The air in the toxic wasteland is thick and acrid, a constant hum vibrating through the layers of Lyra's respirator mask. The Geiger counter clipped to her belt clicks steadily, uncomfortably fast. Acid storms have long since hollowed out the earth, and the secret military base is buried somewhere beneath a land that should have been forgotten.
But Fum's body is here. Timmy's final gift—the data chip—has been clear in its brutal simplicity: location, access sequence, security measures, last known shifts in ownership.
Lyra moves like a shadow through irradiated canyons and melted concrete ruins. Each step brings her deeper into contested ground. Every inch of her body aches—scars still healing under her armor, ligaments pushed past recovery. But none of it matters. She has one mission, carved into her like scripture:
Bring him home.
She bypasses tripwires by hand, scrambles encrypted barriers with makeshift tools she has rigged from what she salvaged along the way. With no hacker backup, she has to rely on what the twins have taught her and what she has picked up through desperation. Her gloves are shredded from friction burns. Her arms tremble from exhaustion. Still, she presses on.
As the vault coordinates drew closer, she kneels behind the remains of a shattered artillery drone, her eyes narrowing at the sound of combat.
Too late.Other factions are already here.
From her vantage point in the ruins of a shattered wall, she sees them—multiple hostile units, all bearing different insignias. Some she recognizes—rival syndicates, rogue paramilitaries, even black market scavenger guilds. Others are unknown, their gear pristine, their tactics silent and ruthless. It is a feeding frenzy of vultures.
And they are tearing each other apart.
Gunfire echoes against the dead earth.
One group tries to flank another through a side corridor, only to trigger a trap that vaporizes half the squad.
Another team moves in a tight formation—disciplined. Dangerous. Their leader barks orders in a voice familiar to her—one of the factions that has tried to intercept them from taking Timmy to a safe place before.
They knew the coordinates, too,
Lyra thinks grimly.
There must've been more than one copy, and someone else cracked it.
She watches one operative kneel over a fallen comrade and remove their ID chip before detonating a remote mine under another approaching team. Blood mists in the heat-sick air.
Lyra grits her teeth and flattens herself against the wall, inhaling deeply through her respirator.
If she moves now, she'll be caught between crossfires.
If she waits too long, they might reach the vault first.
Her headgear flickers with failing power—her battery packs have drained rapidly in the toxic zone, and she is almost out of energy reserves.
She has maybe twenty minutes of optimal strength left.
Her hand brushes the small transmitter she wears—no active signal, no backup. This is a solo mission. By her own choice.
You really are stubborn, she can almost hear Theresa say with a dry chuckle. Should've waited for backup, but no—you had to do it your way, huh?
Her lips twitch.
A concussive blast rocks the ground a few feet from her, sending dust and ash into the air.
The vault's outer door has been breached by someone else, partially.
Enough that smoke begins billowing from the access corridor. Screams follow, then the sound of mechanical limbs skittering—auto-defense bots activating.
The factions panic. Half retreats. The rest goes berserk.
That is her opening.
With a sharp exhale, Lyra sprints low and fast toward the breach, weaving between ruins and scattered bodies. A drone whirs to her right—she dives behind a collapsed steel beam, aims her silencer, and shoots it clean through its optic.
One down. Too many to go.
Smoke swallows her whole as she passes through the semi-breached vault door. The temperature drops instantly, and the thick toxic air is replaced by refrigerated containment systems buried in the walls. Ahead of her, a dozen corpses litter the floor—some killed by the defense bots, others by one another.
But the hallway beyond is clear—for now.
She clutches the data chip and runs the remaining access sequence on the panel.
Her fingers tremble.
Her eyes burn.
But it works. A low hiss fills the corridor as sealed bulkheads are unlocked, and the reinforced doors slide open—
—and there, in the heart of a cryogenic stasis vault, is her uncle, Fum.
Still.
Preserved.
Floating in a glass tank, body wrapped in the kind of containment reserved only for VIP operatives or legends. His expression is eerily peaceful, as if time itself has paused the moment he died.
Lyra's knees hit the ground. She doesn't cry. Can't.
Instead, she touches the glass and whispers, "I came to take you home."
Then the alarms blare.
Reinforcements from the other factions are coming. Fast.
No time for tears, I have to move fast!
Lyra moves closer.
Then the cryogenic chamber hisses as Lyra inputs the final override code. Freezing mist pours from the containment unit, curling around her boots like ghosts reluctant to let go.
Then the vault's cradle releases with a soft metallic click, and her uncle's body—Fum's body—drifts gently into her waiting arms.
He is heavier than she expected.
Or maybe it is just the weight of everything she has endured for this moment.
Cradling him close, Lyra turns to leave—but a flicker on the display console catches her eye.
A small tablet, dull-lit and buried beneath a layer of frost. Not part of the original schematic.
She pauses.
Then, heart tightening, she steps back and reaches for it with one trembling hand. Her gauntlet squeaks against the metal as she wipes it clean. The screen activates with her touch.
[GENETIC VESSEL #1178]
STATUS: DECEASED
ORIGIN: CLONE OF OPERATIVE 'FUM'
CREATION SUCCESS: YES
WAR ZONE 154 – PRIMARY BODY: RETRIEVED / DECONTAMINATED / CREMATED
CLONE USAGE: ABANDONED DUE TO NEURAL DECAY
RETAINED FOR STUDY / EXTRACTION
LOCATION: BLACK VAULT B-7
Lyra freezes.
