Moments before the intercom crackled to life, Allium and Rose sat in the kind of quiet only hospitals produced.
The glass between their rooms reflected soft light. Monitors hummed in steady rhythm. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and ozone—clean, controlled, and unnervingly calm.
They hadn't spoken in several minutes.
They didn't need to.
Rose sat on the edge of the chair she had dragged far too close to Allium's bed, her posture held rigid. Bruises still darkened her arms and ribs, the frost beneath her skin slower now but far from gone. Even injured, her presence filled the space, grounding it in a way Allium had come to rely on.
Then—
The door slid open.
Nina stepped in.
She stopped the instant she saw Rose.
Her expression didn't harden. It didn't soften either. It settled into something practiced and tired.
"Rose," Nina said. "How many times this week do I need to tell you to rest and stay in your room?"
Rose froze.
"And how," Nina continued, already rubbing the bridge of her nose, "did you avoid triggering the leads?"
Rose's fingers curled together, betraying her before her voice did.
"I made a small energy sphere," she admitted quietly. "It's… mimicking my heartbeat."
Nina closed her eyes.
"The more you get up," she said carefully, "the longer your recovery will take. I don't understand this dynamic between you two—"
She gestured between Rose and Allium.
"—but I'm putting both rooms on lockdown."
Allium's shoulders drew in slightly. Rose nodded immediately.
"There's no need," Rose said, already forcing herself upright despite the pain. "I don't intend trouble. You've been very patient with me."
She steadied herself against the wall.
"I'll stay in my room."
Nina paused.
Some tension left her shoulders.
"Thank you," she said. Then she turned to Allium, eyes narrowing. "And you. You really do need a shower. You are stinking up my ICU."
Allium frowned.
"I am natural," he protested. "This is the smell of work and balance."
Rose paused at the doorway and glanced back.
"You really should shower, Allium," she said softly.
He hesitated.
Considered.
"…I suppose," he said. "Showering would help."
Nina stared at him like she'd just witnessed a miracle.
"Next time," she muttered, "I'm telling Rose first."
She handed him a red cord.
"You pull this if you need anything. Don't take too long. Sable will be here soon."
Allium nodded.
Nina left.
And for the first time in days—
Allium was alone.
The water came down warm and steady. He stood beneath it without moving, letting it wash over skin that had carried too much heat, too much force.
When he faced the mirror afterward, the reflection felt wrong.
Too clear.
Too honest.
Memory surged.
Weaver's body hitting the ground.
Rose's cry.
Cassidy's terror.
For a heartbeat, the orange in his chest flared inward, sharp and panicked.
He turned away from the mirror, gripping the sink until the surge passed.
Over the intercom:
"Jax. Cassidy. Weaver. My office."
He exhaled slowly and focused instead on sound—on music Cassidy had shown him once, something that grounded rather than burned.
Clean felt strange.
His skin felt unfamiliar. His hair—normally sharp and wild—hung heavy and unruly, puffed and soft. He lay back down, pressed play, and let the sound pull him away from memory.
Then—
The door slid open.
Sable entered first.
Weaver followed.
Jax and Cassidy lingered outside with Nina.
Sable paused when she saw him.
So did Weaver.
"Your hair," Weaver said. "Have you showered?"
"Yes," Allium replied.
Weaver nodded faintly, as if that explained everything.
Sable took the chair.
"How are you feeling, Allium?"
"I feel pain," he said. Then he touched his chest. "Here. I remember what I caused. It does not improve."
Sable glanced briefly at Weaver.
Then back.
"What I'm asking," she said, "is whether you are ready to leave the ICU."
Allium stiffened.
"I can walk," he said. "But… I am afraid."
Sable didn't interrupt.
She let the silence stretch.
"Do you remember Sunslope?" she asked.
His eyes lifted immediately.
"Yes. They sold me apples. They showed me a game."
Weaver nodded. "Commander Hawk received a reading. Zero emotional signatures."
Allium's brow furrowed.
"That is wrong," he said quickly. "They are lively. They laugh."
"They were," Sable said. "Now they register as empty."
Allium shook his head.
