Archive Zero groaned like a wounded beast.
The walls shuddered, shedding flakes of crystallized time that evaporated before they hit the floor. Panels flickered between states of existence—solid, transparent, phased—while deep within the facility a growing vibration built like a distant thunderstorm trapped inside metal.
The other Orion—the echo—tightened his grip on the fractured data-core.
"It's waking up faster than before," he muttered. "Your arrival accelerated the loop."
Rhea advanced one cautious step."Explain. Now."
The echo looked at her, then back at Orion.
"Archive Zero was never a single experiment. It's a cycle. A self-correcting engine that keeps trying to stabilize the fracture it created. Every time it fails, a timeline collapses… and leaves behind residue like me."
Vale's voice was flat."And the machine keeps trying again."
The echo nodded.
"Each cycle burns hotter than the last. We called the runaway reaction a Fusion Storm—a point where time, energy, and mass fuse into a single catastrophic process."
Solven's eyes widened with a rare hint of alarm.
"A positive feedback loop across universes… That would explain why the Unmaking accelerates."
Orion felt the vibration in his chest intensify, like a second heartbeat.
"Where is it?"
The echo pointed down a warped corridor where gravity bent sideways and the floor flowed like liquid metal.
"The core chamber. That's where the storm begins."
Lyra hesitated.
"And what happens when it fully ignites?"
The echo's eyes dimmed.
"Then the Refracted Star loses what's left of its structural coherence.""And your universe joins the pile of erased probabilities."
Rhea raised her weapon higher.
"Lead us."
The echo nodded and turned, limping into the distorted corridor. After a brief glance at Orion, Vale fell in behind him, shadows slipping along the broken walls. The rest of the team followed, moving slow and deliberate, weapons and scanners raised.
The Core Approach
With every step, the air grew hotter and heavier, charged with ozone and temporal radiation. Orion's vision doubled intermittently—he would see two versions of Lyra for a fraction of a second before they collapsed back into one.
Rowan's voice crackled over comms from Astra-9.
"Commander, I'm reading massive energy fluctuations inside the Star itself. It's resonating with whatever you're approaching."
Kessler replied, grim:
"That's the fusion coupling. The machine and the Star are locked in a feedback loop."
The echo Orion stopped at the edge of a cavernous chamber.
Beyond it, reality boiled.
At the center of the vast space hovered a colossal device—an enormous spherical framework of interlocking rings and crystalline conduits. Inside it churned a storm of blinding white, violet, and black energy, spiraling inward and outward at the same time.
The Fusion Core.
Time bent around it in waves.Debris from different eras orbited the sphere—ancient tools, future alloys, shattered drones, frozen arcs of lightning.
Orion stared in awe and terror.
"That's… beautiful."
The echo smiled faintly.
"So were our cities. So was our sky. Right up until it ate us."
Console stations surrounded the chamber, most of them half-phased into other versions of the facility. Some were manned by echoes—flickering silhouettes of scientists repeating the same motions endlessly: typing, recalibrating, screaming, dying.
Lyra whispered, shaken:"They're stuck in a loop…"
Vale scanned the chamber.
"And the machine is using their repeated actions as input."
Solven inhaled sharply.
"A self-feeding experiment. It runs on its own past failures."
The Fusion Core flared brighter.
A shockwave of raw energy burst outward, hurling Orion backward. He slammed into the wall, gasping as Lyra caught his arm to steady him.
The Infinity mark burned white-hot.
The echo Orion shielded his eyes.
"It's entering a storm phase. You're out of time."
Rhea snapped, "How do we shut it down?"
Silence.
The echo's shoulders sagged.
"You don't shut down a storm.""You outrun it… or you change the atmosphere that feeds it."
Vale turned slowly toward Orion.
"Meaning?"
The echo looked straight at Orion, fear and pity mingling in his eyes.
"The machine doesn't just run on energy.""It runs on your signature.""The same one that created the first fracture."
The truth hit Orion like a physical blow.
"You're saying I'm powering it."
The echo nodded.
"Every version of you who gets this far becomes its ideal stabilizer.""Which is exactly why none of them survive."
Lyra shook her head violently.
"No. No, that's not happening. There has to be another way."
Kessler's voice was tight.
"The resonance pattern matches him exactly. The Fusion Storm is literally tuned to Orion's temporal frequency."
Rhea's fists clenched.
"So the machine wants to use him as a battery."
The echo corrected her softly.
"As an anchor."
Orion stepped forward despite Lyra's grip.
"What happens if I enter the core?"
The echo's expression fractured.
"The storm stabilizes.""The Refracted Star stops bleeding timelines.""The Unmaking… pauses."
A terrible hope rose in the air.
Lyra whispered, voice breaking:
"And Orion?"
The echo closed his eyes.
"No version of you that entered the core ever came back human."
The Fusion Core roared—a sound like a thousand universes colliding.
The chamber flooded with blinding light.
Vale spoke quietly, deadly calm:
"Then we're standing at the exact crossroads your future selves warned us about."
Orion felt the pull stronger than ever—like gravity inside his bones, calling him toward the storm.
The countdown flickered violently in his peripheral vision:
09:20:01:47
Time was no longer just running.
It was burning.