Back in the lab, everything was mostly still, humming softly with post-diagnostic inertia. Ambient light cast geometric shadows across the floor, broken only by the subtle flicker of Calyx's central console. One of her bodies stood at the fabrication unit, another reviewing cortical interface logs. But the one nearest the holoprojector paused mid-motion.
A tone pulsed - soft, insistent.
INCOMING TRANSMISSION – SECURED CHANNEL
Calyx didn't move at first. Instead, she lifted her gaze slowly toward the message prompt, then flicked her eyes to the room around her.
Immediately, her other bodies departed. sliding silently behind shielding panels and diagnostic barriers until the room appeared empty, save for Nova and Caelus.
She turned, stepping away from the holoprojector.
"Nova. Caelus. Step out of view, please."
Nova, crouched beside a power node, exchanged a glance with Caelus. He said nothing, but after a moment's hesitation, both obeyed; slipping behind a translucent partition near the scaffolding array. Nova gave one last curious glance back before the panel dimmed.
Calyx waited one breath more. Then accepted the call. The air shimmered. A soft pulse. Then,
Lucius Ward.
Projected in full definition: eyes like cold data, expression carved in patience, half his face caught in the glow of unseen interface feeds. No introduction. No preamble.
"Calyx."
She inclined her head. "Lucius."
"I have a task."
Her brow ticked up faintly. "I assumed as much."
"I need eyes on the Ravel Spoke. We've picked up unusual activity. Unusual signal bleed, neural interference. Possibly Purist. Possibly worse."
Calyx's smile was barely there, more suggestion than expression. "I'm the one you call when you suspect ghosts in the machine?"
"Simply put, you're the only one who knows how to exorcise them."
Her posture shifted slightly - interest tempered by suspicion.
"This is a direct call, Lucius. Which means I'm the second choice, not the first."
Lucius didn't deny it.
"The last operative," she pressed, "didn't return?"
"Not quite failure," he said after a pause. "Just… the limits of the tool I used. I need someone who can be more than just a sword."
Behind the partition, Caelus's jaw tensed. He didn't speak, but Nova saw the shift in his eyes, the slight pull of tension along his shoulders. She glanced up, met his gaze, and mouthed the words:
I'm sorry.
Calyx folded her arms slowly, synthetic joints whispering in harmony. "So," she said, "not a strike mission. A reconnaissance. With discretion. Observation. Intelligence recovery."
Lucius gave the faintest nod. "And if necessary, suppression."
"Always the polite phrasing," she muttered. "And how exactly do you expect us to get there? The Spoke isn't a train ride away."
Lucius tapped a command into something unseen. A map appeared, flickering between layers of vertical infrastructure and energy nodes.
"There are jump stations," he said. "Compressed relay points built during Praxelia's expansion era. Pre-set coordinates. Unlike the Compression Lance, they don't offer choice. Only arrival."
"And you'll be bringing them online?"
"I'll notify the Operator Control Room," he said. "Your authorization will be confirmed at mission time. You'll receive coordinates once the station nearest the Spoke is stabilized."
Calyx nodded once, eyes already parsing routes and probability branches. "Then I assume you won't mind if I assemble my own team."
Lucius met her gaze. "I expect nothing less."
The projection blinked once, then dissolved into air. No fanfare, no farewell.
Calyx remained still for a moment longer.
The light from Lucius's projection dimmed and evaporated, leaving only a faint shimmer where authority had just spoken.
Calyx didn't move right away. She exhaled - not breath, but habit. One hand reached up, index finger circling the air. A second holographic interface blossomed beside her, rippling with a secure channel header.
CONNECTING: KREEL VARN – SYSTEMS ENGINEER, TIER 3
It took only a second before Kreel's face appeared: the same gaunt, tired man she came to expect, bathed in the sickly green glow of too many midnight diagnostics. A stim tab was clamped between his molars, and he looked one part annoyed, two parts resigned.
"Well, well, well," he said, not looking up from the panel he was working on, "if it isn't our favorite synthetic oracle. What's wrong? Does your throne of surgical divinity finally need recalibrating?"
Calyx smiled sweetly. "Oh Kreel, don't pretend you don't miss me. I'm the only one who makes your inbox worth reading."
"You're also the only one whose codebase crashed my personal tablet last quarter."
"That's called innovation. You're welcome."
