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He stayed silent for a breath, then said flatly, “I do not have an answer for that.” His voice was quieter now, stripped of its usual substance. “There is no protocol for this kind of interaction. You are not behaving as expected.”

Maya leaned in slightly, not missing the tension laced between each word. “So what does your programming tell you to do with unexpected variables? Dissect them? Eliminate them? Or do you just stare at them and hope they solve themselves?”

He blinked once, deliberate and composed, assessing her with the stillness of a man used to commanding outcomes.

Then again, slower, less detached, more deliberate.

The second blink lingered, his gaze sharpening.

No trace of uncertainty, only the press of judgment, focus, strategy.

He looked at her not like a subject or threat, but like an equation that refused to balance. “I observe. Iadapt. Ieliminate risk.”

“And am I a risk now?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, and then after a pause, “but not for the reasons I expected.”

“Then why haven’t you moved? Why are you still standing here like I’ve said something you don’t know how to process?” Her heart thudded. “What did they forget to program into you, Riven?”

He exhaled slowly. Not a sigh. Something more regulated. But she saw it, the fracture.

And he didn’t leave.

She caught the struggle flickering in his eyes. Caught the thing he tried to suppress. Not anger. Not duty. Something taut and fierce, straining beneath the surface. Authority still lingered in his stance, but it was shaken, like he was fighting need with discipline and barely keeping it caged.

She should have been afraid. Should have shut her mouth, quieted her pulse, stopped baiting the unstable, armored weapon standing inches from her. But fear, real, paralyzing fear, was something she’d already lived through.

She remembered walking into Anya’s empty apartment, heart pounding, knowing something was wrong the moment the silence answered her call. That was fear. This? This was different. This was a storm of fury and disbelief, twisted with a sliver of something else she didn’t want toname.

Because in that crack, that moment where his certainty failed, she saw something she understood. Doubt.

“You think you are unpredictable,” he said at last, voice low. “But you are not chaos. You are interference. Unmapped. Unreadable. My systems cannot make sense of you. And I do not like what that suggests.”

Maya tilted her head slightly, eyes locked on his. “You really don’t know what to make of me, doyou?

The words didn’t come with heat or bite. They were quiet. Measured. And they landed with more weight than she intended. For the first time since waking in this chamber, she wasn’t the one being studied, but the one holding the scalpel. She let the silence stretch.

He still hadn’t moved. Still hadn’t spoken. But the charge built between them, the unspoken question ricocheting in the space he refused to close.

“You can’t figure out what I am?” Her voice dropped. “Let me help you out. I’m the thing you weren’t ready for.”

The words hung there, fiercer than she’d expected.

She hadn’t planned to say them, not exactly, but they sounded right.

Solid. For a moment, she felt taller, steadier.

Like the power in the room had shifted. Maybe she wasn’t just reacting anymore.

Maybe she was becoming something he hadn’t accountedfor.

His fingers curled into fists, the motion sharp, silent, and tight with restraint.

She watched every muscle twitch. Noted every flicker of restraint.

“If you’re going to dissect me,” she said quietly, “do it now.”

He didn’t answer rightaway.

Instead, he shook his head, his long hair flowing across his chest and shoulders. “I do not wish to harm you.”

Maya blinked. That wasn’t what she’d expected.

“You already have,” she said, voicelow.

He gave a fractional nod. “Not like that.”

“Then what is this?” she challenged. “Because it sure as hell doesn’t feel like mercy.”

He hesitated again. “I do not understand why you are affecting my systems. This is... anomalous.”

“Welcome to the human condition,” she muttered.

And still, he didn’t move. That, more than anything, unsettled her, whichsaid more than any words.

She didn’t let up. “Whatever this is—experimentation, interrogation, elimination—just get it over with. Don’t drag it out like it’s merciful.” Her voice didn’t shake. “I’d rather die with my spine intact and my mind my own than end up another broken experiment on your slab.”

He didn’t speak.

But something changed. The air shifted, just slightly, like a breath held too long. Afaint ripple passed through the space between them, and Maya caught the barest scent of ozone, sharp and wrong. Her skin prickled a half-second before the change in temperature.

It started subtle. Aflicker in the air. Then theheat.

Wrong heat.

It hit her skin like a phantom flame, not burning, but distorting.

The air thickened, charged with a low, vibrating static that buzzed in her ears.

She could smell something sharp and metallic, and her eyes stung as the lighting in the chamber shifted, too bright around the edges, dim in the center, like the room couldn’t decide how to hold shape.

Every sound became muffled, swallowed by the pressurized hum building all around them.

Her lungs struggled to draw air that no longer seemed like oxygen.

She sensed it before she saw it, the shift in the air, the change in his posture. Atightening across his shoulders. The way his hands curled into fists, not like a threat, but like he was barely holding himself together.

He stepped back, sharp and purposeful. His pupils flared. Something beneath his skin began toglow.

Maya’s stomach clenched.

“What—what’s happening to you?”

He didn’t answer.

Couldn’t, maybe. His body convulsed. His hands slammed against the chamber wall. Heat rolled off him in waves, shimmering the air, fracturing the illusion of stillness.

The diagnostic panel blazedred.