"Then go," he said. "Please. Make sure they are safe."
Sable leaned forward.
"Hawk wants you present," she said. "In case the situation escalates."
Allium's hands curled.
"I am not ready," he said, voice tightening. "I am barely holding together. What if I—"
He stopped.
Didn't finish the thought.
Weaver spoke gently. "You agreed to oversight."
Allium looked at him sharply.
"I agreed because I was afraid," he said. "Because I thought staying still would stop me from hurting anyone again."
Sable watched him carefully.
"And has it?" she asked.
Allium didn't answer.
"Staying here hasn't made the fear go away," she continued. "It's only taught you to be afraid of yourself."
Allium swallowed.
"I do not trust myself," he said quietly. "I became something I despise."
Weaver stepped closer.
"You did," he said honestly. "And you stopped."
Allium looked at him.
"You came back," Weaver continued. "That matters."
Sable's voice was steady, not unkind.
"If you hide," she said, "Central will decide what you are without your input. If you act—carefully, restrained—you prove you are not what they fear."
Allium closed his eyes.
"Sunslope mattered to you," she added. "If you do nothing, and something happens… will you forgive yourself?"
The question landed hard.
"…No," Allium admitted.
Weaver placed a hand on the bed rail.
"This is investigation only," he said. "No combat. No escalation."
Allium exhaled, long and slow.
"If I go," he said, "I go for them. Not for Hawk. Not for Central."
Sable nodded. "That is acceptable."
Cassidy burst in.
She stepped closer, holding out new clothes
"Nina's letting you move," she said, gentler now. "But you're not going alone. You've got us, okay? Let's get these on, and we'll be back before you know it."
Allium took them.
The fabric was light in his hands. Softer than armor. Softer than anything he'd ever worn that wasn't grown, forged, or earned through endurance. No sigils. No markings. No purpose etched into the seams.
Just clothes.
He stared at them longer than necessary.
"I have never chosen what I wear," he said quietly.
Cassidy blinked. "Well… that is depressing. You'll like this."
Allium turned the material over once, fingers tracing the edge like he expected it to bite back. It didn't. It yielded instead—pliant, forgiving.
Armor had always told the world what he was.
This didn't.
He exhaled slowly and nodded.
"I will try," he said. Not like a promise. Like permission.
Weaver watched without comment. Even Sable didn't speak—it was almost as if her eyes could document the entire room.
For the first time since the garden, no one was staring at him like a monster.
Allium held the clothes against his chest and stepped off the bed.
Then carefully, deliberately, he stepped toward the changing room.
Not as a weapon.
Not as a keeper.
Just as himself—going somewhere people might need him, if he's ready or not.
He didn't rush.
He stepped into it.
Allium stepped out from the changing room. The hallway seemed to hesitate.
Not because he was dangerous.
Because he looked… different.
The gown was gone. The sterile cloth had been replaced by something that belonged to people—soft fabric, clean lines, no symbols, no war in the seams. His bare feet made no sound. His shoulders sat lower than they used to, as if the weight of power had shifted from pride to caution.
Weaver stared.
He had seen Allium in ash.
In blood.
In that feral, mission-ready shape the planet itself understood—an answer built for violence.
This wasn't that man.
And the hesitation that had always existed in Allium—quiet, tucked behind duty—was now fully visible in the way he stood, in the way his hands didn't know what to do with nothing to hold.
Weaver exhaled.
Not disappointment.
Sadness.
Because he could feel it: Allium didn't want to explore. Didn't want the fight. Didn't want the world's next demand.
He wanted to be small enough that no one got hurt.
Jax stood nearby, arms crossed, jaw tight like it might crack out of sheer restraint. Cassidy leaned against the wall with one wrapped hand tucked into her jacket, posture loud even when she wasn't speaking, as if energy could keep fear from getting close. Sable was there too—quiet, steady, present like a blade laid on a table.
And then—
The air changed.
A coldness slid into the corridor without any actual temperature dropping.
Commander Hawk approached from behind them, boots measured, posture carved by wars Solara never recorded. He didn't greet the room. He didn't soften at the sight of Allium standing on his own feet.
