2024-12-23 17:37:11“How?! Why?!” Joey’s eyes widened in shock as he entered the room.
“What the hell happened?!”
The others stayed silent, stunned as they watched him.
None of them had expected Joey to show up.
Known for solving the toughest cases, Chief Joey Gunther was even rumored to be a contender for governor.
To them, someone like Samuel was far too insignificant to warrant Joey rushing to the station in the middle of the night—let alone in such a hurry!
They had never seen their chief speak to anyone with such a respectful tone.
The young officer who had just threatened to shove Samuel’s head in a toilet quietly stepped back, terrified of facing Joey’s possible wrath.
It was clear to those present that Samuel was no ordinary man to Joey.
“Um, Chief Gunther, Mr. Hayes--” Douglaz began.
But Joey cut him off with a raised hand, his face a mix of frustration and concern.
Joey sat down, exhaling deeply, and turned his attention back to Samuel.
“Relax, take a deep breath, Chief,” Samuel said calmly.
“Why are you here, Mr. Hayes?” Joey asked.
“Madaline reported me. She provided ‘evidence’.” Samuel replied.
“Madaline? Your fiancée?!” Joey asked, stunned.
He placed the cigarette on the table.
“What charges are they accusing you of?”
“Fraud, embezzlement, forgery, and tax evasion,” Samuel replied.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Could they not come up with something more reasonable?!”
Joey spun his chair toward the three officers standing behind him.
He got up, appearing ready to strike one of them, but Samuel quickly intervened.
“There’s no point in hitting them, Chief Joey. Stop.”
Joey lowered his hand and shook his head slowly.
“I’ve warned them countless times not to blindly accept reports filed by businessmen like the Brooks family or anyone else!”
Joey snapped; his face flushed with anger.
“Do you have any idea that if it weren’t for Mr. Hayes, I wouldn’t even be here?!”
Joey barked, his voice shaking with emotion.
The three officers lowered their heads, growing increasingly uneasy about Samuel’s significance to Joey.
“I still remember how dry my throat was, how I couldn’t swallow for months in Brownsville! I thought the light I saw when the door opened was hell, that my time was up!”
“But I was wrong. What I saw was Mr. Hayes!”
Joey declared, his eyes glistening with a mix of awe and gratitude.
Samuel just offered a smile.
Brownsville was infamous for smuggling and drug trafficking, a reputation that cast a dark shadow over its heavily armed residents.
Suspicious of outsiders, the locals were hostile to anyone not from the area.
J&S Corp had no choice but to pass through Brownsville due to its strategic location by the sea and proximity to key cities.
When operations resumed, Samuel had personally stepped in to address the challenges in the area.
Samuel boldly entered Brownsville alone, negotiating with local groups and influential figures.
His exceptional persuasion skills yielded extraordinary results, significantly reducing illegal activities in the area.
Most remarkable was the rescue of three government agents who had been reported missing—one of them being Joey.
These two monumental events left an indelible impression on Joey, solidifying Samuel’s near-mythical status in his eyes.
“Without a doubt, I can guarantee that Mr. Hayes did nothing wrong,” Joey said.
The three officers exchanged uneasy glances, visibly shaken by Joey’s fervent defense of Samuel.
The anger they initially felt toward Samuel began to dissipate, replaced by doubt over the validity of the report.
Joey’s unwavering declaration cast serious doubt on the allegations against Samuel.
“Alright, Chief, that’s all in the past now. No need to dwell on it. There are more pressing matters,” Samuel said.
Joey nodded, his sharp gaze fixed on Samuel. “Yes, I’ll talk to Brooks. You—”
“I only came here to inform you that I’m heading to the West Line,” Samuel interrupted.
His words made Joey and the three officers freeze in shock.
“You’re joking, right, Mr. Hayes?!” Joey asked, panic evident in his voice.
The West Line was a desolate region with a fearsome reputation.
Spanning a vast desert of fiery red dunes that seemed to burn under the sun’s glare, it was a lawless place, abandoned even by authorities.
The few inhabitants who remained were said to be even more brutal than those in Brownsville.
Samuel shrugged, as if he had just mentioned going to a party instead of the most dangerous place.
“You know, Chief, I never joke.”
