"Detective—" he whispered.
Then the Messenger shouted:
"Override. Directive Seven."
Kade's pupils dilated. His jaw clenched. The flicker vanished.
His hands closed around my throat.
Serena fired—not at him, but at the ground near his feet. The wood splintered, forcing him to step back. Mara tackled him from the side, but he flung her off like she weighed nothing.
"Serena," I gasped, rubbing my throat, "can you stop him?"
She chambered a new round. "Only one way to stop a mapped operative."
I froze.
"No. Not him."
Her eyes hardened—not cold, just honest. "Then you'd better think of another option fast."
Kade charged.
I raised my pistol—but not at him.
At the humming metal case they'd opened earlier.
The relay interface.
If it was still linked… maybe I could use that.
Serena realized what I was aiming at. "Detective, don't—"
But it was too late.
I fired.
The bullet struck the device—
and the world tore open.
A blinding surge of energy exploded outward like a silent scream.
Everyone was thrown back.
Lights burst.
Metal warped.
The pier split with a thunderous crack.
When the blast finally died…
There was smoke.
Water rushing through broken planks.
Bodies scattered.
And Kade—
gone.
Mara coughed, pulling herself up. "Where… where is he?"
Serena stood slowly, scanning the wreckage with narrowed eyes.
"He's not gone," she said. "The relay didn't destroy him."
My stomach sank. "Then what did it do?"
Serena looked at me—grim, certain.
"It pulled him back inside."
She turned toward the dark silhouette of the lighthouse on the distant shoreline.
"And if we don't move fast… it's going to do the same to you."
---
Mara and I followed Serena through the narrow service road, our footsteps crunching over gravel and broken glass. Serena moved fast, checking corners, scanning rooftops—every gesture fluid, practiced. Like she'd never been gone.
But I barely registered the path ahead.
My mind was stuck on one impossible question:
How did Mara know Serena?
Mara, of all people.
Because everything I did know about Mara screamed that she shouldn't.
This was the same woman who'd spent years running with the Eclipse—one of the most dangerous underground networks in the city. Smugglers, intel thieves, blacksite brokers. A group we'd spent half our careers trying to dismantle.
Mara left them. Went rogue. Crawled her way into the legal world by shedding blood for both sides.
But a criminal knowing a cop like Serena Hale—especially Serena—wasn't something that made sense.
Not without something much bigger underneath.
I stopped walking.
"Mara," I said sharply, "start talking."
She froze for a moment, her breath fogging in the cold air.
Serena turned back, irritation flashing in her eyes. "We don't have time—"
"I don't care," I snapped. "She was Eclipse. You were IA and undercover ops. How the hell did you two cross paths?"
Mara's jaw tightened. She didn't look away this time.
"Because Serena was the one who got me out."
The words hit harder than the blast on the pier.
"You?" I said. "Serena got you out of Eclipse?"
Mara nodded. Slow. Heavy. Like each piece of truth weighed her down.
"I was sixteen," she said. "Eclipse didn't give me a choice. Serena did."
Serena's expression softened—not something you see often from someone built out of caution and steel.
"I was embedded in Eclipse operations back then," Serena said. "Low-level surveillance. I found Mara during a raid—starving, hurt, terrified, doing whatever they told her just to survive."
Mara swallowed. "I wasn't a criminal because I wanted to be. I was a kid with no way out. Serena… she gave me one."
Serena stepped closer. "And after I pulled her out, I trained her. Off the books. Gave her skills Eclipse couldn't use against her. Turned her into someone who could make her own choices."
I felt the ground shift under me—like everything I thought I knew about Mara was suddenly rewritten.
"You said you went rogue," I murmured.
Mara nodded. "I did. From them. Not from you." She hesitated. "I never told you because if anyone dug too deep into my past, I'd be thrown straight back into a cell—or worse."
Her voice cracked.
"And Serena told me hiding it was the only way I'd get a life that wasn't controlled by Eclipse or the department."
I opened my mouth, closed it, then opened it again.
Nothing came out.
Mara looked at me like she expected judgment—or worse, disgust. And maybe a small part of me felt betrayed. But a larger part saw something else:
A survivor.
A fighter.
Someone who'd been shaped by hell long before she ever chose to stand beside me.
Serena broke the silence.
"You can hate me for the secrets later," she said. "But right now, we have a bigger problem. Eclipse wasn't just a gang. It was a test bed."
