Jax didn't go straight to bed.
He told himself he would. He even made it halfway down the corridor before the feeling caught up to him—the sense that his thoughts had been touched, rearranged slightly, like a room someone insisted they hadn't entered.
He turned instead.
Back toward command.
Gravity felt negotiable tonight. He leaned against the rail overlooking the operations floor, one hand wrapped around a mug large enough to count as infrastructure. The coffee inside was black, bitter, and already cooling. Behind him, an empty pot steamed faintly. Another sat cracked in the bin.
His visor lay untouched on the console.
Jax scrolled through the sensor logs again.
Nothing.
No Seraphim signatures.
No extraction spikes.
No deviations they hadn't caused themselves.
"You're not gone," he muttered to the empty room. "You're just quiet."
Without warning, his fist came down on the console.
The impact rang louder than it should have.
He froze, breath tight, then exhaled and forced his hand flat against the surface, grounding himself. Control first. That had always been the rule.
He adjusted the search parameters. Slowed his breathing. Continued.
Down the hall, HQ sounded wrong.
Footsteps hesitated.
Laughter cut itself short.
Monitors dimmed their brightness as if embarrassed to make noise.
It felt like a place holding its breath.
⸻
Nina hadn't slept properly in days.
The diagnostics lab glowed around her in layered blues and greens, harmonic graphs looping the same planetary rhythms she'd been staring at since Khelos first brushed against HQ. Three mugs sat abandoned within arm's reach. One can lay on its side, empty. An IV drip of pure stubbornness fed into her arm without ceremony.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and ran the overlay again.
Minute by minute.
Hour by hour.
Trying to understand how he did it. How Khelos could act without leaving fingerprints. How something could affect everything while touching nothing.
At first glance—normal.
Then she filtered known frequencies.
A third curve remained.
Not a spike. Not a flare.
A pressure.
Low. Continuous. Barely above the noise floor. Like the air itself anticipating something.
Nina straightened.
She isolated the data, fingers hovering as doubt crept in uninvited. Am I seeing this, or do I want to?
Soft footsteps approached.
"Dr. Nina…?"
She jumped, then smoothed her shirt instinctively, as if wrinkles could invalidate her authority.
"Yes—Rose?" she said, too quickly.
Rose stood in the doorway, steady, alert. Working. The painkillers had done their job—but Nina noticed the frost first, curling faintly across the floor where Rose stood.
"I see those painkillers helped," Nina said, forcing a tone she immediately regretted.
Rose gave her an odd look. Not unkind. Just… aware.
"Can you scan me again?" Rose asked. "I've been colder than usual."
As she stepped forward, frost spread another inch.
Nina swallowed. "I'll see what I can do."
They moved toward the scan room—the same one Allium had occupied not long ago.
⸻
Allium had been in his dorm for hours.
Rose had shown him around. Explained the layout. Where things were. He'd nodded, thanked her, and waited until he was alone before sitting on the floor instead of the bed.
He didn't like the bed yet.
He held an apple in both hands, red and warm, faintly glowing. Sunslope apples. The settlement had pressed the bag into his arms after he helped, like offering tribute to a myth that had turned out to be polite.
He ate slowly.
Silence pooled around him.
Then—
The apple slipped from his hands.
Allium clutched his head as a sharp ringing tore through him, followed by a whisper so small it barely qualified as sound.
"Sees me…"
He looked up.
Nothing.
He closed his eyes and reached outward.
Empty.
His mind flickered to a name.
"Khelos…"
He shook his head. No. This felt different. Familiar, but not the same. Like the echo of something learned, not the thing itself.
Like the Temple of Stillness. Like Overload's first whisper.
But he wasn't in Overload.
He stood, grounding himself, then paused.
Weaver was nearby.
Very nearby.
Too nearby.
In more than one direction.
Allium followed the sensation down the hall and stopped short as threads withdrew into the walls, retracting as if caught mid-thought.
He knocked.
"Weaver? Is everything okay in there?"
A voice answered—not from the door.
From his mind.
"Thief."
Allium stiffened.
The door opened.
Weaver stood there, composed but pale, eyes searching Allium's face.
"Allium. What do you need?"
"I'm sensing something when I'm alone," Allium said carefully. "Is there a way you could help me with this?"
Weaver hesitated, then nodded. "Come in."
They sat. Weaver's threads extended, brushing across Allium's energy, his core.
"I sense no deviation," Weaver murmured.
Then—
"Thief."
The word rang aloud this time.
Weaver recoiled.
Allium saw it.
"You heard it," Allium said. "Why does it call you that?"
Weaver stared at nothing, jaw tight.
Then another whisper slid into his thoughts.
Shut him down.
Weaver inhaled sharply.
"Perhaps," he said too quickly, "if you slept, I could better locate the problem."
Allium's eyes narrowed.
"You told me to live," he said. "Not watch life through sleep."
Weaver shook his head. "No—that's not—something is wrong."
Allium studied him. The confusion felt… real. But so did the distance.
"I don't sense him," Allium said quietly.
Weaver looked desperate now. "You have to believe me."
Allium stood.
"I saw your threads," he said. "You don't trust me awake."
Weaver reached out—then stopped himself.
"I won't bother you anymore," Allium said, and left.
The door closed softly.
Weaver remained standing, alone.
"What is happening…" he whispered.
The walls did not answer.
⸻
Somewhere in HQ, a light flickered.
Then steadied.
No one noticed.