The corridors of Sector Delta never truly slept. Even now—long past the hour when most people would collapse into beds—the halls buzzed with the hum of generators, the shuffle of boots, the occasional murmur of voices behind steel doors. The whole place carried the restless pulse of a heart that never stopped beating.
Dani walked in silence, Reese trailing at her side. The boy matched her stride in the way soldiers do when they're not sure if they belong—half eager, half uncertain. She noticed the way his shoulders tensed each time a squad of operatives brushed past, the way his eyes darted toward her as though gauging if he should speak.
"Something on your mind?" she asked at last, her voice flat but not unkind.
Reese scratched the back of his neck. "Just… everything. The mission, the cult, that thing in the sphere. None of it feels real. Like we stepped out of the world and into…" He trailed off, gesturing vaguely.
"Hell?" Dani supplied, smirking without humor.
Reese chuckled nervously. "Something like that."
They turned a corner into a quieter wing. Here, the fluorescent lights flickered intermittently, buzzing faintly with age. Dani stopped near a reinforced observation window. On the other side was nothing but a concrete wall, but she still checked her perimeter instinctively, scanning shadows. Old habits. She leaned against the frame, letting out a long breath.
"Reese," she said, tone shifting, lower now, "you want to learn something? Something they won't print in the manuals?"
His eyes widened. "Yes, ma'am."
Dani shook her head, tired smile tugging at her lips. "Don't 'ma'am' me. I'm not your CO."
"Right. Sorry, Dani."
She watched him a long moment, then tilted her head toward the window as if confiding a secret to the reflection instead of him. "Not all anomalies come from other realities. Some…" Her jaw flexed. "…were people. Once."
Reese blinked. "People?"
"Yeah." Dani tapped the wall lightly, each word measured. "People don't just pop out like that. They get bent. Warped. Sometimes it's slow—like rust eating through metal. Sometimes it's instant. An anomaly brushes against a mind that can't hold it, and suddenly they're something else."
She let the thought hang before continuing, quieter: "Could be corruption, like a sickness you catch and never shake. Could be they slipped between realities and came back… wrong. Or maybe they just believed too hard in something that didn't want them to survive the believing."
Her jaw tightened. "Doesn't matter how it starts. Once it takes root, the person's still in there somewhere, but twisted into something you can't pull free. That's what we fought in the pit. Not a monster born that way. A person… rearranged until there's no going back."
Silence hung. Reese's lips parted, but no words came. He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers like he wasn't sure they were still his.
Dani softened—not much, but enough. "Scary thought, isn't it?"
"Yeah," he admitted, voice barely above a whisper.
For a moment, the hum of Sector Delta was all that filled the air. Then Dani exhaled sharply, breaking the tension. "You're what, seventeen?"
Reese hesitated, chewing on the inside of his cheek. "…Sixteen."
The words landed like a hammer. Dani's head snapped toward him. "Sixteen?"
He nodded, sheepish, eyes sliding to the floor.
"Christ," she muttered. A bitter laugh bubbled from her throat before she could stop it. "You're a kid."
"I can fight," Reese said quickly, defensive. "I've trained. I passed every exam they gave me. I'm not here to impress anyone, I just… I want to do something that matters."
Her expression softened again, but in a different way this time. Less tired, more… pained. She saw the rawness in his words, the unshaped edge of someone still figuring out who they were. Slowly, she crouched so her eyes leveled with his.
"Tell me something, Reese. Your father… he a good man?"
The boy blinked, caught off guard by the question. "Yeah. Yeah, he is. Stricter than most, but… good. He listens, even when he's tired. Doesn't always show it, but I know he cares."
Dani studied him, then looked away, jaw working. A rare vulnerability crept into her voice as she whispered, "Good. That's… good."
Reese tilted his head. "Why do you ask?"
"Because fathers like that are rare." Dani said simply, her gaze distant.
For a moment, the silence between them wasn't heavy—it was steady, grounding. Dani pulled herself back to her feet, brushing off her knees. She gave Reese a tired smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Alright, lesson number two." She nodded toward his belt, where the hilt of a Refractor Blade rested. "Show me you can draw that without losing a finger, and maybe—just maybe—you'll live long enough to complain about your dad's lectures."
Reese grinned nervously but obeyed, fumbling with the weapon. Dani shook her head, chuckling under her breath, exhaustion bleeding through but not fully dulling her warmth.
"Relax, kid. You'll get there. You've got time."
The words were quiet, almost meant for herself as much as for him.
She motioned toward the Refractor Blade again. "Alright. Show me you can draw it."
Reese obeyed, pulling the hilt with an exaggerated care that made Dani stifle a laugh. The blade shimmered into existence with a low hum, catching pale light on its edge.
"Not bad," she said, crossing her arms. "Now—again. Faster."
He tried. Too fast this time. The blade flickered into being, skimmed his sleeve, and fizzled dangerously close to his arm.
