Recovery took the rest of Day Four.
Kael's System-enhanced regeneration was faster than a normal human's, but "faster" was relative when you had three broken ribs and a mild concussion. He spent the afternoon on Lena's couch, pretending to watch the news while his body knitted itself back together.
Lena, to her credit, didn't ask why he looked like he'd been hit by a bus. She just made soup — a new batch, properly cooked this time — and sat beside him with a blanket and a pointed silence that communicated I know you're not telling me everything and I am keeping score louder than any interrogation.
By evening, the ribs had downgraded from 'broken' to 'aggressively sore.' Good enough.
His phone buzzed. Sera.
"Decoded the coordinates. Come to Grounded tomorrow. 7 AM. Bring Riven. This is big."
Kael stared at the message and felt the familiar tension between urgency and exhaustion. In his first life, he'd run himself into the ground during the first month, pushing too hard, sleeping too little, until his body had simply shut down during a dungeon and Riven had to carry him out.
He wasn't going to repeat that mistake.
"I'm going to bed." He turned to Lena.
"It's 7 PM." She looked at him like he'd announced he was joining the circus.
"I'm tired."
"You never go to bed before midnight. Even when you were in college, you'd stay up reading until — Kael, are you okay?"
"I'm trying something new. Taking care of myself. Weird, right?" He paused in the hallway.
"Deeply weird. Alarmingly weird. Should I be concerned?"
"Only if I start eating vegetables voluntarily." He smiled.
He slept for eleven hours. It was the deepest sleep he'd had in either lifetime.
Day Five. Grounded coffee shop. 7 AM.
Sera had transformed the corner booth into a command center. Her phone was connected to a tablet via a cable that definitely wasn't consumer electronics, and both screens displayed a world map with three glowing points marked in red.
Riven arrived at 7:03, carrying four coffees and a bag of pastries. He distributed them without being asked. Golden retriever, Kael thought. Even his logistics are instinctively generous.
"The three coordinate sets from Dr. Vasquez's fragment. I've cross-referenced them with geographic databases, satellite imagery, and Rift emergence patterns." Sera pulled up the map.
She pointed to the first marker — a location in central Europe.
"Coordinate one: 48.2082 N, 16.3738 E. Vienna, Austria. Specifically, a subterranean chamber beneath the Hofburg Palace. According to historical records, the chamber was sealed in 1947 and hasn't been opened since."
"Vienna. That's Crimson Vanguard territory in my first timeline. They controlled most of Central Europe by Month Six." Kael's eyebrows rose.
"Coordinate two."
She pointed to the second marker — a location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
"2.1833 N, 157.3167 W. That's approximately 600 kilometers north-northeast of the Spire."
"The Spire? The giant creepy tower that appeared in the ocean?" Riven nearly choked on his pastry.
"Near it. Not on it. Whatever's at this coordinate is underwater — deep underwater. 4,000 meters, based on bathymetric data."
"So we'd need a submarine or a very good lung capacity."
"Coordinate three." Sera ignored Riven's comment.
She pointed to the third marker. The room went quiet.
The third coordinate was in their city. Not on the outskirts. Not in the industrial district. Dead center of the metropolitan area, in the middle of residential district 4.
"31.2304 N, 121.4737 E. The Meridian Tower apartments. Floor 42." Sera's voice was carefully neutral.
"That's... twelve blocks from here." Riven set down his coffee.
"Floor 42 of Meridian Tower. What's there?" Kael stared at the map point.
"Residential units. Nothing special in public records. But when I ran the address against the early Awakened database the government started compiling yesterday, I got a hit."
She pulled up a file on her tablet.
"The registered resident of Unit 4217, Meridian Tower, Floor 42, is one Dr. Marcus Webb. Age 61. Retired professor of quantum mechanics from MIT. He relocated here eight months ago for reasons that aren't listed in any public database."
"" Kael felt the Paradox Mark pulse — not the hostile burn of System interference, but something softer. Recognition.
"Does the name mean anything to you? From your first timeline?"
Kael searched his memories. Dr. Marcus Webb. MIT. Quantum mechanics.
Nothing. In ten years of the Awakening, he'd never heard that name. Which meant either Webb had died early — millions had — or he'd existed so far below the radar that even the intelligence networks had missed him.
"No. But Dr. Vasquez was a physicist at CERN. If she left coordinates pointing to another physicist..."
"She was building a network. Before she was sent back, before she failed — she planted clues for the next Regressor. Breadcrumbs." Riven connected the dots.
"And one of those breadcrumbs is twelve blocks away." Sera nodded.
Kael stood up.
"Then that's where we go first."
"I love a good field trip." Riven grabbed his coffee and pastries.
"We should be careful. If the System is monitoring the Paradox Mark, it'll flag any movement toward Vasquez's coordinates." Sera packed up her equipment with practiced efficiency.
"It will. But we can't wait. The Anomaly Hunter authorization could come through any day. We need every advantage before it arrives."
They left the coffee shop at 7:32 AM, walking through a city that was slowly, painfully adapting to its new reality. Military vehicles patrolled the streets. Volunteers distributed emergency supplies. A Rift shimmer appeared three blocks north and was immediately surrounded by a cordon of soldiers who looked barely older than Riven.
The world was changing. And somewhere in a high-rise apartment twelve blocks away, a retired physicist might hold a piece of the puzzle that could save it.
[End of Chapter 13]
Next Chapter: Kael meets Dr. Marcus Webb — and discovers that not all of the System's secrets are hidden in dungeons. Some are hiding in plain sight.