Lucien stared at the stark white text, a cold dread coiling in his gut.

  

  [TRAUMA LOCK]

  He looked from the gate to Echo, finally understanding the source of her tension, the deep, unspeakable pain in her eyes.

  "We have to do this," she said, her voice a quiet whisper. But her resolve was absolute. "It's the only way."

  Tamiyo stepped up beside them, her own expression grim. "The system will try to isolate us. It will pull us into our own personal hells. Whatever happens... don't let it break you. Find your anchor. Hold on to it."

  She looked at Lucien, then at Echo, and gave a single, firm nod. Then the three of them stepped forward, placing their hands on the shimmering surface of the crimson gate.

  The world dissolved.

  But it wasn't a glitchy de-resolution like before.

  It was a smooth, sickening slide into a different reality. The crimson gate washed over them, and for a moment, Lucien was adrift in a sea of pure, unfiltered data. He saw Tamiyo's avatar flicker, her face contorting in a silent scream—eyes wide with terror—as it looked like invisible hands pinned down her wrists. Then she was gone—ripped away into her own customized nightmare.

  He and Echo were alone, standing on the cracked concrete of a landing pad.

  He knew this place.

  He wished he didn’t.

  The air smelled of scorched metal, hydraulic fluid, and the coming rain. The low, guttural whine of a corporate gunship's engines idled nearby, a sound that vibrated deep in his bones. He looked down at his hands. They were his own, but they were trembling. This wasn't a digital construct; this was a memory.

  The worst one.

  Echo stood beside him, no longer a memory-construct, but the real her. Their worst nightmare was one they shared together. She wore the same sleek, black bodysuit and white jacket from that first day they'd met, but her face was pale, her electric eyes wide with a fear he had never seen in her before.

  "Lucien..." she breathed, her hand finding his. Her fingers were cold.

  He squeezed her hand, the contact a small, desperate anchor in the rising tide of his own anxiety. "I'm here."

  From the open bay of the gunship, their old commander, a man whose face he had tried for years to forget, barked an order. "You have your targets. This is a sterilization op. No witnesses. No survivors."

  He remembered this now. The betrayal. The mission that was a setup from the start.

  "We have to go," he said, pulling Echo toward the edge of the landing pad. "We can make it to the service tunnels."

  He couldn’t remember what was about to happen, but he had used his willpower before to overcome what he was forced to relive. Maybe it would work now…

  But she stopped him, her grip on his hand tightening. She turned to face him, her expression a mask of heartbreaking clarity. She knew what was coming.

  "Lucien," she said, her voice impossibly steady. "Your willpower can overcome the computer."

  Her eyes shimmered, and he saw tears welling in them. “But you can’t change the past.”

  "Don't say that," he growled, his own voice cracking. "We're getting out of this. Together."

  She reached up, her free hand gently touching the side of his mask. "We are…" A single tear rolled down her cheek. "And we aren’t."

  Lucien felt the seals of his mask come undone. As she pulled it away, he felt the heat of the air on his bare skin.

  “I don’t understan—”

  She pulled him down and kissed him, her fingers tangling in the hair on the back of his head.

  The kiss was passion, desire—fire, fury, and finality.

  Her lips were soft, trembling, and they tasted of the rain that had just begun to fall. In that single moment, he felt everything they had between them—her respect, her trust, her affection, the deep, unspoken bond they had forged in the shadows of a hundred missions. It was a lifetime of partnership compressed into a single, heartbreaking instant.

  It was a goodbye.

  When she pulled back, the world was already exploding. He didn’t shake, he didn’t sob—but tears streaming down his face, he remembered everything that had happened leading up to when he was captured.

  Including what was about to happen.

  

  [INTEGRITY: 100%]

  [LOGIC: 100/100]

  [WILLPOWER: 100/100]

  “Echo?” His own voice sounded impossibly far away, like a scared little boy—completely on his own.

  Everything faded to white.

  When his perception returned, the world was a cacophony of screaming metal and shouting voices. He was on his back, the cracked concrete of the landing pad digging into his shoulders. Echo was beside him, her face grim, firing her handgun at the corporate soldiers pouring from the gunship.

  He scrambled to his feet with a roar, trying to push back the impending reality by sheer willpower.

  They had been ambushed—betrayed. Expected to die here.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  He drew his own weapon and opened fire, his movements a desperate, chaotic dance of survival. They fought back-to-back, a seamless unit even in the face of impossible odds.

  But there were too many.

  A rocket-propelled grenade screamed past his head, impossibly fast in slow motion. It impacted the side of the gunship that was trying to lift off, the explosion tearing through the fuselage, sending a wave of fire and shrapnel across the landing pad.

  He tried to throw himself over Echo, tried to shield her with his own body like he hadn’t been able to the first time. But as pure hellfire rained from above and the world dissolved into heat and pain, it ended the way he knew it would.

  The way he couldn’t stop, no matter how hard he tried.

  When the ringing in his ears subsided, he pushed himself up. His armor was scorched, his HUD a mess of critical warnings.

  But he was alive.

  He turned. "Echo, are you—?"

  He saw her.

  Panic and terror flooded Lucien’s perceptions, but he couldn’t look away.

  She was pinned beneath a massive, twisted piece of the gunship's hull. Her body... it was gone. Everything below her ribs was a mangled ruin of crushed robotics and shredded synthetic flesh. Her left arm had been sheared off at the shoulder. The only thing left was her torso, her head, and her right arm, which was feebly trying to push the wreckage off of her.

  "Lucien..." she gasped, her voice a wet, ragged whisper. The electric pink light in her eyes was blinking and glitching, growing weaker.

  “No!” He screamed, rushing to her and slamming into the wreckage.

