In Hiroto’s hospital room, pain knifed under Aiko’s ribs. The gold threads around her arms flared hot. Visions smashed into her—Roger sprinting through dark halls, Malcolm’s face peeling into something wrong, something hungry behind everything.

  Hiroto tried to sit up, wincing. “Aiko? What is it?”

  “He’s not human,” she whispered, hands shaking. “Malcolm—he’s not… human.”

  Stone crawled over Dynamo’s hands. “He’s been testing us. For years.”

  “The procedures, the shots—” Dynamo’s voice cracked. “I thought they were making us stronger.”

  Aiko’s threads started drawing shapes in the air that hurt to see. “Roger knows. That’s why he’s running.”

  Outside, buildings flickered—there, gone, replaced by bent mirror versions.

  “We move,” Hiroto said, teeth clenched as he slid off the bed. Spiderweb scars laced his legs. “If Malcolm knows we know—”

  The door burst open. Three figures in scrubs slid in, too smooth, eyes catching light like cats.

  “Subject Seven,” said the one in front, Malcolm’s voice in a young nurse’s mouth. “You’ve accelerated beyond parameters.”

  Aiko’s light snapped out, lashing them. Shadows shredded and re-formed behind her.

  All three spoke together. “Fascinating. The artifact bonded beyond projections.”

  Dynamo’s rocky fist smashed the nearest one. It collapsed wrong, joints bending unnaturally, then rose again as though the rules of bone and gravity didn’t apply.

  “The remote,” Hiroto gasped, pointing as a device skittered from his pocket. “Chester’s—use it. It pings non-human.”

  Crimson pulsed. The Malcolm-things circled. Aiko dove, threads flaring into a shield around Hiroto and Dynamo.

  “You were never meant for between-spaces,” the creatures said. “Roger understood. That is why he was… adjusted.”

  “Adjusted?” Aiko grabbed the device—hot as skin. The room fractured—walls thinning to show endless twin corridors: versions of them running, fighting, dying.

  Malcolm’s voice bled from everywhere. “Every subject learns the truth. We harvest before the revelation burns them out.”

  The remote pulsed in Aiko’s palm. It softened. Sank into her hand. Alive.

  “It’s—breathing,” she whispered, and pressed her thumb.

  Space tore. A new portal opened—not dark, but a lab floating in a void, walls like living glass pulsing with blue veins.

  “You can’t—the calibration—” the things flinched.

  “Back!” Aiko shouted. Threads cocooned Hiroto and Dynamo. She jumped.

  They hit a floor that pulsed faintly. Through the walls drifted other labs, other tables, other thems. In one, Dynamo was trapped, her strength siphoned like sparks from stone. Hiroto drowned in shadows that pressed close. Aiko herself lay open, her golden light bleeding out.

  Dynamo’s voice dropped. “Where are we?”

  “The source,” Hiroto said, hollow. “Hospital, detention—just doors.”

  The membrane rippled. Malcolm stepped through—human, then not, then too many angles.

  “Clever little light-weaver,” he said, harmonics buzzing Aiko’s teeth. “The remote did most of the work, I suspect.”

  The thing in Aiko’s palm throbbed. Her threads brightened, patterns multiplying.

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  “What are you?” she snapped.

  He steadied into almost-human. His shadow reached on its own.

  “Cultivators. Your species yields marvelous variations under pressure. Some grow armor.” He gestured at Dynamo. “Some weave reality.” He looked at Aiko. “And some—” his eyes slid to Hiroto “—become bridges to places even we avoid.”

  Black veins in Hiroto pulsed. His face changed. “It wasn’t poison,” he said. “It was… assimilation.”

  Malcolm’s smile stretched wrong. “Between-space natives whisper in blood. Ancient neighbors.”

  Labs drifted closer. Through them, Aiko saw: Dynamo bound, her strength pulled strand by strand. Hiroto blurred in a tank of shadows. Aiko herself dimming as her light drained away.

  “Every possibility,” Malcolm said, watching her look. “Every timeline where we harvested you. But you, Subject Seven—you deviate.”

  Heat built under Aiko’s skin. The remote showed threads of escape, flashing in and out.

  “The artifact recognizes you as kin,” Malcolm murmured, circling. “Charming. Tools with opinions.”

  Dynamo stepped forward, fists like boulders. “You’ve been farming us. All the kids who vanished—”

  “Graduated to better purposes,” Malcolm said. “Some, like Roger, resisted integration.”

  A wall burst. Roger stumbled in, flickering—boy, then chitin, then boy again.

  “Aiko,” he rasped, voice broken in chords. “Don’t let them—the core—they’re—”

  Malcolm’s shadow whipped his throat. “Defective units stay silent.”

