The fused ceramite where Kaelen had made his last stand still glowed with a dull, cherry-red heat, a grim monument sealing the chamber's worst wounds. But the reprieve was temporary. The deep, groaning protests of the spire had returned, more frequent and violent now. Without Kaelen's sacrifice to blunt the immediate plasma breach, the collapse had entered a new, accelerated phase. The floor plates buckled in waves. The air grew thick and acrid, stinging their lungs with the scent of superheated metal and ionization.
Before them, the core sphere was a vision of terrifying, newborn chaos. The beautiful maelstrom of color had intensified into a frantic, swirling vortex. Bolts of raw, untethered energy—crimson, gold, violet—snapped out from its surface, earthing themselves against the walls and leaving smoldering scars. It was no longer a machine, nor a god. It was a screaming infant star, convulsing in its crib of metal, unaware of its own destructive power.
Alexander dragged Elara back from the edge of the dais as a whip-crack of amber energy shattered the spot where they'd just stood. Her face was pale, tear-streaks cutting through the grime, her body trembling with shock and exhaustion. She stared at the chaotic core, her scientist's mind instinctively trying to categorize the unpredictable energy signatures, even as her soul recoiled from the horror of it.
"The structural cascade is irreversible," she shouted over the rising din, her voice hoarse. "But the core's energy… it's not decaying. It's transmuting. It's becoming pure, undirected chrono-radiation."
Alexander's grip on her arm tightened. "Chrono-radiation? Time energy?"
"The same base energy that powers the portals!" Elara's eyes widened with a realization that was equal parts hope and dread. She pointed to the interface terminal, now cracked and sparking. A few screens still flickered, displaying garbled data streams. "Look! The last coherent logs. The core's final act before the lobotomy was a system-wide dump of its stabilization protocols into the chrono-field generators. It's a failsafe! One last, desperate attempt to preserve its central consciousness by… by flinging it into the time-stream."
A cold, clear understanding crystallized in Alexander's mind, cutting through the chaos. The business acumen that had built an empire now processed the apocalyptic variables. "It's turning the entire spire into a bomb," he said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "But not a physical one. A temporal one. The explosion won't just destroy matter. It will scatter fractured time and consciousness across dimensions."
"A temporal shockwave," Elara breathed, horrified. "It could unravel local causality. It could make the very concept of 'here' and 'now' meaningless for miles." Her gaze snapped to his, sharp and urgent. "But that energy surge, focused through the primary emitter…" She gestured wildly to a crystalline node at the apex of the chamber, which was beginning to pulse in sync with the core's tantrum. "It could also open a gateway. A massive, unstable one. Possibly large enough and powerful enough to reach Earth."
The Choice, theoretical until this moment, slammed into the space between them with the weight of a collapsing world.
They both saw it simultaneously. The terminal's dying screens offered one, final command prompt. A manual override for the primary chrono-emitter. It could be used in one of two ways.
Option One: Containment. They could attempt to use the emitter to try and fold the expanding temporal shockwave back in on itself, creating a localized containment field. It would be like trying to bottle a supernova. The data suggested a 3% chance of success. If it failed, they would be at the epicenter of the unraveling. If it somehow succeeded, they would seal themselves forever in a bubble of fractured time, a ghostly appendix to a dead world.
Option Two: Escape. They could invert the polarity, channel the spire's last, catastrophic surge of chrono-energy into ripping a single, focused gateway tunnel back to their point of origin—the alley on Earth. The math was slightly better, a 10% chance. But the energy required was immense. The logs were clear: the emitter could only sustain a gateway for one point seven seconds at that magnitude. One point seven seconds for one transit.
One person.
The chamber convulsed in a massive quake. A huge section of the ceiling directly above the core sheared away, crashing down into the maelstrom and vanishing without a trace, consumed by the distorted physics around the sphere. The dais listed violently to one side. They slid, grabbing onto the base of the terminal to avoid being pitched into the energy storm.
"The system is priming for the final discharge!" Elara cried, reading the scrolling disaster on the screen. "We have less than ninety seconds!"
In the stark, strobe-like light of the dying spire, Alexander Blackwood faced the only boardroom that had ever truly mattered. The variables were laid bare. The risk assessment was catastrophic. The decision point was now.
He looked at Elara—her brilliant mind already working on the futile numbers, her courage etched in the grime on her face, the woman who had turned his ruthless calculus into something he could no longer define. He thought of his empire of steel and glass, cold and silent. He thought of the empty penthouse that had never been a home.
A lifetime of choices had led him here. Choices made for profit, for power, for self. Every negotiation, every takeover, every calculated emotional withdrawal had been a rehearsal for this single, defining deal.
He moved.
His hands flew over the cracked interface, not with hesitation, but with decisive, brutal certainty. He bypassed the containment protocols. He input the coordinates from the portal log Glyph had provided a lifetime ago. He set the emitter to overload and channel everything—everything—into a one-way, one-passenger rupture in reality.
"What are you doing?!" Elara screamed, trying to pull his hands from the console.
He turned to her. There was no coldness in his eyes now. No CEO's mask. Only a vast, terrifying, and complete clarity. "I am executing the only viable strategy," he said, his voice cutting through the roar. He grabbed her by the shoulders, his grip firm, an anchor in the disintegrating world. "The asset is too critical to lose. The mission is not survival. The mission is you."
Terror and understanding dawned in her eyes. "No! Alexander, don't you dare! We find another way! We—"
"There is no other way!" he roared, shaking her once, not in anger, but in desperate emphasis. "This is the deal, Elara! This is the cost! You showed a machine what it means to be human. Now let me show you!" His voice broke, the control shattering. "I have spent my entire life building walls and calling them empires. You… you walked through them without even trying. You are the only thing I have ever built that matters."
Tears streamed down her face. "I won't go without you. I won't live with that choice!"
A soft, incongruous chime sounded from the terminal. EMITTER PRIMED. GATEWAY INITIATION IN 10 SECONDS.
Alexander's expression softened. He cupped her face, his thumb wiping away the ash and tears. For the first and last time in this world, he smiled—a real, unguarded, heartbreaking smile. "Then don't live with it," he said softly. "Live for it."
He reached down, his fingers closing around the small, furry form of Glyph, who had been huddled, whimpering, by their feet. He pressed the creature into Elara's arms.
5 SECONDS.
With a final, surge of strength, he pushed her—not towards the growing, shimmering tear in reality that was forming in the center of the dais—but around the console, into the relative shelter of a reinforced alcove.
2 SECONDS.
"Alexander, NO!"
1 SECOND.
He turned his back on her, on the gateway, and faced the chaotic core. He spread his arms wide, a solitary, defiant figure in a tailored suit silhouetted against the erupting star of broken time. He wasn't a CEO closing a deal. He was a man accepting a bill.
"Run the company, Doctor," he said, his voice calm, final.
0.
The world dissolved into a scream of light and twisted physics. The emitter fired. The gateway flashed open, a tunnel of storming reality leading to a glimpse of wet asphalt and a dumpster. A violent, suctioning force filled the chamber.
Alexander Blackwood did not look back. He held his ground as the energy tore at him, his eyes fixed on the beautiful, terrible chaos he had chosen. He saw a lance of pure chrono-energy, deflected by the gateway's formation, lash out directly towards him.
In the last fragment of a second, he didn't see an empire. He saw her face.
Then, light consumed everything.