The silence in the VTOL on the return journey was a physical weight. It was not the quiet of exhaustion, but the grim, heavy silence that follows a brush with death and the witnessing of true horror.
Arthur sat with his leg stretched out, the deep gash from Shifter's blade now sealed with a glowing medi-gel patch that stung with a cold intensity. The physical pain was a minor distraction. His mind was replaying the battle on a loop: the feeling of the catwalk exploding beneath his feet, the searing feedback of the fire-whip in his hands, Golem's scream of agony.
He had crossed a line. He had moved from defense to brutal, offensive power. And a part of him, a part that terrified the boy he used to be, had reveled in it. The Molten Core had responded not with chaotic rage, but with a fierce, primal satisfaction.
Across from him, Merrill was curled in on himself, his form still struggling to fully coalesce after the deep cut. Josefa stared out the window into the dark, her usual playful energy utterly absent, replaced by a deep sorrow from the empathic backlash of the laboratory's suffering. Henry was silently running diagnostics on his gear, but his hands were trembling faintly. Warner was uncharacteristically still, the adrenaline crash leaving him hollow.
Only Serena seemed unbent, but even her posture was rigid with a tension that hadn't been there before. She was studying Arthur, her star-pupiled eyes analytical.
"Your new applications were effective," she stated, her voice cutting through the hum of the engines. It wasn't praise; it was an assessment. "The explosive concussive force and the focused plasma lash are significant additions to our tactical options."
"They were necessary," Arthur replied, his voice rough. He didn't meet her gaze, instead looking at his hands. The Ignis-Carbide gloves were scorched.
"Were they?" Henry asked quietly, not looking up from his data-slate. "The level of force you employed against 'Golem' was near-crippling. The objective was extraction and intelligence, not execution."
"He was going to kill us!" Warner snapped, a flicker of his old fire returning. "Arthur saved our backsides in there!"
"And in doing so, he may have played directly into Vex's hands," Serena countered coolly. "Vex said he was collecting data. You gave him a spectacular show, Caldera. He now has a detailed read on your offensive capabilities. He will engineer his next Chimeras specifically to counter them."
The truth of her words hit Arthur like a physical blow. In his desperation to protect his team, he might have made them all more vulnerable. He had been so focused on the immediate threat that he'd ignored the larger, more calculating enemy.
"He was going to kill us," Arthur repeated Warner's words, but with less conviction. The pragmatic part of his brain, the part that had always been his guide, was now siding with Serena. He had been reckless.
"The mission was a tactical failure," Serena declared, her tone final. "We acquired minimal data on the central systems, we did not secure Dr. Vex, and we failed to extract any of the victims. The only objective we achieved was confirming the project's existence and surviving the encounter."
The words hung in the air, a bitter admission of defeat.
When the VTOL landed in the Aerie's hangar, the team disembarked like ghosts. There were no words of encouragement, no plans to debrief. They simply moved towards the residential sector, each carrying their own private shock.
As Arthur limped towards his room, a chime echoed from the data-slate on his wrist. It was a priority alert from Marcellus Gears.
REPORT TO MEDBAY FOR FULL BIO-SCAN. IMMEDIATELY. VEX'S LAB CONTAINED UNKNOWN PATHOGENS. QUARANTINE PROTOCOLS INITIATED.
A new layer of ice settled in his gut. Pathogens. They hadn't just been fighting monsters; they'd been walking through a plague ward.
He changed direction towards the medbay, the sterile white halls feeling more like a prison than ever. As he walked, he reached out with his mind, not with power, but with a desperate, yearning thought towards the one anchor he had left in the world. He pushed a feeling through the void, not of words, but of a simple, aching need. Kirche.
He couldn't feel her. The distance, the mountain, the dampening fields of the base—they all conspired to block the connection. He was alone with the echo of screams and the scent of his own scorched gloves.
Lying on the bio-scanner bed, surrounded by humming machines, Arthur closed his eyes. He had learned to create explosions. He had learned to bend fire. But the cost of that knowledge was a new, chilling fear. The fear that in learning to control the monster, he was becoming a more valuable prize for a far greater monster. And the fear that the woman he loved, and the future they had created, were now further away than ever.