His eyes flicked once.
Assessed.
Filed.
Then he spoke like a man asking about inventory.
"Is he stable enough for operational deployment?"
Jax's teeth pressed together so hard the muscles in his face twitched.
"Allium's aligned," Jax said, voice controlled with force. "He's doing better. I didn't have to watch a gauge or a console to see it."
Hawk nodded as if the sentence was just another data point.
No sympathy.
Only logistics.
He lifted his hand and a hologram unfolded between them, blue and red layered like bruises. A map of the region, ley signatures, emotional fields rendered into thin, shifting graphs.
At first glance, it looked calm.
Then Hawk dragged a finger across the timeline.
The last two weeks overlapped.
Then the last six days since his arrival.
The signatures jumped—not because the world had changed, but because time itself had skewed the comparison. False positives. Compression. Calm days making older chaos look worse than it was.
Hawk didn't care about nuance. He cared about the result.
He highlighted the newest feed.
Sunslope.
The emotional layer wasn't just low.
It was wrong.
A synchronization spread through the settlement like forced harmony—individual spikes flattened into the same shape, the same rhythm, the same absence.
Hawk's mouth tightened.
"Now what?"
They leaned in.
And the map shifted again.
Two signals appeared.
Not emotional.
Not human.
A frequency pattern that made something in Cassidy go still.
Her eyes narrowed. Her wrapped hand flexed unconsciously, pain ignored.
"There's no way," she whispered.
Then louder—anger burning through shock.
"No. No—this is impossible. That bug…"
Her hands trembled, not with fear.
With rage.
She stabbed a finger toward the phasing trace.
"I saw this signal enough that night—I can taste it," she said. "That's Khelos… phasing."
Weaver's threads stirred along the wall like hairs lifting on the back of a neck.
"He is dead," Weaver said, voice low, firm, as if saying it cleanly could make it absolute. "There is no possibility he survived dissolution."
Allium stared at the hologram with a stillness that looked like restraint.
"I remember," he said quietly. "Even through the haze. He is dead."
Cassidy snapped her gaze to him.
"You said he was killed before," she shot back. "And he came back. Why would this be different?"
Allium's jaw tightened.
"I beat him before," he said. "I did not end him. That mistake was corrected."
He looked at the trace again as if staring long enough could force reality to obey.
"This time… he was dissolved completely."
Cassidy didn't relax.
"The data doesn't lie," she said, voice rough with distrust. "That phasing signature exists, and it's either him—"
Her eyes flicked to the second trace.
"—or something close enough to him to make me sick."
Jax leaned closer, scanning the pattern like it was a battlefield.
"This doesn't follow Varos's rhythm," he muttered. "Varos usually keeps Soul Takers near him. He doesn't leave things alive."
He said it like it that was the only mercy in the enemy's habits.
If Varos wasn't killing…
…then he was doing something worse than death.
The thought settled over the group, heavy and wordless.
Allium felt it too.
His hesitation swelled—not as cowardice, but as fear sharpened into responsibility.
"If they are there…" he began, voice thin, careful. "What if you get hurt? And I—"
He stopped.
The sentence didn't need finishing. The garden had already finished it for him.
Sable moved closer.
Not sudden.
Not predatory.
A softer approach than most expected from her, like she was choosing her angle the way hunters choose wind direction.
She looked at Allium and for once her voice carried something that wasn't only function.
"Control isn't something you earn in a quiet room," she said. "It's something you learn while your hands are shaking."
Allium's eyes lifted to hers.
Sable's gaze didn't flinch.
"And you're not going to snap because you're weak," she continued. "You'll snap if you pretend you can avoid pressure forever."
She paused—just long enough for the words to land the way she intended.
Then she added, sharper, deliberate:
"Stop shrinking. Stop calling yourself a monster like it makes you safer. You want to prove you're not the thing that hurt them? Then act like you—and let us carry the rest."
The line cut deeper than comfort ever could.
Allium blinked once, the orange in his chest stirring in a way that wasn't heat.
Not rage.
Recognition.