Dani winced. "You keep that up and you'll lop your own elbow off."
Reese blinked at her, dead serious. "Could you even fight without an elbow?"
Dani stared at him, lips parting in disbelief. "That… was not the point of the warning."
But Reese was already frowning in thought, lowering the blade. "I mean, you could brace a rifle against your shoulder, but without that joint's rotation, melee would be shot. You'd have to retrain your stance completely. Maybe rely on one side only…"
"Kid," Dani cut in, pinching the bridge of her nose, "please don't invent hypothetical amputation scenarios while holding a live blade."
Reese flushed. "Right. Sorry." He shut the blade down, clipping the hilt back to his belt. Then, almost instantly, his eyes flicked to the weapon rack behind her. "Why do we still stock Archivist Lances if they're so dangerous? Wouldn't it be safer to keep them sealed until deployment?"
Dani raised a brow. "Because sometimes 'safer' means useless. You'll learn that quick."
But Reese's face lit with that earnest curiosity again, leaning slightly forward. "So it's like calculated danger? You keep them ready because… sometimes being ready is more important than being safe?"
Dani smirked, half-admiring his angle. "Yeah. Something like that."
His expression softened then, tilting his head. "That's kind of you, too, isn't it?"
She blinked. "…What?"
"You," Reese said simply. "You're dangerous to be around. But people keep you close because you're the one who's ready. Even when it costs you."
The words caught her off guard. Dani's mouth opened, then shut again. Her smirk faltered, replaced with a flicker of something quieter. She turned away, grabbing another blade from the rack to mask it.
"You think too much for your own good, kid."
"I think just enough," he replied with surprising firmness. "If no one else asks, how do we learn anything?"
The earnestness in his tone disarmed her more than any weapon could.
For a few beats, the only sound was the hum of the lights and the faint metallic ring of Dani adjusting her blade. Then Reese spoke again, softer this time. "That cultist today… the one who changed. Did it hurt?"
Dani froze. She hadn't expected the question. Not from him.
"Yes," she admitted finally, her voice low, heavy. "More than he could scream about."
Reese's brow furrowed. He didn't recoil or harden like most operatives might have. Instead, he stepped a fraction closer, his voice careful but unafraid. "Then maybe we should figure out how to stop that from happening again. Not just… fight them after."
His sincerity landed with a weight Dani hadn't braced for. She looked at him—really looked. Sixteen. Barely old enough to drive. And yet he stood there, eyes steady, not hiding behind bravado or anger. Just… earnest determination.
For the first time that night, Dani smiled without exhaustion pulling it down. "You've got a good heart, Reese. Don't let this place grind it out of you."
He tilted his head, curious again. "Is that a promise?"
She chuckled, shaking her head. "No. That's your job."
It was then the door shuddered with a distant vibration. Somewhere in the hall, a stack of binders toppled with a heavy thud. The sound snapped through the sparring chamber like a gunshot.
Reese startled, lowering his blade. "What was that—?"
"Dammit," Dani muttered, lowering her weapon and stepping toward the folders. Reese followed, curiosity overriding his exhaustion.
The corridor outside was dimmer, strip lights casting long sterile lines over file carts stacked along the wall. One had tipped, a half-dozen manila folders spilled wide across the floor. Dani crouched, gathering them quickly. The stamped covers looked familiar—Delta's internal markings, clean serif font, official seals. She began stacking them into order when a header froze her hand mid-motion.
As she flipped one open, her breath caught slightly. The header was bold, official, and crisp: Project RIFTWALK.
She froze, reading silently, with her student looking curiously over her shoulder.
PROJECT RIFTWALK
Project RIFTWALKPurpose: A weapons research initiative under Sector Delta, attempting to stabilize—or exploit—rift phenomena where reality frays into overlapping layers.
Core Idea: Harness sigil-based ballistics that can force anomalies to "walk the rift"—essentially ejecting or displacing them into adjacent layers of unreality, instead of just destroying them.
Implication: These weapons are anti-manifestation in nature. They don't just shoot matter, they shoot concepts wrapped in ritual geometry. The adhesive sigil shell loaded is one such round—meant to "stick" to an anomaly and drag it into another fold.
Her breath caught. She muttered under her breath, almost unconsciously, "These… these are the same as mine."
Reese, crouched beside her, tilted his head. "Yours? Like… the ones you use in the field?"
Dani didn't answer immediately, just tapped the edge of the folder as if trying to think her way through it. She remembered the small flashes of light she'd drawn in the alley, the symbols she etched on the windows, the sigils she had traced in the dust and the cracks of abandoned buildings. All of it, now, matched what the document described: "adhesive sigil shells," "conceptual displacement," "rift manipulation."
She swallowed, a dry, tight sensation at the back of her throat. "So… somehow," she murmured, voice low, "I'm tied to this. Whether I know it or not."