Page 5

RIVERA

T he energy field flickered violently between us, a nauseating strobe of shifting colors—blue, purple, angry orange—casting erratic shadows across Varek's furious face on the other side. I backed away from the unstable barrier, pressing myself against the cold stone of the alcove's back wall. My markings pulsed with warning, a frantic heat beneath my skin.

The air hummed, thick with the smell of ozone and the high-pitched crackle of stressed energy emitters. The sound vibrated through my teeth.

Outside the field, Varek moved with controlled fury. I saw him pry at a conduit junction on the outer wall, muscles straining against the ancient tech. Sparks showered around him, thick and orange, as the field fluctuated dangerously in response to his interference.

"What did you do ?" His voice barely carried through the field's roar, distorted and muffled, heavy with accusation.

"I didn't do anything!" I shouted back, my voice thin against the noise. I glanced desperately at the diagnostic panel beside me—it still flashed red warnings, meaningless symbols scrolling too fast to comprehend. "The system was already failing! I barely touched it!"

"You triggered a containment breach!" Varek abandoned the conduit and struck the wall beside the field emitter with the metal bar he carried. Another shower of sparks erupted, closer this time. The field buckled inward momentarily, its energy washing over me like static discharge, making the hair on my arms stand on end. "The entire settlement could be at risk because of your recklessness!"

My markings flared hot against my skin, responding to his anger—or maybe just to the unstable energy saturating the small space. I couldn't tell anymore. It was all just noise and pain and fear.

"I was trying to diagnose the tremors!" I yelled, pressing closer to the field again, needing him to understand, needing him to stop hitting things and think . "Someone had to assess the damage! Your precious Elders were just sitting around debating!"

"And now you're trapped." Varek's golden lifelines brightened across his dark skin, visible even through the distorting field as he examined the field emitter itself. "The Council specifically warned against human interference with ancient tech."

"Oh, I'm sorry—should I have just left it to destabilize on its own?" My engineer's mind raced despite my fear, analyzing the flickering barrier. "The primary emitter is overloading! We need to reset the containment protocols, not bash the damn wall!"

"How convenient that you know exactly what needs to be done after causing the problem." Varek's expression hardened as he moved to examine the dead external control panel again, ignoring my assessment.

I bit back my next retort as my markings burned painfully. Something about his proximity, his focused energy interacting with the field—it created an uncomfortable resonance deep inside me, a feedback loop I couldn't explain.

"Listen," I said, forcing my voice steady despite the tremor in my hands. "The field is collapsing inward. The energy signature is spiking exponentially. If it fails completely while I'm in here?—"

"I understand the implications," Varek cut me off, his eyes scanning the chamber walls outside the alcove, assessing structural integrity perhaps. His gaze flicked back to me. "The diagnostic panel. What did it show before it overloaded?"

Finally, a sensible question. "Containment failure in the primary circuit," I reported quickly. "The system is trying to compensate by drawing more power from somewhere deeper in the facility, but it's creating a feedback loop. Destabilizing everything." I pointed to a junction box on his side of the field, near where he'd struck the wall. "That junction box—it should have an override! A physical disconnect!"

He moved to the panel I'd indicated, prying off its scorched cover with the end of the metal bar. "This technology destroyed our ancestors," he bit out, his focus intense. "Now you play with it like a child's toy."

"I'm not playing!" My voice rose as the field's hum intensified, pitching higher, vibrating the very air. "I'm trying to prevent a catastrophe!"

A spark jumped from the field, striking my outstretched arm, leaving a painful red welt that instantly blistered. I jerked back, swearing under my breath, cradling the injury.

"The junction is fused," Varek called, his voice tense. "Melted solid. What else?"

I scanned the alcove desperately, looking for anything that might help on my side. "There's a secondary panel here, but it looks like auxiliary diagnostics only! I can't access the main controls from here!"

The field's color shifted rapidly from angry purple to a blinding, unstable white, the energy becoming more erratic, more violent. Every hair on my body stood on end as the charge built in the small space. The air crackled audibly.

"If we don't stabilize this soon—" I started, the words dying in my throat as the ground beneath us lurched violently.

The tremor threw me hard against the back wall of the alcove. Pain shot through my shoulder as stone and dust rained from the ceiling. The containment field sparked wildly, the emitters screaming with overload, the sound piercing through my skull.

A deafening groan of stressed structure echoed from outside the alcove, louder than the field itself. Through the destabilizing barrier, I saw Varek brace himself against the chamber wall, his golden lifelines flaring bright with alarm, his stance shifting instantly to combat readiness.

The field between us thinned, flickering like a dying candle, then surged with terrifying new intensity. Electricity arced uncontrollably from the emitters, scorching the stone walls around me. The diagnostic panel beside me exploded in a spray of sparks and sharp fragments, several pieces stinging my face.

My markings burned like fire against my skin, responding to the massive, uncontrolled energy buildup. This wasn't just system failure—this was catastrophic, imminent detonation.

"It's going to blow!" I shouted, pressing myself flat against the farthest wall of the alcove, making myself as small as possible. The air crackled with charged particles, making it hard to breathe, tasting like burnt metal.

