Chapter 15: The Falling Star of the Ardennes
The descent of The Needle was a symphony of screaming metal and fracturing reality. Arthur plummeted through the ship's central shaft, the air around him rippling as the engine's Tesseract rings began to oscillate out of control. Thorne was somewhere above, a frantic silhouette lost in the smoke, but Arthur's focus was locked on the core.
The Leap of Faith
[ SYSTEM ALERT: EXTERNAL POWER SOURCE DETECTED ]
[ INITIATING: EMERGENCY SPATIAL EXTRACTION ]
As Arthur neared the spinning rings, he didn't brace for impact. He extended his staff, the Tesseract shard acting as a lightning rod for the ship's dying energy. The blue glow was so intense it turned the interior of the engine room into a white void.
The moment of contact felt like being hit by a freight train made of frozen time.
[ BATTLE LOG ]
Arthur absorbs 4,000 units of Raw Spatial Energy.
Spatial Leap: TARGETING — Allied Forward Command.
Warning: Temporal accuracy is 82%. Arriving... now.
The Impact
Arthur didn't land; he arrived. A shockwave of blue force exploded outward from a snowy clearing just three miles from the Allied front lines. The force of his arrival snapped pine trees like toothpicks and left a glowing, glass-bottomed crater in the frozen earth.
He lay in the center of the devastation, the [Archivist Combat Shroud] steaming as it shed the excess heat. His lungs burned, and every nerve ending felt like it had been rubbed with sandpaper.
The Reunion
"Hold your fire!" a familiar, gravelly voice barked through the woods. "I said hold it! Look at the light!"
Arthur blinked, his [Chrono-Vision] flickering. He saw the "intended" path of the soldiers—they were supposed to find a crashed Hydra scout plane here. Instead, they found him.
Steve Rogers was the first to reach the edge of the crater, his shield raised, eyes wide with a mixture of hope and terror. Behind him, the Howling Commandos fanned out, their rifles lowered as they recognized the midnight-navy armor.
"Arthur?" Steve stepped onto the scorched earth, his boots crunching on the glass. "You... we saw the ship explode. It's only been two hours since you were taken."
Arthur pushed himself up with his staff, the metal still humming. Two hours. To him, the ordeal on The Needle had felt like a week of interrogation and data-torture.
"Thorne is dead. Or at least, his ship is," Arthur rasped, coughing up a cloud of blue-tinged frost. He reached into the hidden compartment of his Shroud and pulled out the pulsing, light-filled data drive. "But he wasn't just building bombs, Steve. He was building a way to erase us."
[ CHAPTER 15 COMPLETE ]
Current DP Balance: 4,200.
Divergence: 19.8% (Stabilizing).
New Item: [The Thorne Files] - Ready for Decryption.
Author's Note: Arthur is back with the team, but he's carrying the secrets of a man who could see the "code" of their world.