She jerked against the table, the restraints holding her down. Panic surged. Her pulse thundered. The room was too hot now. Too bright. Like the air itself had turned volatile.

Her eyes flicked toward the seals along the wall, searching for any weakness, any exit.

Nothing. She catalogued what she knew about chambers, about heat stress, about overloading systems. She tried to slow her breath, tried to focus.

Five senses. She could still count. Still think.

That meant she wasn’t out of options yet. Not completely.

“Tell me what this is!”

He was unraveling.

His knees buckled. He caught himself with a snarl. And then she saw it, his skin glowing under his ribs, mouth open in a silent scream, eyeswild.

An instant later, it wasn’t silent.

The sound that ripped out of him was not human. Wasn’t meant tobe.

It shook the room. Rattled her bones. Aguttural, fractured roar that clawed through the air like something being torn apart from the inside.

She stared, wide-eyed, frozen.

A flicker followed.

Not in him, but on her. Just above her heart, low on the inside of her left collarbone. Ashimmer. Faint, like heat lightning beneath her skin. Not pain, not quite heat, but something else entirely. Aflash of light, silvery-blue, and then it wasgone.

A low, fractured sound came from him, not pain, not rage. Something else entirely. His eyes locked onto the shimmer, and for a heartbeat, something ancient stirred in them, recognition, buried and ancient. Like a memory he didn’t know he still carried had clawed its way to the surface.

Then his expression twisted, too quickly to read, and he wrenched away, as if the sight itself unmoored him further. He made no sound. But he had seen it. And he had knownit.

Whatever it was, it had passed between them, acknowledged, mirrored. The shimmer might have appeared on her skin, but it had struck something in him. It belonged to both of them now, even if neither of them understood what it meant.

Her breath caught and her pulse faltered. Had she imaginedit?

No, she was intensely aware of it. The shimmer, the charge in the air, the way his gaze had latched onto hers as though he saw something that shouldn’t exist. Her skin still tingled where the light had flickered.

She closed her eyes briefly. Not to shut him out, but to steady herself.

Something was shifting inside her. Agravity pulling at her chest, realigning a part of herself she hadn’t known was loose until now.

Not with heat. Not with rage. But with recognition.

Adeep, trembling awareness that a visceral element in him had touched the same in her, sparked something elemental.

She couldn’t name it. Didn’t want to. But it was there, blooming in the silence betweenthem.

And it wasn’t fear. Not exactly.

It was connection.

Maya swallowed hard, heart still hammering as his breathing turned ragged, staggered, no longer even remotely under his command.

She didn’t know what she’d just witnessed.

Didn’t know if it was transformation, meltdown, or both.

But he was crashing. Visibly. Physically.

And whatever this was, it wasn’t graceful. It was violent. Primal.

And it was killinghim.

“You’re burning up,” she said, throat dry. “That can’t be normal.”

He didn’t respond. His body trembled, the glow pulsing now, erratic, uninhibited. Sweat broke along his temples. His chest hitched with every breath.

Maya twisted against the restraints, anger and panic crashing into each other. “Damn it, say something. What is this? What’s happening to you?”

At last, his head turned, barely. “Final Flight.” The words scraped outraw.

“Final Flight? What does it mean ?”She narrowed her eyes. “It sounds... bad.”

“It is. Final Flight is the end,” he said.

“A warrior’s final cycle. It begins when we reach four hundred years of service.

Our bodies are designed to burn out, fast, brutal, final.

Systems collapse in sequence. Power unravels.

Thought and flesh tear away from each other until there is nothing left to hold them together. ”

Maya stared at him, stricken. “That’s... that’s what’s happening to you now?”

“The symptoms started weeks ago. Temperature fluctuations. Loss of color. My hair, my eyes turning black… are warnings. Ithought I had more time.”

She swallowed, voice barely a whisper. “But you don’t?”

“Uncertain.” His gaze lifted to hers, steady and unflinching. “I believed there would be enough time to complete my final directive before the collapse began.”

She hesitated. “Am I the final directive?”

“Affirmative.”

She went still. “This final cycle... You’re not going to die, are you?”

He didn’t answer. And that, more than anything, terrifiedher.

“Riven.” Her voice cracked. “Look at me. Are you dying?”

“Yes.”

The air rushed out of her lungs. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am always serious.”

Something sharp twisted in her gut. She stared at him, chained down, helpless, and hated how much that mattered in this moment.

She didn’t want to care. But watching him come apart, seeing him, this perfectly meticulous, untouchable figure, fracture in front of her, sent something sharp and unexpected through her chest. Not pity.

Not even fear. Something else. Athread of protectiveness she didn’t want to name.

Seeing the control crack, the breath stagger, the agony behind his eyes, made it impossible notto.

Her voice came quieter this time. “Is there anything I can do?”

He regarded her with curiosity. Like the question confusedhim.

“I’m serious,” she added. “I don’t want to be trapped in here with a corpse, so if you need something—stabilization, water, whatever— say so .”

He stared at her for a beat too long, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was low, rough-edged. “You stopped it.”

Maya blinked. Her heart stuttered, then slammed into a harder rhythm. What the hell does that mean? She opened her mouth, then closed it, throat tight with too many questions. The silence between them appeared thinner now, more fragile, like it might shatter with the next breath.