The streets were quieter now, but not safer.
Atlanta's ruins stretched endlessly, shrouded in shadow and dust. Our boots crushed broken glass as we moved, each step echoing too loudly in a city that had forgotten how to breathe.
Jacob walked ahead with his gauntlets glowing faintly, keeping an eye out for patrols. Rev drifted near the edge of the group, fingers twitching with soft pulses of energy, subtly mapping the frequency grid that the androids used to communicate. Maddie moved like a ghost between us, keeping low and quiet, absorbing the ambient sounds of cracked lampposts and distant radio towers. Chase stuck close to her, eyes darting between his tablet and the horizon.
I was in the middle. My usual spot.
The center of everything, and yet never truly grounded.
The shelter wasn't far. A repurposed underground train station, fortified by rogue engineers and a few ex-Sentinel defectors who had once called themselves protectors. It had been months since anyone had checked in. We didn't know if it would still be standing, or if it had been claimed by androids—or worse.
Booker was quiet, limping beside me. He hadn't said a word since the last illusion, and I didn't push. Whatever was inside him… it was still there. Dormant, maybe. But alive.
Just like the thing inside me.
We moved past a burning car and took a sharp turn into an alley. A flash of movement caught my eye.
"Stop," I said.
Everyone froze.
Rev's eyes lit up as he focused ahead. "I count five signals. Close. Low energy, but they're armed."
"Ambush?" Maddie asked.
"No. They're… waiting."
Jacob flexed his fingers and nodded toward the edge of the alley. "Let's say hi."
We stepped out and found them—a cluster of battered survivors with scavenged gear and distrustful eyes. A woman in a patchwork uniform aimed a rail rifle at us. Her arms trembled.
"Don't move!" she barked.
I raised a hand calmly. "We're not your enemy."
"That's what the last group said before they turned into one of those things," she spat.
"Do I look like an android?" Jacob asked, lifting a chunk of debris off the ground and crushing it between his palms. The crunch echoed.
She hesitated, then lowered the rifle.
"You're with Sentinel?"
"No," I said. "We're what's left of what comes after."
She studied us for a long moment. Then, quietly: "You're the Renegades."
Rev grinned. "Word travels fast."
She nodded toward the shelter's access tunnel. "You're lucky. The place is still active. We've kept it running, barely. But something's wrong down there."
"Define 'wrong,'" Chase asked, stepping forward.
"People started hearing things. Seeing things. Some of them left and didn't come back. Others… just stopped talking. Like their minds got scrambled."
My chest tightened.
Illusions. Mental interference.
Vesper?
No—this felt different. More personal.
"I need to see it for myself," I said.
She led us down a long, spiraling staircase coated in moss and old graffiti. A few floors below the city's skeleton, the shelter came into view.
It was partially lit—just enough to see the faded Sentinel banners that still clung to the far wall. Dozens of people were packed inside. Survivors, kids, the wounded. It was a city beneath a dead city. But the energy was off. The air was too still. Every conversation was a whisper.
A little girl watched us from behind a broken vending machine. Her eyes glowed faintly—red.
"She's infected," Jacob said softly.
"No," Chase corrected. "She's syncing."
Maddie looked at me. "With what?"
Before I could answer, the ceiling above groaned.
The lights flickered.
Then, in the far corner of the shelter, a device came to life.
A sphere.
Familiar.
It hovered a few feet off the ground, pulsing with faint white light—contained in a cradle of circuitry and black metal veins.
"That's it," Chase whispered. "That's what they were after in Atlanta. What they built the labs for."
"A Nullwave generator?" Rev asked.
"No. Worse."
I stepped closer. My power reacted—pulling toward it.
The glow intensified.
Then the air shifted.
A vision cracked into my mind like lightning.
I was somewhere else.
Not here.
Not now.
I saw her.
Aaliah.
Bound, surrounded by fractured light and shadow. She was suspended midair, wires embedded in her back, eyes wide with pain—but alive. Trapped in a facility that looked half-science, half-nightmare.
She turned her head and looked at me.
"Kaleb," she whispered.
The illusion snapped.
I fell to my knees.
"Did you see something?" Maddie asked.
"She's alive," I said.
Everyone froze.
"Aaliah?" Jacob asked, voice sharp.
I nodded. "That thing is connected to her. She's in one of their labs—somewhere beyond Atlanta. Maybe a Nexus facility, maybe something worse. But she's alive. And she's sending signals."
"Then we find her," Rev said.
"No," Chase said, suddenly pale. "You don't understand. That sphere isn't just a signal relay. It's a lock."
"A lock for what?" Maddie asked.
Chase looked at me.
Then at Booker.
Then back at me.
"A lock on whatever they buried inside him."
The shelter trembled. People screamed.
Sparks shot from the sphere. And then…
Booker collapsed, seizing.
A hum filled the space—one I knew too well.
Chrono's energy.
Reality bent.
The Nexus inside me stirred, clawing at the edges of control.
Jacob helped me up, eyes burning. "Whatever this is, it's not done yet."
"No," I said, voice shaking.
"It's just beginning.
The hum deepened, like a choir of collapsing stars echoing inside my bones.
Booker convulsed violently on the ground, his body arching, mouth frothing with static. The sphere in the corner pulsed brighter—no longer white, but a flickering, unstable red. Sparks flew from its cradle, striking the walls in erratic bursts of energy. Survivors screamed and backed away, some shielding children, others dragging supplies toward the exit tunnel.
"Get him stable!" I shouted.