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619
At first, they thought it was just an echo.A flicker on the surveillance net. A brief distortion near the old Echo Chamber beneath Bastion’s west wing — long abandoned, used only during the early calibration of shard synchronization. The space had since fallen into disuse. No power, no systems, no reason to return.Until now.“Tell me you’re seeing this,” Sarah muttered, leaning over the monitor.The image was faint: a silhouette pacing slowly inside the chamber, pacing in exact steps Sarah had once taken.“Looks like you,” Joey said, frowning.“That’s because it is me,” she whispered.“But that can’t be—”Samuel entered behind them, already reaching for his personal interface. “Pull the prism scanner. I want a temporal signature.”Sarah tapped in the override.A moment later, the analysis came through.Thread anomaly: 94% match.Anchor origin: Flame Net timeline [Locked: UNKNOWN]Subject: SARAH, VARIANT 3B - INVERTED FLAME“Jesus,” Joey breathed. “It’s a version of you. From another
618
Not the kind that followed battle. Not the heavy kind that came after decisions like the one they'd made — to delay sealing the world, to buy time they didn’t understand.This silence had shape.It bent.It listened.It waited.And then, without warning, it spoke.Joey was in the lower observatory, seated by the paneled dome where the artificial stars had begun to glitch. Every few minutes, a light would flicker and repeat itself — blinking patterns out of sync with the constellations.He was alone.Or he thought he was.“Still think we made the right call?” he muttered aloud, fingers tracing the rim of his cooling tea.No answer.He reached for his comm-link, considered calling Lin, then Sarah… but didn’t. The others were all in their corners, dealing with the consequences in their own ways. Samuel had retreated to the eastern wing, no doubt reviewing models and constructing fallback rituals. Sarah had been pacing the upper deck like a hawk for the past hour. Lin was—nowhere. She dri
617
The Bastion’s war table hadn’t been used in months.Dust lined its edges. Old energy signatures flickered faintly along its curved interface, echoing long-erased battle maps. It was built to track enemies—Void incursion zones, Ashborn troop lines, shard anomalies.Tonight, it displayed Earth itself.Not the Earth they remembered.Not the Earth they had fought for.The globe was fraying. Threadlines glowed red across the surface—unraveling. Symbols blinked where entire cities once stood. Others spun erratically, overlapping. Multiple realities clashing for space, like two ghosts trying to possess the same body.Joey stared in silence.Lin sat with a heavy shawl around her shoulders, pale but awake.Sarah stood stiffly across from Samuel, arms folded.Nobody had spoken in five minutes.Until Joey said softly, “We’re already losing it.”Samuel said nothing.Sarah’s voice came next, hard-edged: “Not yet.”Joey turned to her. “What would you call what just happened? We opened a hole in the
616
No one touched the relic at first.It hovered midair in the center of Bastion’s Deep Chamber — spinning, slow, silent, and not entirely present. Shaped like an orb, but its edges shimmered and warped, refusing to settle into a single dimension. Every time someone looked too long, they saw something different: a beating heart, a writhing knot, a tiny flame.Samuel stood closest, arms folded, the memory of Kael’s echo still fresh in his mind.Sarah and Joey flanked him. Lin hadn’t woken yet — her mind was still torn open from the Spiral’s flood.“Where did it come from again?” Joey asked, voice barely above a whisper.“Kael gave it to me,” Sarah said, hand tight around her shard. “Or what’s left of him. He called it a key. Something older than the Net.”Joey eyed the orb. “It doesn’t look like any relic I’ve seen. Doesn’t feel like one, either.”“It’s not a relic,” Samuel muttered.Sarah turned to him. “Then what is it?”“It’s a hole.”They didn’t believe him at first. Not until the orb
615
The corridor was silent, save for the soft pulse of the emergency lights. Sarah moved carefully, her fingers trailing the wall, her shard still flickering from the chaos at the ridge. She wasn’t sure why she’d come down here — the lower levels of the Bastion were sealed, memory-locked since the first Wave.But the shard pulled her. Not through flame. Through grief.Room B-17. Her mother’s old chamber.Except it wasn’t.The moment she stepped inside, the light shifted. Everything became thinner, quieter — like sound had been tucked under glass. Dust didn’t settle here. No time passed.And in the center of the room stood Kael.Her breath caught.He wore the old uniform — burnt red sash, blade across his back. He looked… unchanged. His expression unreadable, his hair slightly windblown as if he’d just returned from patrol.“Kael?” she whispered.He didn’t answer.But he smiled.“I watched you climb the cliff once,” he said. His voice was softer than she remembered. “You were thirteen. Th
614
Flames crawled along the blackened hillsides like serpents starving for breath. The sky above the Eastern Ridge had begun to turn the color of bruised plum, a prelude to something no one wanted to name. Ashborn forces, once so unified, so terrifyingly synchronized, now moved with jagged rhythm, like puppets on strings too tight or too frayed.Samuel stood at the ridge's edge, panting, one hand gripping the hilt of his flame-blade. Around him, the remaining Guardians kept their weapons drawn but hesitated to attack. Not because the Ashborn had stopped advancing, but because they were... speaking.Not shouting. Not chanting.Whispering.He couldn’t understand the words, not fully. The tones were warped, soaked in static, like memories being replayed through a broken machine. But the cadence was unmistakable.Voices from the Void.One Ashborn, eyes glowing with leaking violet light, fell to its knees. Another followed. Then three more. Their mouths moved, and Samuel heard it more clearly
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