CHAPTER 4 — Recruitment or Containment?
The world reassembled in pieces.
A ceiling first.
Cracked, peeling paint.
Faint blue neon dripping through blinds.
Then the smell—dust, old wood, the faint metallic tang of stale electronics.
Lyra's voice cut through the static in my skull.
"Don't move yet. Your mind hasn't finished syncing."
My vision sharpened.
We weren't in the hospital anymore.
We were inside an abandoned apartment—one room, bare walls, broken TV, cables ripped from the floor, a mattress that looked like a war crime.
I pushed myself upright.
"What just happened?"
Lyra didn't answer immediately. Instead, she closed the blinds and layered three pieces of chalk across the window sill in a pattern I didn't recognize.
It wasn't decoration.
It was shielding.
Or a ward.
Only when she finished did she finally turn toward me.
"I used a short-range divergence," she said.
"A forced branch jump."
"In English."
"We didn't teleport," she clarified.
"We just moved to a version of this building where we already were."
I stared at her.
"That's not how physics works."
She smiled softly.
"That's not how your brain works anymore either."
Before I could respond, a vibration pulsed in my head.
Rook's Echo.
Not the man himself—
just the future version of him, bleeding through timelines.
I saw him inches away from death.
Pinned under rubble.
Holding a gun.
Calling someone—my name—before static swallowed him.
I winced.
Lyra noticed.
"You felt an Echo from far away."
"Too far. That shouldn't be possible."
"It's because your link to Rook is stronger than you think," she said quietly.
"He saw something in you that he wasn't supposed to."
My jaw tightened.
"Why me, Lyra? What do you want?"
"What everyone wants," she said.
"A future where we don't die."
Not reassuring.
Before I could press her, she stiffened—head snapping toward the door.
"They're here."
I moved instantly, mind sharpening.
Footsteps outside—six, maybe eight.
Metallic clinks—suppressed weapons.
"Neuroforge?" I asked.
"No," Lyra whispered. "Worse."
The lights snapped off.
A faint humming filled the building, like radio interference.
Lyra grabbed my arm.
"Stay behind me."
The door shattered inward.
Men in dark tactical gear flooded the room—black visors, armored vests, insignias scratched off. Silent, precise, too coordinated to be mercenaries.
But they had no Echoes.
No futures.
No branching timelines.
No ghosts behind them.
Just emptiness.
"You can't see their futures?" Lyra asked.
"They don't have any."
The one in front spoke:
"Alexian Vale. You will come with us."
I frowned.
"That voice doesn't match your body."
"That's because it isn't mine."
Lyra's hand glowed faintly.
"They're shells," she whispered. "Bodies being puppeted. Spectral occupation."
That explained the lack of Echoes.
Entities were controlling them directly.
The front puppet cocked its head.
"No resistance is required. The Progenitor wants to see you."
The room's temperature plummeted.
Lyra moved first.
She snapped her fingers—
And three alternate versions of herself appeared like overlapping afterimages.
One version blocked the doorway.
One dragged me back.
One lunged forward to strike the puppet soldiers.
The room exploded into motion.
A soldier swung a baton at her—
but it passed through the wrong version of her.
She twisted around, grabbed the real soldier by the wrist, and dislocated his arm with a single motion.
I pivoted toward another puppet, my vision overclocking.
Its Echo didn't exist…
but mine did.
Every possible version of me flickered—
me dodging
me getting hit
me stabbing him with his own knife
me breaking his leg
me doing nothing
I reached into the instant
and chose the branch where I took his weapon before he even realized he had attacked.
He collapsed.
Lyra glanced at me, eyes widening faintly.
"You're adapting faster than I expected."
I didn't respond.
Two soldiers approached from the left—
but Lyra threw a steel pipe across the room.
Or rather—
one future version of Lyra did.
The pipe struck both soldiers at an angle that shouldn't have been possible.
Only then did I realize:
She wasn't predicting the future.
She was living multiple futures simultaneously.
But even she wasn't enough to stop what came next.
A new figure stepped into the shattered doorway.
Not armored.
Not human.
A tall, flickering silhouette wearing a humanoid shape like a glitching coat.
The Entity from the accident.
Its voice rattled the walls.
"Hybrid. You are not stable.
You must be absorbed."
Lyra stepped in front of me instantly.
"You're not taking him."
The Entity ignored her and stretched its hand toward me.
Cold.
Wrong.
A gravity that pulled at my thoughts.
My Echoes fragmented violently—
tens, hundreds, thousands of versions of myself fracturing and collapsing in real time.
I dropped to one knee, clutching my skull.
Lyra grabbed my face—forcing me to look at her.
"Alexian! Focus on my voice!"
The Entity stepped closer.
"The anomaly must return to origin."
Lyra grabbed my hand.
And her eyes… shifted.
No longer blue.
No longer human.
For a single second, I saw the truth of her:
A being standing at the edge of time,
fragmented, multiplied,
existing in too many versions to count.
"Break," she whispered.
Reality snapped.
The Entity's arm shattered into a mess of static.
Lyra pulled me backward, and the entire room twisted—
walls bending, floor cracking open like fractured glass—
And we fell through the world.