  He frantically tried to lift the wreckage, the augmented muscles straining in a vain attempt to thwart reality.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  "Don't," she choked, a trickle of dark liquid spilling from her lips. “It’ll be okay, Lucien.”

  “Echo—” he collapsed to his knees, his palms hovering above her. “I just want to go back to our apartment. I want to wake up this morning and never get out of bed.”

  “I know,” she whispered. A tear fell from one eye while the other blinked dark for a second. “But you have to keep going. Keep living. I’ll still be here.”

  Her hand found the pouch on his thigh, pulling a heavy cable from it.

  She held up one end to him. “It’s time.”

  He understood.

  His shoulders slumped in resignation as he pulled the mask from his face. Tears ran freely, and he made no effort to stop them.

  As he took the cable from her and plugged the end into his mask, her hand came up and traced the scars across his face and temples.

  “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Lucien Thorne.”

  He smiled weakly, his hand sliding under her head. The tip hovered just before the outlet at the base of her skull. It would create a direct link to her core processor.

  His hands were shaking so violently he could barely fit everything together.

  "I'm sorry," his own voice broke. "I'm so sorry."

  "Don't be," she said, holding his cheek. "You made me happy."

  “I love you, Echo.”

  He pressed the heavy jack port to the exposed access point at the base of her skull. It clicked into place like the blade of a guillotine falling.

  He watched as the last spark of life, the last flicker of consciousness, drained from her eyes. The pink went dark.

  Her eyes stared open, blank.

  He screamed at the top of his lungs, a sound so loud he couldn’t even remember hearing it.

  His throat raw, Lucien put his mask back on, the filtered vision whirring back to life as the seals squealed and locked.

  The digital world of the memory began to turn to green gridlines and code, fading away to pixels and nothingness.

  He watched her body disappear.

  Lucien Thorne floated in an endless white void. His digital body felt whole—all of his memories returned.

  A new, clean line of text appeared on his HUD, overriding everything else.

  

  [SYSTEM OVERRIDE: KERNEL INTEGRATED]

  [DESIGNATION: ECHO]

  

  He could picture that smile perfectly.

  The sterile white void dissolved. He was back on the circular platform in front of the now-dormant crimson gate. The crystalline pillars were dark, the oppressive hum of the core security system silenced. He was alone.

  But not really.

  Her presence was a quiet, steady warmth in the back of his mind. Not a voice, not a memory, but a part of him. The [DESIGNATION: ECHO] on his HUD was a constant, comforting pulse of light. He was whole.

  They were together.

  A shimmer of white light coalesced in front of him. Tamiyo's digital avatar reappeared, but she was… different. She held a look of focused determination and cold, disgusted vitriol. She looked as if pure adrenaline coursed through her synthetic veins.

  Lucien remembered the terrified look as she had disappeared. “Are you alright?”

  She looked at him with eyes that could sheer steel in half. Then, slowly, her expression eased. It shifted, her shoulders relaxing, until something bordering sanguine excitement settled in place.

  “My brother is coming. And he’s pissed.”

  Then she looked at him differently, her electric blue eyes taking in the change in his posture, the newfound stillness in his gaze.

  "You did it," she said, her voice a mix of awe and relief. "The core is open. I can get out."

  She turned, and a shimmering portal of white light opened in the air beside her. Through it, he could see the sterile, metallic walls of the lab where his physical body had been—and hers was still plugged in.

  She paused on the threshold, looking back at him. "Lucien, I’ve given you full administrative access. The security protocols that were locking you down, this entire massive Conservatory warship we’re on board—you have control. The system thinks you are the Auditor."

  She gave him a small, mischievous grin. “Do me a favor and resist the urge to fly us into a star until after I get your body back.”

  She stepped through the portal, and it vanished, leaving him alone on the platform.

  He stood there for a long moment, the silence of the core network pressing in on him. He felt the full, unlocked weight of his own mind, every memory, every skill, every piece of trauma now a perfectly integrated part of him. He felt the ghost of Echo's final kiss, the phantom ache of her loss, and the quiet, unwavering strength of her presence now woven into his own.

   Echo said in his mind,

  Lucien’s shoulders shook once with the heaviest, saddest laugh he’d ever felt.

  Yeah, he thought. Something like that.

  She was quiet for a moment, then excitedly said,

  He felt power coursing through him, a clean, cold fire that burned away all the static and all the fear. His nostrils flared as he took a deep, simulated breath.

  

  [WILLPOWER: ???/100]

  He could hear every Conservatory technician, every soldier, every officer—all ringing out from all over the ship. He focused on the ones that had put him here.

  “Shit! It’s Thorne!” One of them yelled.

  “Pulse,” Lucien broadcast to every connected terminal—his voice resonating like a synthetic bass-fueled vibration of electricity.

  “What?!” another technician yelled. “Oh my god! Lucien is free in the system!”

  He exhaled a seething wave of livid rage.

  "Your god has abandoned you."

  A storm of red warnings erupted across his HUD as he flooded the entire warship with charged chaos. Lights went out, airlocks opened, power conduits overloaded—the system itself screaming in protest as it tried to contain the sheer force of his will.

  

  [CRITICAL ADMINISTRATIVE WARNING: SUBJECT’S WILLPOWER EXCEEDING ESTABLISHED THRESHOLDS]

  [SYSTEM INTEGRITY COMPROMISED]

  [OVERLOAD IMMINENT]

  Mind Fracture Complete!

  here. By the time this chapter airs, the relaunch will be close to catching up, so I hope to see all of you over there. The main story has been slightly restructured into:

  Cradles of Gravity: A Space Opera Romance

  The Cradle)

  !)