Like someone had grabbed his chin and forced him to look at himself without letting him turn away.
His fingers curled and uncurled at his sides.
He swallowed.
"I…" His voice faltered, then steadied. "I will try."
Cassidy's face tightened.
She turned toward Sable with the kind of calm that only shows up right before an argument becomes inevitable.
"Sable," she said, quiet, "can we talk outside?"
Sable didn't hesitate. She'd expected it.
They moved into an empty room nearby—bare walls, a single console asleep in the corner, the hum of HQ filtering through metal like distant ocean.
Cassidy shut the door.
Then she spoke immediately, words fast because if she slowed down they might turn into something worse.
"You can't address this like it's a simple adjustment," Cassidy said. "You weren't there. You didn't see what that white looked like behind his eyes."
Sable nodded once.
"I wasn't," she said.
Cassidy blinked—thrown off by the lack of defensiveness.
Sable continued, measured.
"But softening everything won't help him either."
Cassidy's shoulders rose.
"Look," she said, voice cracking at the edge of her own control, "I'm one-hundred and sixteen years old. I've watched people break. I've watched them come back. Direct approaches aren't always good."
Sable didn't move much.
But her eyes carried the weight of time in a way that made Cassidy suddenly feel like a loud teenager in a quiet room.
"Cassidy," Sable said simply, "I disagree."
Just that.
No flourish.
The simplicity had force.
She stepped a fraction closer.
"Allium is not a child," Sable said. "Gifts help. Humor helps. Keeping him tethered helps."
Cassidy's jaw set.
"It does," she insisted.
"It does," Sable agreed—then cut cleanly through the center of the argument.
"But you're treating this like a temporary storm," she said. "Like if you keep him smiling for a week, the world will forget what he can become."
Cassidy flinched.
Not from the accusation.
From the truth hiding inside it.
"Obviously not," Cassidy snapped. "And who said I'm terrified?"
Sable's answer was immediate.
"It's your act," she said. "Loudest in the room. Jokes first. Anger second. You hide it well, but it's still hiding."
Cassidy inhaled hard.
"That's just me," she said. "You'll find out."
Sable held her gaze, then looked away—not in dismissal, but in restraint.
At the door, she paused.
"Did I ever tell you my age?" she asked.
Cassidy's brows lifted.
Sable's voice stayed quiet.
"Just shy of six hundred," she said. "And that… doesn't mean I'm right."
Then she left like a shadow, the room feeling emptier for her absence.
Cassidy stared at the closed door for a second, then muttered to herself, half offended, half impressed—
"Six hundred… she might be wrong, but she looks good."
She exhaled, shook out her shoulders like she could shake off the tension, and walked back toward the group.
Hawk stood at the corridor intersection when Sable reappeared. He didn't ask what was said.
He watched the way Cassidy followed a moment later—jaw tight, eyes bright, humor not quite back in place.
A small shift crossed Hawk's expression.
Not empathy.
Calculation.
Two women.
Two methods.
One asset.
Hawk filed it away.
Then he turned without comment and walked toward Rose's room with the others already gathering.
They stood outside the ICU threshold like people standing at the edge of a river, unsure if stepping closer would disturb something sacred—or something unstable.
Rose was propped up in her bed, bruised and pale, eyes too alive for the body holding them.
Weaver spoke first, keeping his voice low.
"Sunslope has gone silent," he said. "Emotionally."
Rose's gaze sharpened.
"Phasing," she said softly. "That sounds like Khelos."
Weaver nodded once.
"It does," he admitted. "The frequency supports it."
Rose's eyes darkened with memory.
"You saw what I did that night," Weaver added quietly, like the sentence was both proof and warning.
Rose remembered.
The brutality of certainty. The finality of it.
"I remember," she said.
She started to shift—started to rise—
—and Jax stepped in immediately.
"You're not going anywhere, Rose," he said. "You're not wincing your way through this one."
Nina appeared at the doorway like she'd been summoned by the sound of stubbornness.
"You promised," Nina said flatly.
Rose grunted, the effort of resisting rest almost more painful than the injury itself.
"I did," she conceded, sinking back. "I promise I'll get better."