Kreel sighed, rubbed his temples. "Please tell me this is a social call. I'm running twelve different neural cascade sims and one of them is threatening to achieve self-awareness just to file a complaint."
Calyx's tone shifted. Light, but pointed. "Just a quick administrative update. Nova Cale."
He blinked. "What about her?"
"She's off this week's handler schedule. No assignments, no diagnostics, no auxiliary deployments."
Kreel's brow furrowed. "Why?"
"Because she's being reassigned," Calyx said, flicking a data packet toward the shared projection. "Effective immediately. Under me. Research and development for an experimental protocol linked to a directive issued by Lucius Ward himself. Full clearance granted. Tiered access packet already signed off. You'll find it in your secure notifications. Third down, flagged crimson."
Kreel didn't check it yet. He just looked at her, eyes narrowing. "You're not asking."
"No," she said calmly. "I'm informing. Professional courtesy."
He hesitated for just a beat, long enough for the weight of that sentence to settle.
Then he chuckled dryly. "Calyx, do you ever get tired of dancing around the chain of command like it's a pole in a nightclub?"
She tilted her head. "Only when the music's bad."
Kreel checked the file. Confirmed. Authorization: Ward/L. – Alpha Channel.
His smirk softened into reluctant acceptance. "Alright. She's yours. I'll clear the queue and adjust her flags."
"Much appreciated."
"Oh, and Calyx?"
"Yes?"
"If she dies on one of your 'experimental protocols', I'm erasing your backup personalities from the cloud."
She smiled. "If she dies, I'll already be dead four times over. So that seems fair."
Kreel leaned back, already sliding her off-screen. "Try not to burn down the city."
"No promises."
The call winked out.
Calyx turned back toward Nova and Caelus, who'd remained silent, watching with veiled curiosity.
"All clear," she said, clapping her hands together with synthetic cheer. "Miss Cale is officially mine. For research. For development. For funsies."
Nova raised an eyebrow. "You cleared me that fast?"
"I cleared you before I asked," Calyx said. "I just needed to make sure Kreel didn't trip over it and accidentally schedule you for someone else's broken dream."
Nova exhaled slowly, part anxiety, part relief. "So this is really happening?"
Calyx stepped closer, her expression more serious now. "You're on this mission. Because he asked for it. Because you built the thing no one else could stabilize. And because I need someone beside me who understands how to walk a tightrope between madness and code."
She looked toward Caelus. "And you," she said, tone softening ever so slightly, "are the sword who deserved to be more."
Caelus said nothing, but the way he nodded - deliberate, grounded - meant everything.
Calyx tapped the central interface, bringing the Ravel Spoke map back to life in golden threads of static and ruin.
"Pack your things," she said. "We leave at first light. We have a haunted graveyard of old tech to trespass through... and some very old ghosts waiting to meet us."
The wind above the R&D district wasn't natural - it was climate-modulated, pressure-cycled, and filtered through a dozen environmental ducts to feel almost like a spring breeze. Almost.
They stood now in a secured Ascendent Government Zone: pale metal walkways stretched out like ribcages over blackstone plaza tiles, flanked by vertical banners displaying the Ascendent sigil; a geometric helix cradled by an open palm.
Calyx moved first, and not alone. All four of her bodies had arrived through the gate. Identical, elegant, and eerie. One walked ahead to survey the jump station's interface, another flanked Nova like a bored handler, a third hovered near Caelus with the calm scrutiny of a surgical auditor. The fourth - the primary, though it was hard to tell - glided toward the mission marker, arms folded, eyes already dancing with strategic imaginings.
At the far end of the open platform, the jump station stood like a silver monolith: three spiraled pylons circled around a central transit ring, each one humming faintly with magneto-plasma fields. The inner aperture shimmered with shifting golden static, like a memory trying to forget itself.
Nova leaned against a supply crate, halfway through a synthetic nutrient bar. "So let me get this straight," she said between chews. "It doesn't launch us. It just... folds the path?"
Calyx nodded, walking the perimeter of the gate. "Precisely. It compresses the space between where you are and where you want to go. You don't move. The world around you does."
Nova frowned. "Comforting."
"It isn't," Caelus said, scanning the jump field's harmonics.
"But it's fast," Calyx added, already smiling again.
Just then, boots echoed sharply on the polished stone. Four Ascendent corporate operatives strode into view; slick black mobility suits, iridescent faceplates, perfectly modded arrogance. They moved like they owned the platform.
