Juno was upside down when Liam found her.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
She was hanging from the ceiling of the mobile medbay by her legs, tangled in a harness meant for cargo lifters, holding a stolen energy drink in one hand and a diagnostics tablet in the other.
"Don't ask," she said, seeing the look on his face.
"I wasn't going to."
"Yes, you were. You've got the 'Why is my teammate a feral raccoon?' look again."
"You broke into Rhea's tech lab again, didn't you?"
"She told me not to touch anything." Juno took a loud sip. "So I touched everything."
Liam sighed and leaned against the wall. The medbay swayed gently as the dropship lifted off from Blackreach, bound for the next site. Outside the reinforced glass, night stretched endless and cold. Another Catalyst corpse had surfaced—this time, a teenage girl with burns on her spine and a glowing sigil etched into her skull.
Third one this week.
Nova sat silently across the room, her eyes on a data pad but her mind galaxies away. Rhea was off analyzing the body already, and Kairo hadn't said more than ten words since boarding. Liam figured that was either normal… or a sign of a massive impending betrayal.
Could go either way.
"You're being broody," Juno said, finally flipping herself down to the floor with an acrobatic twist that made Liam feel tired just watching it. "Stop being broody. You're messing with the aesthetic."
"I've got a second consciousness living in my head and nobody will tell me why," Liam said. "I think I'm allowed some brooding."
"Fine, fine. But can you at least do it shirtless next time? You get more sympathy that way."
"Juno."
"Hey, I'm just saying. Trauma is hot when it has abs."
Before Liam could respond with something mature like "I hope you get electrocuted by your own earbuds"the intercom crackled.
Rhea's voice came through, flat and clinical. "We've got a match. The Vector girl's DNA is a 98.7% overlap with Liam."
Nova looked up sharply. "What?"
Juno froze. "Wait. Like sibling overlap?"
"No," Rhea replied. "Closer. Like... mirrored cell lines. Lab-grown match."
Liam sat up straight. "Are you saying I have a clone?"
"No," Rhea said. "I'm saying you were the clone."
The medbay went dead silent.
Liam stared at the comm as if it had personally betrayed him.
"You want to repeat that?"
Rhea didn't answer. Instead, she sent a direct data stream to Nova's pad. Nova's eyes scanned it rapidly, her lips parting as she whispered, "Project HALDRAN_01..."
Liam stood. "That's Vex Haldran's name."
Kairo's voice came through, low and steady. "It's more than a name. It's the project that created you."
A long pause.
Juno blinked. "So… you're saying Liam is a genetically engineered son of the biggest war criminal in modern history?"
Rhea responded, "Technically, he's the perfected version. A Catalyst weapon designed from Apex DNA fragments. Vex's fragments."
Liam blinked, sat back down, and rubbed his temples. "Great. I'm basically a genetically enhanced meat burrito filled with daddy issues."
"High-grade meat burrito," Juno said helpfully. "With trauma sauce."
Nova stood up, crossing to him slowly. "You didn't know."
"Of course I didn't know," he snapped. "I thought I was just… fast. Strong. Unlucky. Not a walking science project."
Her eyes softened, and she reached for his hand.
But the moment her skin touched his, something rippled through him.
A surge.
A spike of heat, light, sound. His vision fractured into static.
And then everything went blue.
He was floating.
Weightless.
Alone.
A voice whispered in his head not his voice, not the second heartbeat either.
Just a single phrase, full of ancient pressure and godlike certainty:
"You are not the end, Liam. You are the trigger."
Then he was back.
Gasping, drenched in sweat, on the floor of the medbay. Everyone staring at him like he'd just given birth to a plasma grenade.
Juno blinked. "So, uh… not a panic attack then."
Nova knelt beside him, her hand hovering, not daring to touch him again.
Liam met her eyes and managed a strained smile.
"I think I need a refund on my life."
"Too late," Kairo said, stepping in from the hallway, holding a glowing chip between two fingers. "We've all been upgraded to hell."
Liam looked at the chip, looked at Nova, then looked out the window at the dark sky.
Another body. Another lie. Another piece of him unraveling.
He didn't know where it ended.
But something was coming.
And it had his face.