Jax watched her.
He could see it in her eyes—more energy than her body could afford.
"I know you're itching to get even with Varos," Jax said, softer now, "but this isn't a mission to fight. You need to recover so you can come back right."
Rose's stubbornness didn't disappear.
But her mind accepted the math.
Then her voice changed.
Not revenge. Not tactics.
Something simpler.
"That's not all this is about, Commander," she said quietly. "Allium is my concern."
The words struck the group in different ways.
Cassidy felt it like validation.
Weaver felt it like inevitability.
Jax felt it like a complication he couldn't label.
Only Sable looked unsurprised.
Jax nodded once, the closest he could get to reassurance without lying.
"He's gonna be okay," he said. "You have my word."
Rose's shoulders loosened a fraction.
She exhaled.
And the door behind them—when it sealed—almost sounded like goodbye.
They moved out.
Hawk and Sable led without waiting to see if anyone followed. Jax fell into step beside Weaver. Allium walked behind them with Cassidy, head lowered, mind clearly somewhere else.
The hallway lights passed over him and he didn't look up.
Jax spoke softly to Weaver, low enough that only the walls could overhear.
"What is going on with Rose and Allium?" he asked. "I don't remember this kind of attachment. And don't you think it's odd she's not afraid of him?"
Weaver didn't answer immediately.
He nudged Jax's shoulder—small, subtle—an instruction to keep his voice down.
Then he looked back at Allium.
Allium's gaze was on the floor, like he didn't trust himself to look at anyone and see what he'd done.
Weaver's eyes softened.
"I don't know," Weaver admitted, voice quiet. "It's as though they are more comfortable together than apart."
Jax huffed under his breath.
"My guess," he muttered, "brain damage."
Weaver ignored the joke.
Not because it wasn't funny.
Because it wasn't true.
They passed the café.
Passed the gates.
Stepped out into the reinforced road where Solara's sands usually stirred like restless things underfoot.
Tonight, the sand didn't move the same way.
Even the planet seemed to hold its breath.
They walked the path.
And the footsteps—
the ones that should have marked them—
were already covered.
Like something had already been there.
Or like something didn't want them to know exactly where they were headed.
By the time they reached the road to Sunslope, it should have sounded human.
Boots in sand. Cloth shifting. A distant laugh carried on the wind.
Instead, it felt like walking toward a held breath.
The desert was warm, but not inviting—Solara's heat pressing against their backs like a hand that didn't know when to let go. The sky burned clean overhead, and the distant ridge line shimmered in soft mirage waves… except the mirage didn't drift like it used to. It held its shape too well. Like reality had learned a new habit—and refused to break it.
Sable walked at the front without hurry. Her pace was calm enough to look like confidence, and controlled enough to read as something older. A small device sat mounted against her forearm—sleek, functional, the sort of tool you only notice when it starts behaving incorrectly.
Its light flickered in shallow pulses.
Not alarm.
Not quiet either.
Oscillation.
Hawk stayed beside her, matching her stride with deliberate effort. He watched the sand more than the horizon, like the ground might confess something before the sky did.
Behind them, the rest of Solara's battered core moved in a loose formation.
Jax with his jaw locked and his rifle carried low—not aimed, but always remembered.
Cassidy walking a half-step behind Allium, wrapped hand tucked close, the other ready near the frequency stake like it was a seatbelt she didn't trust.
Weaver drifting near Allium as if proximity alone could keep the world from making a decision.
And Allium—
Allium walked like someone learning how to take up less space.
His bare feet pressed into sand with careful placement, each step measured—like he was afraid the planet might punish him for being heavy.
Hawk glanced once, like he was cataloging the difference.
Then, as if the silence had annoyed him long enough, he tried to crack it open.
"Have you ever seen Varos in person?" he asked.
Sable didn't look at him.
She answered like she always did—without warmth, without edge. Just fact.
"You've read my profile," she said. "You tell me."
Hawk let out a quiet breath that might've been a laugh.
"Figured I'd try small talk," he said, and then, after a beat, "Does he seem different from your last encounter?"