"For what?" I asked.
Serena's eyes shifted toward the distant lighthouse, glowing faintly through the mist.
"For the same technology that took Kade."
My breath caught.
Mara whispered, haunted, "The relay."
Serena nodded.
"Eclipse didn't build it," she said.
"They stole it."
And suddenly… everything made sense.
Why Mara recognized the equipment.
Why she panicked when Kade was taken.
Why the relay responded to me.
Serena turned toward the shoreline again, voice grim.
---
The shoreline stretched out before us like a strip of shadow cut against the waves. The lighthouse stood at the far end, its pale beam sweeping across the water—slow, mechanical, indifferent to the chaos it had already caused.
Serena kept a brisk pace, glancing back only to make sure Mara and I were close. Mara walked beside me, her expression unreadable—guilt, anger, fear… all layered under that hardened calm she'd perfected after years on the run.
I still wasn't sure what to feel.
But I did know this: the secrets were done. Whatever awaited us inside that lighthouse wasn't just connected to Serena or Mara. It was tied to me. To Kade. To the entire nightmare unfolding beneath the city.
And we were walking straight into it.
We crossed the rocky incline leading up to the lighthouse's base. The air grew colder, heavy with the scent of salt and rust. The beam rotated overhead with a low hum, like a giant clock counting down something inevitable.
Serena signaled for us to stop behind an outcropping of jagged stone.
"Before we go in," she said, her voice low, "you need to understand what we're walking into."
Mara folded her arms. "We know the relay alters people. We saw what it did to Kade."
Serena shook her head. "No. What you saw was only the surface. The lighthouse was never designed as a simple interrogation site. It was built as a conduit."
"For information?" I asked.
"For people," Serena corrected. "For memory. Identity. Patterns of thought. The kind of data you can't store on a server or inside a chip."
She tapped her temple.
"You store it in minds."
My breath hitched. "You're saying the relay overwrites people by copying someone else into them?"
Serena exhaled. "Yes. But it's worse than that. It blends multiple cognitive maps into a single host—merging skills, memories, instincts. The perfect operative. Loyal. Predictable. Erased of anything inconvenient."
Mara's voice trembled. "That's… that's Eclipse tech. That was their dream."
"No," Serena said firmly. "That was the government's dream. Eclipse just stole the discarded designs."
The truth hung between us like a blade.
"So Kade…" I said quietly.
Serena nodded. "He's trapped inside the system with every other mind the relay ever took."
My jaw tightened. "And you think we can pull him out?"
"I think," Serena said, "if anyone can survive interfacing with that thing, it's you."
Mara looked at me sharply. "Why him?"
Serena answered without hesitation.
"Because he's the only one it couldn't map."
I stared at her. "You knew that? For how long?"
"Since the first time you worked a case with me," Serena said. "Your brain doesn't follow predicted pathways. You break patterns, instinctively. The relay can't model you—and it hates that."
It made sense in a way that terrified me.
The message.
The summons.
The device nearly being forced onto my head.
The system didn't just want me—it needed me.
To complete something.
Mara stepped closer, her voice softer than I'd heard it in a long time. "But if the relay can't map him… doesn't that mean it'll try to destroy him?"
Serena didn't answer immediately.
And that silence was enough.
Finally she said, "Once we're inside, stay close. If you get separated, the system will isolate you. Show you things that aren't real. Pull you into someone else's memories. And once that happens… you won't know what's yours anymore."
A chill ran down my spine.
"What about Kade?" I whispered.
Serena looked up at the lighthouse, her eyes narrowing against the rotating beam.
"Kade is alive. I can feel it. The relay didn't kill him—yet. It's using him. Feeding off him. Expanding."
She pulled a compact device from her coat—a jammer, improvised but powerful.
"We'll breach from the lower service entrance," she said. "You two stick behind me. No matter what you see, no matter what you hear—don't break formation."
Mara nodded. "We won't."
I swallowed, forcing the fear down into something manageable.
"Alright," I said. "Let's finish this."
Serena cracked the door to the lighthouse's base.
A blast of cold, recycled air spilled out—like the breath of something ancient and hungry.
Inside, the lights flickered.
And deep below, far beneath the lighthouse's foundation, something hummed to life.
Almost like it sensed us.
Serena whispered, "Welcome to the relay."
