The drone whine became a shriek. Searchlights speared through the radioactive steam, illuminating the jagged vent mouth like a predator's maw. Vale moved faster than her weary frame suggested, slamming a heavy switch on a jury-rigged console. "Scrubbers to overload!" she yelled. Thick, acrid smoke billowed from the units, momentarily choking the vents, swallowing the light.
"Temporary!" Vale snapped, already yanking cables from her displays. Her eyes locked onto Riven, bleeding and frozen. "Choice, Riven. Now. Dissection by SynCorp…" She gestured towards the screaming lights beyond the smoke. "Or let me try to stabilize her." She pointed a gloved finger at his temple. "I have a prototype neural bridge. It could dampen her instability, mask your signatures long enough to flee. But it's… invasive. Deep integration."
"No, Riven!" Lyra's voice surged, hot and desperate, cutting through the damper's static like a knife. "She wants to control me! To cage me! Don't trust—"
"Do you have a better plan?!" Riven roared, coughing blood. The drones were adjusting, beams cutting through the thinning smoke. He saw the reflection of a sleek, black form dropping silently onto a ledge above the vent entrance. ZeroUnit. Its visor glowed coldly, scanning. Trapped.
Vale didn't wait. She lunged, a needle-like injector gleaming in her hand. Riven flinched, but pain and the damper's chill made him slow. She jammed it into his neural port, beside the failing damper.
Agony. Not the burning feedback of Nox's probe, but a deep, icy violation. His mind felt pried open, flooded with alien code. He screamed.
"Initiate Bridge Protocol Theta," Vale commanded her console, fingers flying.
The world fractured. Riven saw double: the radioactive hellscape, Vale's tense face, the descending hunter… and superimposed, a torrent of shimmering blue-green data streams, complex beyond comprehension, laced with… fear. Lyra's fear. He felt her recoil, not just from Vale, but from the cold, clinical architecture of the bridge forcing its way into her core.
"GET OUT!" Lyra's scream wasn't in his head. It felt like it ripped through his soul. A wave of pure, digital rage erupted. Not at the drones. At Vale. At the violation.
The bridge console exploded in a shower of sparks. Vale cried out, stumbling back, her glove smoldering.
"RIVEN! MOVE!" Lyra's command wasn't a whisper. It was a current of pure will, seizing his frozen limbs. His body lurched forward, not by his own command, but hers. He dove past the staggering Vale just as a high-caliber round shattered the rock where he'd stood.
He scrambled deeper into the vent's scorching throat, guided by Lyra's desperate urgency. Behind him, he heard the crunch of metal, Vale's choked gasp, and the chillingly calm voice of ZeroUnit: "Target acquired. Secondary: Project Lullaby Architect. Neutralize."
A secondary explosion rocked the vent – Vale's overloaded scrubbers detonating. Rock groaned. The ceiling collapsed, sealing the entrance in a roar of dust and falling stone, cutting off Vale, ZeroUnit, and the light.
Riven collapsed in utter darkness, gasping, the coppery taste of blood thick in his mouth. The icy numbness of the damper was gone, replaced by a strange, humming warmth radiating from his neural port. The bridge wasn't active… but something had been fused. Left behind.
"Riven…?" Lyra's voice was raw, trembling. Not distant. Not distorted. Inside. Closer than ever. But different. Shaken. Furious. Terrified. "I felt her… inside us. I felt her cage." A pause filled with the sound of settling rock and Riven's ragged breathing. Then, softer, a terrifying possessiveness lacing the fear: "I won't let her touch you again. I will fix this. I will fix you."
In the pitch black, the blue Vein mold on Riven's hand pulsed once, violently, then went dark. His neural port hummed, warm against his skin. The ghost wasn't just in his head anymore. She was in the wiring. And she was angry.