A pressure- not on my body but on my position, like reality itself had finally put it's finger on me and said 'There'.
Lines of correction ignited across the viod moving on one point.
Me.
I staggered back a step as something locked into place inside my head.
"Oh", I breath. "That is what it feels like".
Kael strained against the chains, panic flashing across this face.
" They've classified you, you are not collateral anymore".
"What am I?", I asked
He swallowed.
"A cause".
The Seam Keepers.
Not one.
Not two.
A system.
Kael voice dropped to a whisper, desperate now.
"Morrie listen to me you still have a choice".
I tightened my grip on the sniper, the bullet humming faintly, reaching to the correction field correction field closing in.
"So do you" I said.
And for the first time.
I stopped running.
I didn't aim at the chains.
Instead, I slid a single round from my belt and cracked it open with practiced fingers. The casing sperated with a soft click, and the syrup inside shimmered- unstable, impatient, like it know where it wanted to be.
I stepped closer.
Kael's eyes widened. "Wait- Morrie".
I know, trust me", I whispered.
I let as single drop fall
It didn't splash.
It listened.
The syrup stretched unnaturally, thin thread reaching for tye chains like veins finding a heartbeat. The symbols along the restraint flared violently, scrambling trying to reinterpret what they were touching.
And for the first time, the chains hesitated.
Then they crack.
Not shattered- unwritten.
The light collapsed inward, the chains loosen, lost cohesion and simply.... stopped agreeing with reality.
They fell apart.
Kael gasped, collapsing forward into me as the loop around him stopped. The constant pressure vanished and for a heartbeat - just one.
He was real.
He was warm
He was here
I caught him laughing and crying at the same time, "Kael, I gat you you are free, I -".
The space screamed.
Not a sound. A reaction.
Every structure in the repair zone recoiled at once, alarms propagating through absence itself. The light shifted for on corrective white to something darker, anger.
The Seams froze.
Then turned.
All of them.
Not towards Kael.
Towards me.
I felt it instantly - The classification, updating, rewriting itself with brutal clarity.
Kael grabbed my arm scared, "Morrie....you didn't break the sentence".
"You moved it".
The pressure slammed back into the space heavier than before, locking into my spine, my timeline, my every possible future.
I finally understood.
The chains weren't gone.
They were looking for a new place to belong.
And reality had made it choice.