Clone? A clone…This… wasn't her uncle? No…no…
Her breath catches, crushed beneath the unbearable weight of that word. She stares down at the still, cold face in her arms.
It is him—it looks like him. The creases of experience, the faint scar above his brow, the peace in his features… but it isn't.
It isn't Uncle…Not truly.
The real Fum has been burned.
Gone.
Scattered ashes over a no-man's land she'll never be able to touch.
A low thump echoes through the vault—her makeshift barricade shuddering as enemy reinforcements try to tear it down.
She has seconds. Maybe a minute.
Her body wants to collapse.
Her knees buckle, and she falls to one. Still holding the clone. Still staring into eyes that will never open. She presses her forehead against his cold chest, tears sliding from beneath her goggles.
"I came too late again… didn't I?" she whispers.
The air cracks again—a louder, sharper boom. The barricade will not last.
Lyra wipes her tears roughly.
Her pain has no place here.
Not now.
Not when people are trying to destroy the clone, too. Not when others still chase ghosts for power.
She adjusts her grip, securing the body to her back with reinforced straps. It doesn't matter what he is—a clone, an echo, a fragment. This is all she has left.
"Flesh or copy…you're mine to protect."
She sprints across the chamber, reroutes the power manually, and plants the blast charge in a structural weak point. A second later—
KRA-KOOM!
The floor above her blows apart in a blinding light. Dust rains down. Metal shrieks.
Without hesitation, Lyra launches her grapple, hooks the edge of the new hole, and pulls.
Her shoulder screams. Her ribs feel like they cracked again. But she doesn't stop.
She claws her way up through the smoke, dragging her uncle's clone with her. The acrid wind of the wasteland slaps her across the face as she emerges into daylight—or—what passes for it beneath the crimson storm clouds.
Behind her, shouts echo through the vault. They are close.
But Lyra is moving again, limping over jagged ground, breathing pain with every step. Her vision blurs, red flashing on the edges, but she keeps moving.
She can't stop.
Every mile she puts between them is a blessing. Every step is grief weaponized.
She has failed to find the real body of her uncle.
But they will not take this one.
Not while she is still breathing.
____________________________________________________
The toxic wind howls like a dying god across the broken land, scouring everything in its path.
Lyra doesn't flinch.
She can't afford to.
Her body is a battlefield. The fabric of her suit is torn in too many places to count, blood dried black where antiseptics haven't been enough. Her breath comes in wet rattles, and her vision flickers with the haze of near-collapse.
Every movement, a muscle tears, every step a new rapture inside.
Yet she presses forward.
Each step is deliberate.
Brutal.
She chugs another vial of regen-serum—its acrid taste burning her throat, too weak now to numb the pain.
It isn't working like it used to.
The medic has warned her. Her body is building resistance. But she has no choice. She chews a second painkiller, then a third, swallowing them dry and bitter as gravel.
"Just keep going," she rasps to herself.
The wasteland around her twists and breathes like something half-alive—razor-sharp hills of irradiated stone, tangled husks of ancient war machines, metal long corroded and half-buried by time and ash. The storm is coming fast, turning the air into a red blur. But that also means her pursuers will struggle.
Small blessings, carved from the same hell.
She slips.
Her knees hit the jagged ground with a crack that echoes through her skull. Her palms catch the edge of rusted steel and bleed for it. For a moment, she stays still.
She stays there, crouched like an animal, head bowed under the weight of her grief, her pain, her fury. Her uncle's clone—still strapped to her back, silent and unmoving—is a constant weight she refused to drop.
I'll bring him home…no matter what.
Lyra forces herself to take a deep breath even if it feels like shoving boiling mercury into her lungs.
Home. Yes, I'll have to get back home. For uncle, for me.
She drags herself upright again, swaying, then catches sight of something: a scrap-metal outcropping half-collapsed in the shadow of a ruin, hollowed out by past explosions—likely a dead soldier's last refuge.
It will do.
Lyra stumbles inside, sagging against the corroded wall, the metal biting her shoulder like fangs. She unlatches the body from her back with trembling hands and lays it carefully down.
The clone's face is peaceful. Too peaceful.
Her fingers hover at her side. Then slowly, she pulls a blade.
Karambit knife, the very same one she received from her Uncle.
A gift, given back when she is full of smiles and laughter beside her uncle, when she is still learning to hold herself upright.
'Keep up the good work, Lyra.' His hands pat my head. Warm and steady.
Its surface is worn, but cared for—still sharp.
Still here unbroken.
She clenches it in both hands and brings it to her chest, folding around it as its presence grounds her.
Outside, the toxic storm broke, lightning crashing crimson against the skeletal remains of towers.
Wind howls into the cavern mouth, shrieking through fractured rebar. Inside, Lyra's breaths are ragged and trembling, her eyes rimmed red but full of determination.
"I'm not breaking," she whispers to no one.
Then louder, like a mantra:
"Not yet. Not here. Not yet. Not here."
Each repetition is a defiance.
Of despair. Of failure. Of death.
Tears fall—not loud sobs, just silent, steady drops that slide over dirt and ash on her cheeks. Her lips tremble, but her grip on the blade never falters.
"I'll bring you home," she murmurs, glancing at the still form beside her. "Whatever part of you… is left. I'll bring it back."
Thunder cracks above, but the cavern holds.
And inside, Lyra remains still—shaking and bloodied, yes—but alive and fighting.
Grief can wait.
For now, she's still moving forward.