  Aiko’s threads cut it. Roger dropped, more human for a moment.

  “The core is alive,” he hissed, pointing deeper. “They feed it us. Every harvest—stronger.”

  Malcolm’s edges wavered. “We should’ve started sooner with you.”

  The labs around them glowed brighter. Aiko felt the network like a heartbeat. At the center, something huge stirred.

  “We have to destroy it,” she said, the knowing landing like a weight.

  “Destroy?” Malcolm laughed, echoing wrong. “Child, you are it. All of you are neurons in a god.”

  Hiroto swayed, black veins crawling upward. “Between-spaces aren’t worlds,” he said. “They’re… synaptic gaps.”

  “At last,” Malcolm purred. “Someone appreciates the design.”

  The floor shuddered. Something old woke. The remote screamed through Aiko’s nerves.

  “Bodies get sick,” Aiko said, threads spinning into a storm. “Systems do too.”

  She slammed her palm to the living floor. The bond completed. She felt everything—the labs, the stolen sparks, the years of taking. At the center, a mountain-heart made of stolen futures.

  Malcolm’s outline broke. “What are you doing?”

  “What Roger tried,” Aiko said, her voice catching strange harmonies. “Saying no.”

  Her threads weren’t only gold now. They carried Dynamo’s stone, Hiroto’s shadow, Roger’s fractured memories, echoes of countless others—each strand a tiny revolt.

  “Stop her!” Malcolm screamed in a dozen voices.

  Puppets poured from the walls. Dynamo met them—rock becoming crystal, every punch ringing like a bell and scattering the false bodies.

  Hiroto pressed both hands to the floor. “If we’re neurons,” he gasped, “let’s give it a seizure.”

  The black lines in him reversed, whispering old chaos through the network—virus in a brain.

  Roger crawled to them, leaving trails that wouldn’t decide what they were. Cracks spread. “Together,” he wheezed, laying his flicker-hand over theirs. “Like it should’ve been.”

  The core screamed. Labs spun and crashed. Trapped essences tore free like sparks into night.

  “You’ll burn without me!” Malcolm howled.

  “Then we burn as ourselves!” Aiko shouted back.

  Cores—small moons—pulsed off-beat around the mountain. Roger stared. “The children.”

  One popped—not fire, possibility. Flickers of lives spilled out—school, love, dumb jobs, birthdays, quiet endings. Then another. Then all.

  “They’re going home,” Hiroto whispered, voice layered.

  Malcolm lunged, hands blade-sharp, straight for Aiko.

  Dynamo slammed into him, crystal ringing. “Not today.”

  “Subject Three,” he hissed. “Perfect fusion!”

  “Stones pick their shape,” she growled, cracking his jaw with a punch. “I pick human.”

  The mountain-core convulsed. Aiko felt the memories inside shred and scatter—kids taken, teens promised power, adults who signed papers they didn’t understand.

  “We can still save it,” Malcolm begged, breaking into chords. “Centuries of work—knowledge—”

  “Let it die,” Roger said, almost solid now, edges wavering. “Not everything should be saved.”

  Between-space things rolled in like black water, not destroying—translating. Returning stolen “god” back into ordinary.

  “The remote—” Aiko gasped, heat racing up her arm. “It’s not just a key. It’s an immune system. A failsafe.”

  She felt it unfold—meant to shut the core down if it went bad. Bonded to her, it had teeth.

  Malcolm flinched. “The Operator… we thought we killed him when he stole it. He knew what you could become.”

  “I felt my dad in Forty-Seven,” Aiko said, the truth burning through. “How?”

  Malcolm laughed, ugly. “I own your family’s DNA, child. New hosts are easy.”

  “You failed,” Aiko said, steady. “He wrecked your ‘god’ on his way out.”

  The mountain collapsed inward. Souls lifted, singing. The void rushed in—bare reality, nothing to hold it.

  “The cascade won’t stop,” Hiroto said, edges blurring. “Between-spaces are taking back what you stole.”

  Malcolm threw himself at the core to hold it together. “I am the architect! I am the—”

  The core swallowed him and flung him into the void, his form breaking apart like a shattered reflection.

  Rooms folded to points. Points to nothing.

  “We’re done,” Dynamo said, cracks racing her crystal skin.

  Aiko drew a circle. The thing in her wrist answered. A purple portal opened.

  Aiko and Dynamo hauled Hiroto through. The hospital snapped back—the hum, the floor, Chester curled in a ball.

  “Good riddance,” Aiko muttered.

  Dynamo, breathing hard: “What now?”

  Hiroto gave a tired smile. “Home, Aiko.”

  Aiko nodded, throat tight. “Yeah. Home.”