The shard was quiet now, but Marei wasn't.
She couldn't sleep. Not after Elijah's message. Not with the storm in her head building louder by the minute.
Kade rested with his back against the far wall of the warehouse, a temporary gauze wrap over his ribs. He wasn't unconscious, but his eyes were closed in that soldier's half-sleep—ready to move the moment something shifted.
Marei stood at the workstation, hands hovering over the floating interface. The projection of the data sphere rotated slowly, its fragments scattering holographic light across her face.
She touched one of the orbiting fragments and dragged it aside. Beneath it was a second cluster—encrypted, flickering red. Unlabeled. Untouched.
Not part of the system's original code.
This one felt different.
She tapped into it.
Instantly, pain lanced through her skull. Sharp. Deep. Familiar.
She stumbled back, gasping, gripping the table.
Kade's eyes opened. "What happened?"
"I—" she shook her head, vision blurry. "I saw something. Not code. A place."
Kade stood and crossed the room. "What kind of place?"
She looked up at him, still breathing hard. "A cliff. Metal towers rising from the ocean. And a symbol—an eye with three lashes. I've seen it before."
"Where?"
"In my dreams."
They stared at each other.
Kade glanced at the projection. "The data's bleeding into your mind now."
"It's not bleeding," she whispered. "It's returning."
She activated the node again—but not to decode. This time, she let it sync with her directly. The interface scanned her neural pathways, seeking resonance.
What it found shocked her.
Her personal ID—burned into her DNA at birth—registered with a hidden access key in the shard. A match.
"Kade," she said slowly, voice cold. "I was never meant to find this. I was programmed to return to it."
He stepped closer. "Are you saying you're one of the nodes?"
"No," she whispered. "I think I'm the map to them."
More fragments unlocked automatically, forming coordinates, fragmented memory logs, and one term repeating across the decoded files:
ARCHETYPE DESIGNATION: VESSEL 3
Kade's pulse thudded.
"That's why Catalyst wanted you alive," he said. "You're not just a memory carrier—you're a keyholder."
"And a liability," Marei added. "If they ever recapture me, they'll extract the rest."
They both knew what that meant.
Kade turned to the terminal, called up a schematic of the coordinates forming from the shard. Most pointed to old Catalyst research zones—places wiped off the official map after the rebellion. But one stood out: a high-altitude facility deep in the Chasm Ranges. Abandoned, quarantined. No known access routes.
"This one," Kade said. "It matches the topography you saw in your vision."
"Then that's our next stop."
"But it won't be easy. We'll need gear. A route. A cover."
"We'll need allies," Marei said.
Kade looked at her sideways. "The kind we can trust?"
She didn't blink. "The kind that hate Catalyst more than they love safety."
The next day, they descended into the city's underlayer—old transport tunnels sealed after the Flood. It was there that Kade knew someone who might help.
An old mechanic turned informant. A woman named Corin, who once built neural rigs for Catalyst before defecting and disappearing underground.
They found her in a half-lit chamber behind rows of power converters and mech shells. Her left arm was synthetic; her right eye flickered with orange glow.
"Well well," she said, wiping grease from her hands. "Didn't think I'd see you again, Ghost."
Kade gave a slight nod. "Need access to Chasm 14."
Corin laughed—sharp and cruel.
"You planning to walk into the Reaper's mouth or just dance around it?"
"We're hunting something Catalyst left behind."
That sobered her.
"You're serious."
He gestured to Marei. "She's the map."
Corin looked Marei over, then whistled low. "They're gonna gut the whole planet to find you."
Marei didn't flinch. "Then we start by getting there first."
Corin stepped back, motioning them toward her console. "Then come. I've got old topographical scans, seismic data, and maybe—just maybe—a drop path through the storm veil."
As the maps lit up, Marei's skin tingled again.
Another fragment unlocked in her mind.
Another memory not her own.
And Catalyst… somewhere… was still watching.