The emitters glowed white-hot, seconds from detonation. If they went, I'd be at ground zero of an energy explosion that would incinerate everything within the alcove—me included.

Pure, cold terror seized my chest. My mind raced through options, calculations, possibilities—finding nothing. No escape. No solution. Just the blinding white light of the overloading emitters.

Through the failing field, my eyes locked with Varek's. Was he safe out there? Would the explosion be contained to my alcove, or would it take him too? The thought surprised me even in my terror. Why should I care about the fate of this arrogant, infuriating warrior who'd done nothing but blame me?

Another violent tremor shook the ruins, longer this time. More debris crashed down around me. The field's hum rose to a painful, unbearable shriek as the emitters reached critical overload.

Seconds left. Just seconds.

Through the chaos of the sparking, blinding field, I saw Varek moving with sudden, desperate purpose. He gestured frantically toward the primary emitter nodes—one on his side, one on mine inside the alcove. His meaning clicked instantly in my engineer's mind: synchronized disruption. Touch both nodes simultaneously to interrupt the energy pattern, force a collapse rather than an explosion.

The field was too unstable to hold, but too energized to approach safely. Touching it meant severe burns at best, electrocution at worst.

But doing nothing meant certain death. Annihilation.

Varek held up three fingers, visible through the glare. Then two. Then one.

I lunged forward, arm outstretched toward the primary node inside my alcove as Varek mirrored the action from his side. The field burned against my skin as I pushed through it, a searing agony that made me clench my teeth against a scream. My fingertips brushed the node—cool metal beneath the energy storm—at the exact moment Varek's touched its counterpart outside.

White-hot energy surged through my body. My markings flared with blinding intensity, a supernova beneath my skin. Through the contact, through the field, through the bond I didn't understand, I felt him —his fierce determination, his focused warrior's mind, his underlying fear—as clearly as if they were my own thoughts. The jolt of connection hit like lightning. Raw, intimate, terrifyingly powerful.

The field stabilized momentarily, the chaotic energy coalescing into pure white light. Then, with a thunderous implosion that sucked the air from my lungs, it collapsed inward. The energy dissipated in a flash of heat and light that left spots dancing in my vision and the smell of superheated air sharp in my nostrils.

Before I could catch my breath, before I could process the echo of Varek's mind against mine, a deafening crash shook the chamber from outside the now-open alcove. The entrance tunnel, the one Varek had used to enter this section, gave way completely. Rocks, ancient debris, and tons of earth cascaded down, sealing the passage utterly.

When the dust began to settle, Varek stood in the main chamber with me, no longer separated by a field but by a mountain of rubble blocking our only known exit. His chest heaved with exertion, golden lifelines still pulsing bright against his skin from the energy discharge.

We stared at each other in shocked silence, the only sound the settling of dust and the distant drip of water. The warrior who'd come to stop me, to contain me, was now trapped alongside me, deep within the ruins neither of us fully understood.

My legs trembled violently with adrenaline crash. I slid down the alcove wall until I sat on the floor, cradling my burned arm against my chest, the skin already blistering.

"You're hurt," Varek said, his voice rough. The first words either of us had spoken since the field collapsed.

"So are you." I nodded toward his hand, the one that had touched the outer node. It was raw, red, blistered where he'd reached through the field.

He examined the injury with detached interest, flexing his fingers. "It will heal." Nyxari arrogance, or just fact? I couldn't tell.

The silence stretched between us again, thick with unspoken accusations, fear, and the undeniable fact of our shared predicament.

"We're trapped," I said finally, stating the obvious, my voice raspy.

"Yes." Varek turned to survey the collapsed tunnel, assessing the damage with a warrior's eye. "No way back through there."

I closed my eyes, trying to process what had just happened—not just the collapse, but that terrifying, intimate moment of connection. When our energies, our markings, had merged through the field, I'd felt him. Not physically, but somehow deeper. The sensation lingered like an echo, a resonance I couldn't shake.

"What was that?" I asked, opening my eyes to find him watching me intently, his golden gaze unreadable. "When we touched the nodes. That... connection."

Varek's expression remained carefully neutral, betraying nothing. "A resonance between your markings and my lifelines," he stated flatly. "An unexpected side effect of the energy discharge. It shouldn't have happened."

"But it did," I insisted, pushing myself slowly to my feet, wincing as protesting muscles screamed. "And it stabilized the field long enough for it to collapse safely instead of exploding."

He didn't respond, instead turning his attention back to our surroundings, examining the chamber walls with methodical attention, already shifting back into survival mode.

The reality of our situation settled over me like the dust still hanging in the air. We were trapped together, deep in unstable ruins, with no immediate way out. I'd felt the Nyxari warrior's mind brush against mine, however briefly. And now, whether I liked it or not, we had no choice but to rely on each other.

"We need to find a different way out," I said, forcing practicality into my voice.

"Agreed." Varek's tone remained cool, formal, but something had shifted in his posture, in the way he looked at me. The raw antagonism had been replaced by something else—grudging recognition, perhaps, of our shared, dangerous fate.

I glanced at the blocked tunnel, then at the imposing warrior I was now dependent on for survival. My markings still tingled from the energy surge, from that unexpected, terrifying moment of connection.

Trapped. Together.

This was going to be complicated.