The lead one pulled off his helmet. Beneath it: a flawlessly angular face, all sculpted bone and smirking entitlement.
"Well, well," he said. "Didn't realize the jump gate was hosting a field trip."
Calyx's expression thinned. "Sevrin."
He didn't bother responding to her. His eyes flicked to Nova, scanning her from top to bottom like an asset he didn't remember approving.
"They're letting civilians access government transit nodes now?" he said, stepping closer.
Nova stepped forward, not even blinking. "I'm not a civilian. I'm on special assignment."
Sevrin reached toward her, almost mockingly. "Let me guess. Junior engineer? Support staff? You don't look - "
Caelus moved. Not his body. Just one arm.
With measured calm, Caelus extended his palm toward Sevrin. The air shimmered between them: a faint magnetic distortion followed by a click of his energy sync. Instantly, Sevrin's reaching arm locked in place.
A stasis field.
His wrist and elbow were pinned mid-extension, as if caught in hardened syrup. The field glowed faintly across his suit's sleeve. Unbreakable, quiet. Absolute.
"What the -?" Sevrin tugged, face twitching. He pulled harder. Nothing. "What the hell is this?"
Caelus didn't speak. His hand remained steady, his eyes unreadable.
"We're under special directive." Calyx began. "If you'd like to contest the authorization, I can have you cry about it to your handler."
Sevrin's panic flickered beneath the surface. "Okay - okay - relax. Just making conversation."
A moment passed, hung in capitivity by the presence of Caelus. He released the field, snapping the tension in the air cleanly. Sevrin staggered half a step back, shaking out his arm like it had been dipped in ice.
He laughed, forced. "Tight upgrades, big guy."
Caelus didn't blink. "That was a warning shot."
For once, Sevrin had no comeback. He turned to leave, motioning sharply to his squad. "Enjoy your suicide run," he muttered.
They disappeared into the outer corridor like rats escaping dignity.
Nova exhaled slowly. "Thanks."
Caelus was still watching the departing men with surgical attachment. "If he tries to touch you again," he said to Nova, "I will make sure he leaves through the wall."
Calyx stepped up beside them. "Corporate Ascendents," she sighed. "All suit, no soul."
The silence after Sevrin's exit didn't feel like relief, it felt more like residue. Something oily left behind in the air. Even after the operatives were gone, their smirks, their contempt, still lingered like phantom fingerprints across the platform's polished blackstone. The jump station ahead of them hummed louder now. Almost eager.
Nova adjusted the strap on her sidepack, fingers slow, deliberate. "When was the last time someone used this gate?"
Calyx's primary body turned toward her, expression unreadable. One of the others ran a fingertip across the rim of the pylon, light dancing in response. "Last successful transit was two hundred and sixteen days ago," Calyx answered. "Last recorded attempt was... unconfirmed."
Nova's brow furrowed. "Unconfirmed?"
Calyx shrugged lightly. "They entered. Nothing returned. Not even telemetry."
Nova stared at the shimmer in the gate's center, the space that wasn't space. "That's... comforting."
"I didn't promise comfort," Calyx replied. "I promised transport."
Behind them, the plaza was quiet again. Too quiet. No wind. No tech chatter. The kind of stillness that made you feel like you were standing in a paused simulation. Caelus stepped forward, eyes locked on the swirling center of the gate. The magnetic pylons flickered as if reacting to his proximity.
"We don't come back through here, do we?" he asked, not quite facing them.
Calyx's voice was soft. "No. This is a one-way vector."
Nova shifted uneasily. "So we're just trusting that the next gate's out there? That someone didn't let it rot in a jungle full of signal ghosts and half-buried war machines?"
Caelus didn't answer. He simply unlatched the safety on his sidearm, holstered it again, then stood straighter.
"That's the job," he said.
The jump field in frront of them surged - pylons flaring to life, energy humming in growing crescendos.
Calyx turned to the group, more serious now. "Listen. Once we're out of the city, things... change. Everything out here - the forests, the dunes, all of it -they're surrounded by dead infrastructure, fractured relays, and places that memory still clings to."
Nova frowned. "Clings how?"
"Residual thought, like a neural echo. Synthetic imprint loops. Whatever name you give it, don't listen to it."
She looked between them now, voice low. Intent.
