Rain still lashed against the windows of the Safehouse.
Crow paced beside the silent body of Hina, watching the rain fall with a twitch in his jaw.
Nel's voice came through the comms. Cold. Sharpened. Controlled.
> "Crow. Status."
He swallowed. "We lost her."
> "The fragment?"
"Dormant," Mao replied, still analyzing Hina's spine. "But intact. Just... hiding."
There was a pause. Then:
> "I know where Time is. He's gone back."
Crow stiffened. "You don't mean—"
> "Yes. The old site. The original lab. Project ZERO."
**
The storm screamed as Lin moved across the wastelands beyond District 7.
Black coat soaked.
Eyes locked on the silhouette ahead — rusted gates beneath broken satellites.
The Space-Time Research Laboratory.
He had no memory of arriving. Only purpose.
He passed corridors littered with dusted memories — empty capsules, medical reports, childlike scrawl on walls. "RUNE + LIN = ALWAYS"
His boots echoed through the hollow halls.
Then he saw it.
Room 09.
Glass tank.
Suspended in it — a girl.
White dress.
Identical to the one in his dreams.
His sister.
Rune.
Or a clone of her.
His mouth went dry.
She floated in the blue fluid, eyelids fluttering. Heart monitor pulsing faintly.
"I never stopped dreaming about her," a voice said behind him.
Lin turned slowly.
Time stepped from the shadows.
White mask, fractured down the cheek. Robes billowing like smoke. But older now. Weaker. Like Time itself was burning away.
"I saved her," Time said softly. "From what the world would've done. You never understood that."
"You used her," Lin said. "You turned us into tools."
"I gave you power. I taught you how to bend causality. How to defy gravity. You were my finest weapon."
"I wanted to be her brother."
They stood in silence.
The hum of machines around them. The low beep of Rune's heart.
Time sighed. "She was always better than you. Gentler. Smarter. But you had rage. You had fire. So I fed it. And now look at you — Black Reaper BKA-201. Do you still dream of killing me?"
Lin's eyes glowed faintly blue.
"No. I plan to."
He fired.
Twin blasts of kinetic energy tore through the air.
Time vanished.
Appeared behind him.
A fist crashed into Lin's spine — sending him sprawling across the room.
"Still too slow," Time muttered.
Lin wiped blood from his mouth. "Then I'll get faster."
He leapt.
Their fight exploded through the corridor. Fists clashed. Guns fired. Time bent the floor beneath them, rewinding impact, looping bullets midair. Lin dove through distortions, adapting — countering.
Time grunted as a blade slashed across his chest.
"You learned," he muttered, clutching the wound. "But you forgot — I wrote your rules."
He raised his hand.
The walls twisted. Gravity reversed. Lin was hurled upward into a collapsing ceiling — then slammed down by his own weight magnified tenfold.
But Lin stood.
Breathing hard. Bleeding.
"I'm done following rules."
He threw the second pendrive — the backup.
It exploded in a flash of red.
Red Rewrite Protocol — Denial.
Time stumbled. "What—"
His abilities glitched. The loop fractured. Reality snapped.
Lin launched forward.
Gun to chest.
Boom.
Time flew back, smashing into the observation deck above the clone chamber.
The glass shattered.
His body crumpled.
Blood dripped from his mouth.
Below them, Rune's tank flickered.
Sparks erupted from the machinery.
"I should've erased you," Time whispered, crawling. "Back then. When she cried every night for her brother."
"You did erase me," Lin said. "But I came back."
He pressed a detonator.
The lab trembled.
One by one, the servers sparked, caught fire, collapsed.
Lin walked to Rune's chamber.
He saw her eyes open.
For one moment — she looked at him.
A soft, warm smile.
Then the chamber exploded.
"No!" Time screamed, dragging himself toward the wreckage. "She was all that remained!"
Lin didn't answer.
His heart broke in silence.
He aimed at the central core — the source of the temporal relay.
Fired.
The pendrive — the last one — erupted in flame.
Fragments of metal and light dissolved into the collapsing lab.
Time screamed again — but it wasn't rage now.
It was pain.
Loss.
Realization.
"You killed her... you killed your own sister!"
"No," Lin said. "You did. The moment you turned her into a weapon."
Time collapsed, coughing.
Blood splattered the floor.
"I was trying... to set us free. From cause. From the wheel."
"And now it ends," Lin said.
He lifted the last shot.
Pointed it at Time's head.
Time looked up.
And laughed.
"Then do it. See if anything really changes."
Boom.
Silence.
Time fell back.
Still.
Dead.
The storm outside slowed.
The air grew quiet.
Lin dropped the gun.
His legs shook.
He fell to his knees.
Stared at the burning remnants of the lab.
Of Rune.
Of their childhood.
Of everything.
He whispered: "I'm sorry."
**
Later, the sky broke open.
Crow and Nel arrived in a black aircraft, scanning the wreckage.
Crow found Lin sitting beside the wreckage, burned, bleeding, holding a cracked pendant.
"Hina's?" Crow asked.
Lin nodded.
Nel stepped forward, staring at the crater where Time died.
"It's over," she said.
"No," Lin murmured.
He looked up.
His eyes burned with a new flame.
"It's just begun."
**
(TO BE CONTINUED)