And we stepped inside.
Here you go—straight into the heart of the relay, no detours:
---
The metal stairwell spiraled downward for what felt like forever, the air growing colder and more artificial with each step. The walls shifted from concrete to steel, then steel to something smoother—like glass infused with circuitry, glowing faintly beneath the surface.
By the time we reached the bottom, my skin prickled with static.
Serena stopped at a sealed door marked only by a single symbol: a circle split clean down the middle, one half black, one half white.
"The relay core is through here," she whispered. "Once we enter, it's live. No buffers. No illusions filtered out. It will try to get inside your head."
She glanced at me.
"Stay anchored. Stay yourself."
My pulse hammered, but I nodded.
Serena keyed in the override code.
The door slid open—slow, heavy, deliberate.
The chamber beyond took my breath away.
It was enormous, cathedral-like, cylindrical and impossibly tall. The walls were embedded with thousands of suspended memory capsules—each flickering with shifting fragments of people's lives. Laughter. Cries. Faces. Entire moments pulsing like fireflies trapped in glass.
And in the center of the chamber…
…hovered the relay.
A smooth, obsidian sphere the size of a small car, suspended in midair by no visible support. Thin lines of blue-white neural light ran across its surface, mapping patterns like constellations.
It was alive.
Watching.
Listening.
And then—
It shifted.
Not physically, but mentally.
A pressure pushed against my mind from all directions at once—like a thousand whispers leaning in at the same time.
Mara staggered, clutching her head.
Serena braced herself against the railing.
But me…
I felt something else.
Recognition.
The relay pulsed.
And a voice—Kade's voice—whispered faintly inside my skull:
"You shouldn't have come here."
My breath froze.
"Kade?" I called out.
Serena hissed, "Don't engage directly—keep your thoughts contained—"
The sphere's lights intensified, swirling faster, bleeding into a dazzling storm of neural threads.
And then, the relay began projecting.
Not illusions—memories.
Kade's memories.
Flashes exploded across the chamber:
Kade strapped to the chair.
White-coated technicians adjusting the device above him.
His body jerking as the relay flooded him with foreign thoughts.
His voice, raw with fear:
"Please—stop—"
Mara cursed under her breath, stepping back. "It's showing us what it did to him."
"No," Serena said, her face pale. "It's showing him what it did. Over and over. It's cycling him."
The sphere pulsed harder, vibrating the entire floor.
A second voice echoed—this one deeper, mechanical, layered with countless tones:
"INCOMPLETE MAP DETECTED."
"SUBJECT 07 UNRESOLVED."
"NEW CANDIDATE PRESENT."
All the lights in the chamber turned toward me.
Serena grabbed my arm. "It's locking onto your neural pattern—fight it!"
But the relay's voice surged louder, resonating through my skull:
"COMMENCING INTEGRATION."
A beam of pure white shot from the sphere straight towards my head—
—and everything went silent.
For a split second, I wasn't in the chamber anymore.
I was standing in a memory that was not mine.
And yet the relay forced it into me:
A cold metal table.
A screaming man.
And a whisper:
"If you break the pattern, you break the system."
My vision snapped back into the chamber.
Serena was shouting something I couldn't hear over the rising pulse of the relay.
Mara was trying to pull me back.
But the beam held me in place.
And inside the sphere—
I saw him.
Kade.
Eyes open.
Terrified.
Reaching for me from within the neural storm.
"Get… me… out…"
---
The beam pinned me so hard my boots skidded against the metal floor. Every muscle locked, every nerve vibrated like a wire pulled to its breaking point.
Mara didn't wait.
"Serena—NOW!"
She lunged toward the nearest control panel, ripping out a bundle of cables with a violent twist. Sparks burst across the wall. The lights flickered, but the relay didn't release me.
Instead, it roared.
A deep, resonant rumble shook the entire chamber as if the sphere was furious—alive and furious.
Serena dropped her rifle, grabbed the emergency breaker handle on the wall, and wrenched it downward.
The room plunged into red emergency light.
The beam wavered.
Just enough for me to suck in a breath.
But not enough to break free.
"INTEGRATION PRIORITY ONE."
"ANCHOR THE SUBJECT."
More beams shot out of the sphere—scanning tendrils of white light whipping across the chamber like searching arms.
One streaked toward Mara.
"MARA—MOVE!"