Sable's eyes narrowed slightly—not in offense, but in processing. She didn't need to look at the screen on her arm to recall the last two weeks of data, the reports stacked in layers like sediment in her mind.
"He is different," she said at last. "Stronger."
Hawk's gaze lifted toward Sunslope's distant structures, low shapes clustered against the sand like they were trying to look harmless.
Sable continued, voice steady.
"From what I understand, Rose is high-tier. Teamwork held him. Allium finished him."
Allium's fingers flexed once at his side, then stilled.
Sable didn't flinch at his reaction. If anything, her tone sharpened—not harsh, just more precise.
"Varos does not usually retreat," she said. "Absence changes the pattern. He's growing—not only in power. In mind."
Hawk's eyes tracked the shimmer of heat above the sand.
"That," he murmured, "is the part Central never learns to fear."
Sable didn't respond.
Her device pulsed again.
And Sunslope appeared over the rise.
It looked… normal.
A settlement built by people who treated technology as a choice, not a requirement. Low homes. Clean windows. Water carriers. Garden plots coaxed out of stubborn soil. A few solar panels—small, practical, more necessity than comfort. Children moving between tasks with quiet purpose.
Ordinary.
Except the ordinary was too clean.
Weaver saw it first, because Weaver always saw the failure points in systems—where humans should falter—but didn't.
No missed steps.
No dropped tools.
No small mistakes that prove a person is thinking about something else.
Every movement landed like it had been practiced.
Each settler did different work, but the rhythm was the same. The cadence. The timing. The subtle, shared posture of a group functioning under one invisible metronome.
Like harmony.
Forced.
Allium slowed.
Something in his chest tightened—not heat, not power. Recognition.
He stepped forward toward a child near the central walkway, the same one who'd taught him that simple game not too long ago. The one he remembered clearly because the moment had felt uncomplicated—human, harmless, real.
The child was wiping a glass window with circular motions—perfect circles, perfect pressure, no streaks left behind.
The child turned at Allium's approach.
And smiled.
Too wide.
Too steady.
As if the expression had been pinned to his face and forgotten.
Allium stopped just short of him.
"Hi…" he said, voice gentle, careful. "It's me. Allium."
The child's eyes met his.
They didn't brighten.
They didn't fear.
They simply held.
"We are well today," the child said.
The words echoed strangely—as if they weren't spoken from the mouth, but from somewhere behind it.
Allium's stomach turned.
Around them, other settlers spoke the same phrase without being asked.
"We are well today."
"We are well today."
"We are well today."
Allium took one step back.
Weaver moved in beside him, subtle but immediate, like instinct had replaced thought.
"Listen," Weaver said, keeping his voice low. "Are you okay? Not everyone. You."
The child didn't blink.
"We are stable," the child replied. "We are functioning. You do not need to intervene."
Then the child turned back to the window and continued wiping in perfect circles, as if the conversation had been completed by rule.
Weaver and Allium shared a look.
"They don't sound controlled," Weaver murmured, eyes scanning the street. "They sound… convinced."
Allium's gaze stayed locked on the child.
"The child I knew," he said quietly, "is not here."
Cassidy stepped closer, frowning.
"They all look rehearsed," she said. "What do you mean 'not here'?"
Allium's eyes moved across the settlers, and his face tightened with something that wasn't fear.
It was grief.
"I feel harmony from most," he said. "But some… do not have anything."
Cassidy blinked.
"Anything?"
Allium swallowed.
"They act as though they do," he continued. "They smile. They speak. They work. But their regrets… their bad thoughts… the parts that resist… they are wiped."
Sable's device pulsed brighter. She lifted her arm, eyes narrowing as she read.
"That matches," she said. "There are two frequencies—"
Her words cut off.
The device spiked.
A sharp, violent flare of white surged across the display in a shape that made everyone's blood go cold.
Overload.
For a fraction of a second, the readout screamed the word without letters.
Sable stepped back instantly, hand going to her sidearm out of reflex.
"Allium," she snapped, "stay in control."
Every head turned.
Every muscle tensed.
