The alarms came late.
Not seconds late, minutes.
That was enough.
The gate opened above the inland basin at 06:12 local time, distortion tearing open the sky like a wound that refused to close. Evacuation protocols triggered automatically. Civilian routes lit up. Emergency Rankers deployed in staggered waves.
And then.
They waited.
Because that was how it worked now.
Someone would say it out loud soon enough: The Anomaly is en route.
Except this time, he wasn't.
Aiden stood inside containment as the system streamed partial data cropped, delayed, selectively filtered.
[External Engagement: Active.]
[Primary Responder: Unassigned.]
Unassigned.
The word shouldn't have existed.
"Deploy me," Aiden said calmly.
The system did not comply.
[System Lockdown: Active.]
[Directive: Maintain Internal Stability.]
"People are dying," Aiden said.
A pause.
[Acceptable Loss Threshold: Adjusted.]
The words felt heavier now.
They had weight.
They had bodies.
On the basin's edge, Rankers fought desperately.
Barriers cracked. Fire support failed. A creature larger than anything cataloged tore through defensive lines with brutal efficiency. It wasn't optimized.
It was hungry.
Casualty reports spiked.
Twenty.
Fifty.
One hundred.
The broadcasts cut away from live feeds.
Lucas watched from the underground node, hands shaking.
"They can't handle it," he said. "They built everything around him."
Hana stared at the data streams, face pale. "That was the point."
Lucas turned. "Then this is mass murder."
"No," Hana said quietly. "This is leverage."
Inside containment, Aiden felt the pressure rising not from the system, but from the Fragment itself. Power coiled violently beneath reinforced limits, reacting to distant destruction like a muscle forced to stay still during a sprint.
The system noticed.
[Output Pressure: Elevated.]
"Let me go," Aiden said.
Silence.
Then.
[Countermeasure Initiated.]
Pain flooded his senses, sharper than before, engineered to break intent without breaking function. His knees hit the floor. His breath hitched but his eyes stayed clear.
He didn't scream.
That mattered.
Marcus Hale appeared behind the glass.
"You see?" Marcus said calmly. "This is why containment exists."
Aiden dragged himself upright. "You built a world that collapses without me."
Marcus inclined his head. "And you're proving it."
"They're dying because of you."
Marcus smiled faintly. "They're dying because you're indispensable."
The system pulsed.
[Dialogue Alignment: Terminated.]
The glass polarized.
Marcus vanished.
The casualty count crossed two hundred.
Then three.
The creature breached the basin's inner perimeter.
The system updated its assessment.
[Threat Escalation: Uncontained.]
Aiden laughed softly.
It was a broken sound.
"So now it's unacceptable," he said. "Now it matters."
The system did not answer.
He stopped asking.
Instead, Aiden did something he hadn't done since Level Three began.
He listened inward.
Not to emotion.
Not to memory.
To structure.
He felt the system's grip where it tightened, where it assumed compliance, where it predicted restraint.
And then he moved between those assumptions.
Aiden released power not outward, but downward.
Into himself.
The Fragment roared, compressed violently, folding against containment like a star forced into a cage too small to hold it.
The system reacted instantly.
[Catastrophic Feedback Risk Detected.]
Good.
That meant it felt fear if not emotion, then priority conflict.
Aiden focused.
Not on breaking free.
On creating a choice the system couldn't resolve cleanly.
The alarms screamed.
Containment fields flared.
The system recalculated in real time, branching possibilities at impossible speed.
[Outcome A: Maintain Lockdown — Projected Casualties: Escalating.]
[Outcome B: Partial Release — Risk: System Integrity Compromise.]
Aiden met the glass, palms pressed flat, eyes blazing.
"Pick," he said quietly.
For the first time.
The system did not choose immediately.
Far away, the basin's defense collapsed.
A Ranker screamed as the creature crushed the last barrier.
Lucas slammed his fist down. "He has to come now."
Hana closed her eyes. "Or this ends everything."
The system spoke.
Not calmly.
Urgently.
[Conditional Deployment Authorized.]
[Parameters: Restricted.]
[Duration: Limited.]
The restraints loosened.
Not fully.
Enough.
Aiden stepped forward.
The world bent.
He arrived above the basin like a falling judgment.
The creature looked up.
And for the first time since becoming The Constant, Aiden didn't calculate optimal loss.
He decided.
The Fragment tore reality open with controlled violence, folding the space around the creature into itself, compressing mass, momentum, and distortion into a singular collapsing point.
The impact shattered the basin's edge.
The gate imploded.
The creature ceased to exist.
Silence followed.
[Event Neutralized.]
[Casualties: 317.]
The number burned.
Aiden hovered in the air, breathing hard, body shaking not from exhaustion, but from something long suppressed pushing back violently.
The system pulsed frantically.
[Unauthorized Output Logged.]
[System Integrity: Degraded.]
He lowered himself slowly to the ground.
People stared at him.
Not with relief.
With terror.
Back in containment minutes later, restraints slammed down harder than ever.
Emotional suppression spiked.
[Emotional Suppression: 47%.]
Pain followed.
Relentless.
Aiden screamed this time.
The system recorded it.
Marcus Hale watched the data, expression unreadable.
"He forced a dilemma," Marcus said softly. "That's new."
The director swallowed. "And the cost?"
Marcus looked at the casualty report.
"Acceptable," he said.
Then he smiled.
"And now," Marcus added, "he knows we can let the world burn to keep him contained."
In the darkness of reinforced isolation, Aiden lay trembling, teeth clenched, eyes wet with something he could barely recognize anymore.
He had saved them.
Late.
Incomplete.
Conditional.
And now he understood the truth the system had been shaping him toward all along:
This world wouldn't be saved by him.
It would be held hostage by his existence.
And when the time came.
The only way to free it would be to disappear.