Kiran dragged himself into a small, abandoned storage room within the sprawling network of tunnels beneath the city. He was exhausted, every muscle screaming, the air thick with dust and the constant, unnerving hum of unseen machinery. He slumped against a cold, metal pipe, trying to catch his breath. The Alpha units were still out there, their presence a cold knot of dread in his stomach, but he'd bought himself a few moments of respite.
The "seed" within him throbbed, a relentless, living pulse. It wasn't just a power source now; it felt like a direct line to something else, something deeply unsettling. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to focus, to calm the frantic beating of his heart. And then, it came. A wave of profound weariness, followed by a raw, desperate fear that wasn't his own. It was a crushing sense of being trapped, of struggling against an invisible force that kept him still. He saw a flash of gleaming metal, heard the faint, high-pitched whine of machines, and tasted something cold and metallic – not blood, but a deep, artificial chill.
Liam.
It was Liam's experience. The "seed," the "tether" as the Weavers might call it, was giving him direct, raw echoes of his brother's captivity, his suffering. It was agonizing, seeing, feeling, what Liam endured. The pain, the mental exhaustion, the constant, invisible pull of whatever was holding him. It was a nightmare shared, a terrible intimacy forced upon them by Dr. Koval.
Kiran opened his eyes, a single tear tracing a path through the grime on his cheek. The weariness in his own body was nothing compared to Liam's. This wasn't just about escape anymore. It was about dismantling Koval's entire twisted vision. He knew, with a certainty that chilled him, that Liam was somehow still fighting, even from within that void. And that desperate, silent resistance resonated with the seed, forging a new, unbreakable resolve within Kiran. He would not just survive; he would break the chains that bound them both.