The medical wing of the Magnet did not smell of life. It smelled of ozone, sterile chemicals, and the faint, copper-like tang of raw mercury. Here, the hum of the fluorescent lights felt like needles pressing against Alaric Vance's temples.
He lay on a cold, obsidian-like examination table, his upper body bare. His right arm, the one that had erased a Colossus from existence only hours ago, was now encased in a series of glass tubes and electromagnetic sensors. The skin there was translucent, showing veins that didn't pulse with red blood, but with a shimmering, sluggish silver fluid.
Dr. Isadora Thorne (Fossil) moved around him with the silent efficiency of a predator. She was looking at a series of holographic monitors that displayed Alaric's neural activity.
"Your heart rate is remarkably low for someone whose cellular structure is currently being rewritten by an alien isotope," Isadora said, her voice devoid of its usual clinical distance. There was a hint of... curiosity. Or perhaps, hunger.
"I don't feel like my cells are being rewritten," Alaric croaked, his throat dry. "I feel like I'm being emptied. Like there's a hollow space inside me that's growing larger every time I use... that power."
Isadora stopped her work and leaned over him. Her glasses caught the blue light of the monitors, masking her eyes. "That 'hollow space' is exactly what we need, Alaric. In a world drowning in the weight of Mercury, a Void is the only thing that can create balance. But you must understand... the more you pull from the outside, the more of your own 'self' you must sacrifice to fill the gap."
She adjusted a dial, and Alaric felt a sharp, icy sting in his arm. One of the tubes began to draw a sample of his silver blood.
"Where is Lyra?" Alaric asked, trying to shift the focus from the agonizing cold in his veins.
"My sister is exactly where she always is when things get complicated," Isadora replied, turning back to her screens. "She's hiding in the dark, sharpening her knives and nursing old grudges. She thinks she can save the man you were. She doesn't realize that man died in the laboratory fire three years ago. What's left is a masterpiece of biological engineering."
Alaric closed his eyes. Masterpiece. The word felt like an insult. He wasn't a masterpiece; he was a broken puzzle, and the person holding the pieces was a woman who saw him as an experiment.
"She's lying to you, Alaric..."
The voice didn't come from the room. It echoed from the base of his skull, vibrating through his teeth. Selene.
Alaric's breath hitched. On the monitor, his heart rate spiked instantly.
"Something wrong?" Isadora asked, her eyes narrowing.
"Just... a headache," Alaric lied.
"She calls you a masterpiece because she wants to own you," Selene's voice continued, smoother than silk, colder than the rain. "But you don't belong to her. You don't belong to this mountain. Do you remember the white lilies, Alaric? Do you remember the way the sun used to look before we turned it gümüş?"
Alaric's vision began to swim. The sterile white walls of the medical wing seemed to melt. For a moment, he wasn't lying on a table in a dark mountain. He was standing in a field of blindingly white flowers. The sky was a perfect, impossible blue.
Standing in front of him was a woman. Her face was blurred, as if seen through a veil of water, but her presence was unmistakable. She reached out, her fingers ghosting over his chest, right where his heart should be.
"You gave me your promise, Alaric. You said that no matter how heavy the world became, you would keep me light. Why have you forgotten?"
"I didn't mean to..." Alaric whispered in the dream.
"Alaric! Stay with me!"
The dream shattered. Alaric bolted upright on the table, the sensors tearing away from his skin with a wet snap. He was gasping for air, sweat pouring down his face.
Isadora was standing back, holding a sedative autoinjector, her expression unreadable. "You had a seizure. Your neural resonance bypassed the safety limit. What did you see?"
Alaric looked at his hands. They were shaking. "Nothing. Just... light."
"Liars don't survive long in the Magnet, Zenith," Isadora said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Whatever is living inside your head, it's not a memory. It's a parasite. And if you don't help me isolate it, it will eventually hollow you out until there's nothing left but a shell for it to inhabit."
She turned away, dismissively. "Go. Find your quarters. Rest. But know this: the next time we go out, the 'engine' will be ready. And I will need you to be more than a man with a headache. I will need you to be a god."
