Chapter 40 · It worked

She drove her forehead into his. Kael grunted, grip breaking. Sera slammed the right switch.

Every control band in the corridor went dark.

The soldiers froze. One dropped his rifle. Another tore at his own collar, sobbing as the red glow faded from his eyes.

Mira collapsed against the console.

"It worked," she breathed. "It actually—"

The archive switch turned black.

Behind the glass, hundreds of blue memory capsules cracked at once. Images spilled into the air—faces, rooms, bloodless fragments of lives. Sera saw a younger version of herself strapped to a metal table.

A man stood beside it.

Kael.

Not the hard-eyed ruler beside her. Younger. Thinner. His hands were clean, but his face was wrecked with panic.

A woman in a white coat leaned over Sera's body.

"Start the murder sequence," the woman said.

Young Kael shook his head. "You said she was only a carrier."

"She is both. Press the key."

The image stuttered.

Sera grabbed Kael by the front of his coat. "You knew."

"I knew something was wrong."

"You heard them call me a carrier."

"I didn't know what it meant."

"You pressed something."

"Not the sequence.