Chase dropped beside Booker and jammed two prongs of a modified injector into his neck. The needle hissed, releasing a cocktail of dampening agents. Booker's body stilled for a moment—then twitched again, as if rejecting the suppressant.
"It's not working," Chase growled. "His vitals are off the charts—he's syncing too fast."
"With what?" Maddie asked, stepping back as the ground trembled beneath us.
"The sphere. Or whatever's behind it," Chase said. "But there's more… I think it's syncing with both of you."
My skin prickled.
I turned toward the sphere—its light now pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat. Each pulse brought a flicker of vision: A black corridor. A red room. A flash of Aaliah's face. Then my own—twisted, corrupted, laughing with a voice that wasn't mine.
I stumbled back, breath ragged. Jacob caught my arm.
"What did you see?"
I couldn't answer. I was still seeing it.
A split version of me.
A darkness woven into my very cells—reflected in the sphere like a mirror I couldn't look away from. I saw the Dark Nexus not as a future possibility, but as a presence. Watching. Waiting. Growing.
The shelter walls groaned again. Cracks split along the ceiling, dust raining down as lights flickered out in sequence.
Rev stepped forward, hand raised. "Back away from the sphere."
"What are you doing?" Maddie asked.
"Testing something." His voice was steady, calm. His power built quietly, flickers of violet and indigo dancing across his fingertips.
Rev released a pulse—short, controlled, and precise.
The blast hit the sphere—and stopped dead in the air.
Mid-impact, the energy twisted inward, absorbed like breath into lungs.
Then it fired back.
A reverse shockwave erupted from the sphere, slamming into Rev and sending him flying across the chamber. He hit a column hard, his body going limp for a second before he groaned and rolled to his side.
"Rev!" Maddie shouted, running to him.
Jacob stepped in front of me. "What is that thing?"
Chase's hands trembled as he typed furiously into his tablet. "It's not just a Nullwave generator. It's a convergence anchor."
"In English," Jacob snapped.
"It's bridging something. Between Kaleb, Booker… and wherever Aaliah is."
"Then we destroy it," Jacob growled, fists flaring.
"No!" I shouted, suddenly terrified. "If you break it, we lose the tether. We lose her."
Jacob hesitated.
I turned back toward the sphere, breathing hard. The shelter seemed to shrink around me, time thickening into syrup. I stepped closer.
Every cell in my body screamed. Every inch of instinct told me to run.
But I didn't.
I reached out.
The moment my fingers grazed the edge of the sphere, a sharp crack split the air. I was yanked forward—not physically, but mentally, spiritually—ripped out of time, out of space, out of myself.
I stood in a white void.
Everything was weightless. Everything was soundless.
And then, the click of footsteps.
Chrono appeared—not in his containment suit, but as a man.
Scarred. Hollow-eyed. His hands folded behind his back.
"You found the signal," he said, tone flat. "Faster than expected."
"This isn't real," I said.
"It's as real as anything you've seen," he replied. "The sphere is more than a lock. It's a gateway. To everything you were. Everything you will become."
"What do you want from me?"
"I want nothing," he said. "I'm merely observing. But the moment you touched the anchor… You confirmed it."
"Confirmed what?"
"That your fate is accelerating."
He turned—and behind him, the void fractured.
Pieces of reality shattered like glass, revealing a thousand versions of me.
Each one worse than the last.
One stood on a mountain of bones, hands coated in blood. Another floated above a ruined Earth, wreathed in anti-light. A third sat on a throne of metal and wires, with Aaliah's hollow body frozen beside him.
"I won't let that happen," I said.
Chrono smirked. "You already are."
A jolt of energy snapped me back.
I collapsed onto the shelter floor, coughing violently. Blood flecked my palm.
Chase was already beside me, tablet beeping like a dying bird.
"You were gone for almost two minutes," he said. "Unresponsive. Pulse erratic."
I wiped my mouth and stood, wobbling slightly.
"The sphere—it's drawing me in. Using me. Like a beacon."
"And Aaliah?"
"She's using it, too. To reach me. But there's a cost."
"What kind of cost?" Maddie asked, helping Rev to his feet.
I met their eyes.
"It's feeding the Dark Nexus."
The room went quiet.
Even the sphere dimmed for a moment.
Then Jacob turned slowly to Chase. "Can we move it?"
Chase shook his head. "It's bonded to the substructure. Removing it could destabilize the whole shelter."
"Then we reinforce the chamber, lock it down, and get the survivors out," Jacob said.
"And after that?" Maddie asked.
"We go after Aaliah," I said.
"But you're not stable," Chase warned. "That thing—it's accelerating your deterioration."
"I don't care."
Maddie's voice was soft. "You're willing to burn for her?"
"Yes," I said without hesitation. "If that's what it takes."
Booker stirred beside us.
His eyes opened—and they glowed a dim red.
But his voice, soft and shaking, was still his own.
"She's calling me, too."
Everyone turned.
Booker sat up, shivering. "I saw her… in a dream. She told me to find the roots. The first Nexus."
Chase turned pale. "No…"
"What?" I asked.
"There isn't just one Nexus," Chase whispered. "There were prototypes. The original site—off-grid, sealed decades ago. If that's where they're holding her…"
He didn't need to finish the sentence.
Then the lights cut out completely.
And the shelter plunged into blackness.
Sirens whirred.
A new frequency lit up the air.
Not Nullwave.
Not Chrono.
Something worse.
I turned to the group.
"We need to move."
And from the shadows, the sphere pulsed one last time—
Projecting a faint, glitching hologram.
A single word flickered on the surface.
"Welcome, Grand Calculus."