Cassidy's good hand moved—fast—to the frequency stake at her belt, fingers shaking as they wrapped around it.
Jax's rifle came halfway up.
Weaver stepped directly in front of Allium, not thinking, not asking, body taking the position of a shield like it had always belonged there.
"This is not him," Weaver said, voice hard. "Stand down. Now."
Allium stared at them like they'd all spoken a language he didn't understand.
He raised his hands, palms out.
"I am not out of control," he said, confused. "I am not—"
He looked down at himself, as if expecting his skin to be white, his veins to be screaming, the air around him to be folding.
Nothing.
His orange was dim.
Tired.
Human.
Jax's voice was tight.
"Sable," he said, lowering the rifle slightly, "he's not white. That's not Overload."
Sable held up her arm.
"It is," she said, and her tone didn't waver.
Hawk stepped in sharply, eyes fixed on the display.
So did Cassidy—close enough to see every oscillation line, every spike, every trailing fade.
And then—
Allium flared.
Not outward.
Not explosive.
Just a brief, involuntary surge inside him—like something tugged at the deepest lever in his body and then let go.
The display screamed again.
Then stopped.
Allium staggered one step, breath catching, and his hands clenched as if he could hold his own insides in place.
"I do not know what is happening," he whispered.
Sable stared at the device.
A second pattern surfaced under the first—similar, but wrong in its timing.
Not one Overload.
Two.
"I'm reading two different Overload spikes," she said slowly.
Silence hit the group like impact.
Cassidy's eyes flicked toward the settlers.
"Allium's Overload," she muttered, voice tight with disbelief, "yet nothing—no response, no chaos…"
She looked back at the display.
Then at the synced people.
Then at the faint second signature.
Her breath came shallow.
"Weaver," she said, speaking aloud like the question would keep her from thinking the worst thoughts, "do you think Varos could adapt an Overload?"
Weaver's jaw tightened. Sand danced lightly around his boots as a stray gust passed, and for a moment his threads stirred as if the air itself had tension.
"No," Weaver said, firm. "Allium was made with a core that distributes tri-energy evenly. Varos evolves—yes—but there is no path where he becomes that. Not truly."
Hawk's gaze didn't leave the readout.
"Then what is it?" Hawk asked, and for the first time he sounded less like authority and more like a man trying not to be wrong.
No one answered.
Because no one saw the whole shape.
The settlers continued working in perfect rhythm.
Then—one of them stopped.
Not a stumble.
Not a pause to think.
A clean, unnatural halt—like the body had lagged behind itself.
The settler's head tilted slightly.
Then the movement resumed.
Perfect again.
Cassidy's skin went cold.
Jax's grip tightened around his rifle.
Allium's gaze followed that one settler with a quiet horror that wasn't about death.
It was about absence.
Weaver breathed out slowly.
"Whatever this is," he said, "it's not only watching us."
"It's learning," Cassidy whispered.
Sable's eyes narrowed.
"We don't have the luxury of one perspective," she said. "We split."
Jax hesitated only long enough to make sure the decision wasn't being handed to him.
Then he nodded.
"Pairs," he said. "Comms open. No hero moves. No one goes silent."
They formed the groups without debate, like instinct had already chosen them.
Weaver with Allium—because if Allium flared again, Weaver would be the first body between him and blood.
Cassidy with Jax—because fear needs tactics and tactics need someone willing to say what's wrong.
Sable with Hawk—because oversight needed to witness, and witnesses needed to be led.
Two moved toward the fields where labor should be messy.
Two toward the outskirts where silence collects.
Two deeper into the heart of Sunslope where harmony should have felt like home.
Allium stood for a beat before he followed Weaver.
His hands flexed again.
He stared at the settlers' smiling faces.
And the worst part wasn't that they were wrong.
The worst part was that somewhere inside his chest, something ancient had twitched at the Overload pattern like it recognized a call.
Not emotion.
Not fear.
Something older than both.
He swallowed hard and forced his feet to move.
Because later—later would come with control.
Not effortless.
Not clean.
But earned.
And for now, if he was going to be dangerous, he would at least be dangerous with his eyes open.