"You might see things. Hear things. Voices. Faces. Even versions of yourselves. But they're not real. They're ghosts of the past; programmatic and desperate. If you talk to them, they'll anchor you. And if you anchor long enough… you don't come back."
Caelus didn't react.
Nova shivered slightly. "And if we already have ghosts?"
"Then do not let them answer," Calyx said softly. "Remember -"
She turned toward the pulsing aperture of the jump station, which now flickered with a pale, swirling glow.
"Ghosts don't belong in the future."
For a few seconds, no one moved. The jump gate pulsed, the center rippled, like fabric caught mid breath.
Nova took another step forward. "Well," she muttered, "no one's going to say it, so… "
She turned to Caelus, then Calyx, then the version of Calyx standing quietly at her side like a twin with a secret.
"See you on the other side."
Then she stepped into the fold. The transition was instant.
One moment: the shimmering pulse of the jump gate, a whisper of heat and pressure folding inward. The next: a wall of humid air and damp, pulsing green. Nova staggered slightly as her boots landed on cracked tile. Stone once polished, now eaten alive by vegetation. Vines crept up the walls like veins trying to resuscitate a dying structure. Fungal blooms dotted the ceiling and floor in bursts of orange, blue, and bruised violet. The building around them, if it could still be called that, was crumbling - all collapsed girders and fractured glass. The very bones of a forgotten facility.
Calyx's eyes adjusted first, irises blooming into scanning mode. "Welcome to the jungle," she muttered.
They were standing inside what looked like the remnants of a logistics hub. Wide corridors, shattered data consoles, rusted doorframes. Tech lay everywhere: a rust-bitten security bot with a sloped, analog casing; a shattered touchscreen bearing a logo no one had used in centuries; and further down, far newer equipment - signal amplifiers, cracked encryption routers, a plasma rail mount with Sovereign markings barely five years old.
Nova knelt beside a small communications relay, vines wrapped lovingly around its frame. She brushed off the moss and read the serial tag: dated 2137.
"That's... over two hundred years old," she whispered.
Caelus stood still, observing. "And someone kept it operational. Recently."
Further in, they found bodies. Not human, but robotic. Wrecked constructs long out of production, too primitive for modern Synthetics, but too advanced for anything pre-Threshold. Some had biomechanical parts, early experiments in hybridization. One unit had the logo of the Earthwide Peace Initiative etched into its chest; a government program that hadn't existed since before the First Mesh Rebellion.
Nova scanned it slowly. "This... this doesn't belong here."
Calyx's voice floated in. "None of it does."
The air itself was thick, warm, not just from the sunbeams filtering through the shattered roof, but from the breath of the green. Spores drifted lazily, catching light. It smelled rich. Soil, decay, electricity.
Almost... alive.
Calyx crouched beside a collapsed bulkhead, one of her bodies brushing dust away from a melted datapad. "This place is layered," she said. "Like someone's been nesting through the remains of every generation and leaving pieces behind."
Caelus looked up. "Signs of Purists?"
"Maybe," Calyx replied. "Or maybe something worse."
She stood. Three of her bodies regrouped, their synchronization flawless. "We need to cover more ground before the heat signatures here start to dissipate."
Nova glanced over. "You're saying split up?"
"I'm saying it's stupid," Calyx said, already loading local terrain maps into her internal display. "But necessary."
She gestured to the overgrown corridors branching out in multiple directions. Two of her other bodies stepped forward from behind her haze, perfectly in sync. One stood beside Nova, adjusting its sleeve. The other moved to Caelus's side, eyes already analyzing him like a lab sample.
"I'm not sending you alone," Calyx said. "Each of you gets a me."
Nova blinked. "You're splitting your consciousness again?"
"Please. It's hardly splitting. More like… delegating."
Nova's Calyx gave a polite bow. "I'll do my best not to be annoying."
Caelus's Calyx said nothing. She simply took position one step behind him, weaponizing silence.
Calyx's primary body turned toward the overrun corridor ahead of her. "I'll take the northern shell." Caelus, you take the lower level access tunnel. It's the only one reinforced. Something was important down there."
Nova gave her a look. "So what's the plan if something happens?"
Calyx turned, already moving toward the corridor. "Simple. If you need help…"
She stopped, grinning over her shoulder.
"Destroy everything around you. We'll follow the pandemonium."
And with that, they went their separate ways - each footfall swallowed by overgrowth, each breath pulled through air that hummed like memory, and something older than memory listened from beneath the dirt.