She ducked, rolled, and slammed her shoulder against a metal pillar. The beam hit the floor where she'd been, melting the steel into a glowing crater.
Serena grabbed my face with both hands, forcing my eyes to focus on hers.
"Stay with me. Don't let it crawl into your head. You hear me?"
"I'm—trying—" My voice trembled between clenched teeth.
Another beam sliced through the air toward Serena. She spun, yanking out her sidearm, and fired three quick shots.
The bullets didn't damage the sphere—
—but they disrupted the light pattern around it.
The main beam jolted.
I stumbled and dropped to one knee.
Mara saw her opening.
She sprinted toward the relay with a metal rod she'd torn from the railing—pure desperation turned into a weapon. She swung with all her strength.
The rod hit the sphere dead-on.
A shockwave blasted outward.
Mara was thrown across the room, slamming into a console so hard the impact echoed like a gunshot.
"MARA!" I shouted.
She wasn't moving.
But the relay—
The sphere flickered violently, glitching, its perfect surface distorting like a corrupted screen.
Serena didn't hesitate.
"Get up!" she barked at me, shoving me toward the center platform. "We disable it from inside the chamber conduits. Move!"
I forced myself onto shaky legs.
Took two steps.
A metallic screech cut through the room as the floor panels split open. Robotic arms unfolded—sleek, segmented, blade-tipped, moving like predatory spiders.
The relay wasn't just defending itself.
It was activating its physical shell.
Serena fired into the nearest arm, sparks flying as she shouted: "You take the left conduit—I'll take the right! The core has three stabilizers—break them and we collapse the entire system!"
I sprinted toward the left conduit port, ducking under a slicing arc from one of the arms that shaved a clean line across the wall behind me.
The stabilizer node pulsed—a glowing column of energy feeding up into the sphere.
I grabbed a loose power coil and slammed it into the node.
The relay screamed.
The node cracked.
Light flared.
"One!" I shouted.
Serena kicked another arm away, dove toward the opposite stabilizer, and jammed her taser straight into the power interface. The surge overloaded the conduit; the column exploded in a spray of blue sparks.
"That's two!" she yelled.
But before she could move—
A robotic arm wrapped around her torso, lifted her clean off the floor, and pinned her against the wall. It tightened, crushing pressure forcing the air from her lungs.
"Serena!" I sprinted—
Another arm slammed down in front of me, blocking the path, inches from taking my head off.
The relay's voice thundered:
"FINAL STABILIZER PROTECTED."
"INTEGRATION PROCEEDING."
The third stabilizer—glowing deep red—was on the far end of the platform…
…right beside Mara's unconscious body.
The sphere was forcing me to choose:
The mission—
or Mara.
But I didn't hesitate.
I vaulted over the fallen railing, slid across the floor, and grabbed Mara by the collar, hauling her away just as a beam lanced down to the spot she'd been lying.
My hand landed on a broken piece of her metal rod.
Not a weapon—
A conductor.
I jammed it straight into the final stabilizer.
For a split second, everything stopped.
Light froze.
Sound muted.
And then—
The relay detonated.
A blast of energy erupted outward, shattering the conduits, ripping the robotic arms off their hinges, and sending the sphere crashing to the floor with a roar like a dying star.
Serena dropped from the wall, coughing.
Mara groaned, regaining consciousness.
The lights died completely.
The chamber fell silent.
Smoke curled from the cracked obsidian shell of the relay.
And inside the broken sphere…
…Kade's voice whispered weakly:
"…help… me…"
Smoke drifted from the cracked relay as Serena and I approached cautiously. Mara, barely conscious but stubborn as ever, pushed herself upright.
A faint glow pulsed inside the shattered sphere.
"Kade," I whispered.
We pried open the fractured casing. Under the tangle of wires and neural filaments lay a containment cradle—its surface scorched, its restraints half-melted. Inside it, Kade was curled in on himself, trembling.
His eyes flickered open at the sound of our footsteps.
"You… came," he rasped.
Serena cut the last restraint with her knife. I lifted him out, his weight limp but alive.
Mara steadied herself against the ruined console. "We need to move. That explosion wasn't quiet."
An alarm began humming deep within the facility—low, rising, spreading like a warning through the walls.
Serena looked toward the exit.
"They're coming."
I tightened my grip on Kade.
"Then we run."