The storm didn't care about the research vessel.
It slammed into the hull in rolling, furious waves, but inside the medical bay, the cold was a different kind entirely — sterile, deliberate, and quiet as a blade.
Amelia Watson had the gauze clamped between her teeth before she'd even sat down.
She poured the antiseptic over her left forearm without ceremony. Didn't flinch. The skin was an ugly mess of blistered flesh — a kinetic burn, courtesy of her own alchemical cards. The magic always collected its toll eventually.
Live wire, she thought, wrapping the gauze with tight, brutal efficiency. Always has been.
She'd learned that lesson young. C.O.V.E.R. had stripped everything from her — childhood, identity, family — and handed her a silvery revolver in return. A life built entirely in shadows.
Empathy was a luxury she couldn't afford tonight.
Not with an extinction-level event lying on the cot across the room.
The girl woke up like a drowning victim breaking the surface.
One second still. The next — a violent, full-body gasp, white hair plastered across her face, that massive tail slamming into the guardrails hard enough to crumple the steel like paper. Her eyes were wild. Feral. Scanning every corner of the room at once.
Amelia's hand dropped to her revolver without a thought.
"Don't," she said flatly. "Stay where you are."
The command landed. The girl — Gura, she'd learn — pressed back against the headboard, pulling her knees up, lips trembling. Then a flood of ancient syllables poured out of her, melodic and desperate and completely incomprehensible.
Of course.
Amelia sighed through her nose and reached into her coat. Blank card, fountain pen, fifteen seconds of precise runic inscription. She didn't break eye contact the entire time.
"Lingua Aperta."
Silver light bled through the ink. She stepped forward, slapped the card onto the metal cot frame, stepped back to a safe distance.
Gura's hands flew to her ears with a sharp gasp — the translation matrix weaving itself into the gap between their minds like stitching a wound.
Amelia clicked her notepad open. "Testing. Can you understand me?"
"What..." Gura stared at her, wide ocean-blue eyes still full of raw terror. "What did you just do to my mind? Where am I?"
"C.O.V.E.R. research vessel." Amelia's pen was already moving. "You're currently the most dangerous unknown variable on this planet. Name. Origin. Start talking."
"You dare—" Something shifted in Gura's expression — fear giving way to a flicker of defensive pride, like muscle memory. "I am Gura. Princess of Atlantis. You don't get to demand anything of the—"
"Atlantis." Amelia wrote it down without missing a beat. "The sunken city. Sure. Two hours ago a Beast-class Void anomaly boarded this ship — a creature that eats reality on a conceptual level. Then you woke up. Punched it through three decks of solid steel. Crimson aura. Completely feral." She looked up. "So. Biological weapon? Or did someone put you in that dome on purpose?"
Gura didn't answer.
The pride collapsed like a sandcastle hit by a wave. She looked down at her own hands — unmarked, unblemished — and went very, very quiet.
"I'm alone now," she said softly. "Aren't I."
It wasn't a question.
Amelia went still.
Her lie-detection instincts — sharpened over years of fieldwork — weren't even necessary here. The girl was shattered. Completely. The kind of broken that didn't perform itself.
"Yes," Amelia said. No softening. No false comfort. Just the truth, clean and honest.
The silence that followed was heavier than the storm outside.
Gura's hand drifted to her collarbone — where a faint blue light pulsed faintly beneath the skin. Her lips parted.
"Where is the—"
"Safe," Amelia cut in, assuming she meant the weapon sealed in the ruins. "It's in a safe place."
Gura didn't push further. Didn't scream, didn't fight, didn't fall apart dramatically. She simply curled into herself — knees drawn up, face buried — and cried. Quiet. Suffocating. The kind of grief that had nowhere left to go.
Amelia watched her.
Something in her chest — that carefully maintained clinical distance — developed a crack.
She knew what it looked like. A world, erased. She'd stood in that exact rubble before.
Her fingers found the pocket watch out of habit. Cold gold against her palm.
She pulled a metal chair over, sat beside the cot, and opened her mouth —
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
The encrypted alarm punched directly into her earpiece. The LED on her collar strobed red.
Amelia was on her feet instantly, two fingers pressed to comms. "Watson. Go."
"Agent Watson. Interrogation suspended." The voice was digitally masked, clipped, no room for discussion. "Satellites just confirmed a major thermal spike — northern continent. A second Pillar has manifested."
Her eyes cut to Gura, still curled on the cot.
"Directive Omega is in effect. Extract the asset and bring her in."
The chair sat empty beside the cot.
The pocket watch ticked.