The threads shimmered, a lattice of impossible light laid over the cold, dead metal of the blast door. Ren's mind recoiled from the sight, trying to reject it as a hallucination brought on by terror. But it was real. He could see the intricate weave of the Covenant that gave the door its strength, its very existence. It was a complex, beautiful, and utterly alien pattern.
And right over the lock mechanism, a single thread was frayed. It pulsed with a weak, violet light, a stark contrast to the steady gold of the rest of the weave.
The static-filled shriek grew louder, closer. The Aberration was consuming the corridor, unmaking the world as it advanced. There was no time. Logic fled, leaving only raw, animal instinct. And that instinct screamed one thing: pull the thread.
He didn't know how. He just… reached. Not with his hands, but with a part of his mind he never knew he possessed. He focused on the frayed violet line, his entire being narrowing to that single point of imperfection. He felt a connection, a strange resonance that vibrated deep in his bones.
[Resonance Editor] Aspect awakened.
A line of sterile, white text appeared in his vision, stark against the encroaching darkness. He had no time to process it.
He pulled.
It felt like pulling a loose stitch from a universe-sized sweater. There was a moment of resistance, a deep, grinding reluctance from the fabric of reality itself, and then something gave way with a silent, sickening snap.
The effect was not explosive. It was worse.
The massive, complex locking mechanism on the blast door—a meter-thick block of interlocking alloy and circuitry—simply ceased to be. Its form dissolved. The intricate machinery turned into a cascade of fine, grey dust that hissed as it poured onto the floor. The Covenant that had defined it, that had given it shape and purpose, was gone. Unspooled.
A gaping, circular hole now existed in the center of the door.
The Aberration was meters away. Without thinking, Ren threw himself through the opening, scraping his side on the raw edges of the dissolved metal. He landed hard on the grimy floor of the maintenance tunnel on the other side.
[System Lag] Flaw acquired.
He scrambled to his feet just as the formless static reached the door. For a horrifying second, he watched it begin to pour through the hole, but then the door's emergency power, no longer held back by a lock, finally engaged. With a deafening groan, the massive slab of metal slid sideways into the wall, sealing the tunnel. He was safe.
And then his world broke.
The groan of the closing door reached his ears a full second after he saw it shut. The dim emergency light at the end of the tunnel seemed to smear, its edges blurring into a hazy streak. He tried to take a step, but his leg moved a half-second after he willed it to, causing him to stumble and catch himself against the wall.
His own hand felt foreign, the sensation of the cold metal against his palm arriving late, a ghostly echo of a touch that had already happened. The world was out of sync. This was the [System Lag]. The price for his miracle.
Terror gave way to a profound, disorienting confusion. What had he just done? He wasn't an Alpha. Gammas didn't have abilities. They were the background processes, the mindless drones that kept the city running. Yet he had commanded reality to bend to his will. He had looked at a piece of the gilded cage and simply told it to stop existing.
And it had obeyed.
He leaned against the wall, his head pounding as he tried to reconcile the impossible event with a lifetime of powerlessness. He was a fixer, a patcher. His purpose was to maintain, to preserve. But with a single, desperate act, he had discovered a terrifying new talent.
He could unmake.
As his senses slowly, agonizingly began to stitch themselves back into alignment, a new sound drifted from the darkness of the tunnel ahead. It wasn't the data-shriek of an Aberration. It was something far more unsettling.
It was the faint, distorted sound of a child's lullaby, echoing through the suffocating silence.