Shadows in the Vent
Alaric walked through the dimly lit corridors of the base. The Magnet was a labyrinth of industrial decay. Pipes hissed steam, and the distant thud of the geothermal generators felt like the heartbeat of a dying giant.
As he turned a corner toward the residential block, a shadow detached itself from the ceiling.
Before Alaric could react, a hand slammed him against the wall, and a cold blade was pressed against his throat.
"Don't scream," a voice hissed. Lyra.
She was covered in soot and grease, her silver eye-bandage glowing faintly in the dark. She didn't look like a soldier; she looked like a ghost seeking vengeance.
"Lyra," Alaric wheezed, the knife's edge biting into his skin. "What are you doing?"
"Saving your life, you idiot," she whispered, her gaze darting to the security cameras at the end of the hall. She reached up and tapped a small device she had stuck to the wall; the camera's red light turned green and began to loop. "My sister isn't 'stabilizing' you, Alaric. She's calibrating you. I slipped into her private server while you were under. She's not trying to stop the Mercury Rain."
"She said the Anchor—"
"The Anchor is a kanca, Alaric! A hook!" Lyra's voice was desperate, her face inches from his. "She's going to use your Void frequency to grab the Sky Source and pull it down to the Magnet. She thinks she can harness the origin of the rain. She doesn't care if the entire mountain collapses under the weight, as long as she gets to see what's inside the core of the storm."
Alaric felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. "Why are you telling me this? You hate me, Lyra. You said I was a monster."
Lyra's hand trembled, the knife shaking against his throat. For a second, the mask of the hardened mercenary slipped, revealing the broken girl underneath.
"I do hate you," she whispered, her voice cracking. "I hate you for what you did to the Garden Sect. I hate you for forgetting my name every morning. But I hate Isadora more. And... God help me, I promised the man you used to be that I wouldn't let her turn you into her puppet."
She pulled the knife away and shoved a small, encrypted data-chip into his hand.
"This is the real map of the Magnet's sub-levels. There's a sector Isadora doesn't want you to see. Sector Zero. It's where she's keeping the 'prototypes.' If you want to know what you really are, go there tonight. But if you get caught... I don't know you. Understood?"
"Understood," Alaric said, closing his fist over the chip.
Lyra looked at him for a long moment, her gaze lingering on his eyes. "You still have that silver glow in your pupils. It's getting brighter. If you start hearing her voice again... the girl from the laboratory... don't listen. She's the one who started all of this."
"Selene?" Alaric asked.
Lyra flinched at the name. "Don't say it. Not in this mountain. The walls have ears, Alaric. And some of them are hers."
With that, Lyra vanished back into the shadows of the ventilation shafts, leaving Alaric alone in the hallway.
The Weight of a Choice
Alaric reached his room—a spartan cell with a bed, a desk, and a single window that looked out into the pressurized hangar.
He sat on the bed, the data-chip heavy in his pocket. He looked at the briefcase he had brought back today, now sitting on Isadora's desk in the lab across the base.
"She's jealous, Alaric," Selene's voice returned, this time sounding like a warm breeze. "Lyra wants to keep you small. She wants you to be a human—frail, heavy, destined to die in the mud. I want to give you the stars. I want to give you back the sky we lost."
Alaric didn't answer. He couldn't. He was caught between two sisters who saw him as a tool, and a ghost who saw him as a god.
He thought of Elara. He thought of the way she had looked at him after he imploded the Colossus. The fear in her eyes was the only thing that felt real in this world of silver lies. If he followed Isadora's plan, would Elara survive? If he followed Lyra's rebellion, would the Magnet fall?
He stood up and walked to the small mirror above the sink. He splashed cold water on his face and looked at his reflection.
His eyes were indeed glowing. A faint, swirling silver mist was beginning to replace the dark irises he once had. He looked less like Alaric Vance every day, and more like the Zenith.
Tonight, he would go to Sector Zero. Tonight, he would find the truth behind the "masterpiece."
Even if that truth was heavy enough to crush him.