Lana adjusted the strap across her chest, the cold biting through her gear like fangs. Her breath fogged the air. The prototype vessel at her side pulsed faintly, its heartbeat slow but insistent—a living metronome that refused to be ignored.
They were twenty minutes ahead of schedule.
The outpost was meant to be a ghost site—a decommissioned Soviet-era radar station reactivated by Jason using one of Noctis's oldest fallback credentials. The ruins were camouflaged by time and geography, buried at the edge of a frozen lake that hadn't known sunlight in weeks.
No movement. No welcome. No sign of Jason.
Kieran scanned the perimeter, his eyes glowing faintly in the ambient gloom. Lana had grown used to the way he shifted without warning—human features giving way to the storm-gray irises and sharp cut of something beneath.
"I don't like this," he muttered.
"I didn't think you liked anything," Lana replied, her voice flat.
His glance flicked to her. She was pale, but not from the cold. Since the Vault, she hadn't spoken of the prototype—or the kiss. They'd spent twelve hours buried in stone and silence, tangled in the kind of intimacy that didn't end with climax, but with questions neither dared voice.
Kieran pointed to a shattered antennae array near the bunker's upper dome.
"That shouldn't be intact. Jason said it collapsed during the spring thaw."
Lana felt the chill crawl deeper.
Kieran pulled his sidearm—a sleek silver-caliber pistol designed to punch through bone and armor alike—and motioned for her to stay behind him.
They moved toward the main entrance, snow crunching underfoot. The steel doors hung ajar, just wide enough to admit a man sideways. Kieran sniffed the air.
"Too clean."
Lana reached into her coat for the encoded disk Jason had given them. The backup plan. Coordinates. Emergency broadcast channels. But something else was wrong.
There was no static on the comms.
Only breathing.
Not theirs.
Then the lights above the helipad flickered to life—halogen beams powered by a grid that shouldn't work—and the snow lit blood-red.
A voice echoed across the ice.
"Isn't this just like old times?"
Kieran froze. Lana turned toward the voice.
A figure walked from the far side of the ruined outpost, his hands in the pockets of a crimson velvet coat. The fur-lined collar caught the wind, snapping behind him like a cape. His hair was silver-blond, tied at the nape. His skin glowed with unnatural health, like marble stretched too tight.
Lysander Vex.
Alive. Composed. Smiling.
He stopped ten paces away. "Do you remember this place, Kieran? It's where we made our first kill together. The pack trials. You broke your hand on that ice wall trying to outpace me. You still lost."
Kieran raised his pistol. "You shouldn't be standing."
"I rarely should be," Lysander replied. "Yet here I am."
Lana stepped beside Kieran, the vessel behind her pulsing in its carry-case like a second heart.
Lysander's gaze flicked to it. "Ah. There she is. My daughter."
Lana stiffened.
"You engineered her," she said. "You never raised her."
He shrugged. "And yet she lives. Credit where due."
Kieran took a step forward. "What do you want, Lysander?"
"To complete what Evelyn started," he said. "And to remind you both that I'm not your enemy. Not truly. I'm simply playing a longer game."
"You murdered Evelyn."
"No. I tried to save her. She chose death."
Lana barked a hollow laugh. "You expect us to believe that?"
Lysander looked at her with something dangerously close to pity. "No. But I expect the creature inside that case to recognize me. She already does."
The vessel emitted a high-pitched whine.
Kieran moved, putting himself between Lysander and Lana. "You're not taking it."
Lysander tilted his head. "Still guarding things that don't belong to you. Some habits never die."
From the outpost, figures emerged. Half-shifted hybrids, fully armored. Eyes burning with gold or green or violet. Each bore the sigil of Vanir carved into their chest armor—a snake coiled around a stylized fang.
"You brought an army," Lana muttered.
Lysander nodded once. "And Specter sends her regards. She won't intervene. Not yet. She wants to see how you dance first."
Kieran didn't fire.
Not yet.
He lifted his weapon slowly, eyes never leaving Lysander, but his finger rested beside the trigger—not on it.
Lana whispered, "Why are you waiting?"
"Because he wants us to shoot first," Kieran murmured. "He's baiting us into panic. Into showing our cards."
Lana looked at him sharply. "You think there's a way out of this?"
"There's always a way," he said. "Sometimes it just costs more than you're willing to pay."
Lysander spread his arms, theatrically. "You've grown more cautious in your old age, Noire. That's what guilt does. Slows the reflexes."
Kieran's voice dropped. "Why now, Lysander?"
"Because the child is ready," Lysander said. "Because you stole what was meant for me. And because you've grown soft, letting this girl steer your instincts."
Lana stepped forward. "You don't know me."
Lysander's eyes glittered. "I know what your mother wanted. I know what you are. And I know what you'll become when you're left holding your lover's corpse in the snow."
Kieran reacted instantly, shoving Lana aside just as the first hybrid lunged from the left flank.
She hit the ground hard, rolling over packed ice. The carry-case skidded beside her.
Kieran's gun barked once—twice—but the hybrids were already swarming. He spun, dropped low, and shifted.
Lana had seen Kieran change before—but never like this.
This wasn't the sleek, calculated predator of Noctis boardrooms. This was the buried beast—the raw, ripping transformation that tore muscle from bone and left skin sloughing to the snow. His coat burst from his back in a cascade of dark silver fur, limbs stretching grotesquely, claws unsheathing like scythes.
When he rose, the wind itself recoiled.
He didn't roar.
He growled low and long—a subterranean sound that made the hybrids hesitate.
Lana's own body reacted. Her hands burned. She looked down—claws. Fully extended. No warning. No thought. Her vision tunneled. The snow glared white and red.
She rolled to her knees, grabbed the case, and sprinted for the nearest ridge of ice. A hybrid turned to follow.
She met him mid-stride.
Her claws slashed upward, carving through the exposed throat before the soldier could shift fully. He fell twitching. She didn't stop.
Kieran was holding the center line—three hybrids down already, his fur matted with blood. One leapt on his back. He rolled, crushed it beneath him, and drove claws through its spine.
Lana reached a boulder and ducked, catching her breath. The prototype case vibrated harder now, the pulse inside spiking.
"Stay down," she hissed. "Just hold on."
Above the chaos, Lysander stood unmoving, hands still in his coat pockets.
He smiled.
Jason stood twenty meters away, rifle raised, breathing hard. He looked nothing like an intern.
Combat armor. Tactical headset. And his eyes—no longer uncertain hazel.
They glowed pale blue.
"Get up," he shouted. "We've got less than five minutes before he deploys the suppressor field!"
Jason tossed a device—silver, disk-shaped, ticking.
"It'll shut down shift forms within a five-hundred-meter radius. Yours too. Don't get caught inside."
They ran.
The suppressor detonated behind them with a pulse of cold blue light that swept the ice field like a second sunrise. Every hybrid still standing dropped, convulsing as their shifting bones screamed in resistance.
Kieran staggered at the edge of the field, gasping. Lana caught his face in her hands.
"Breathe. Shift back. You'll tear your body apart if you fight it."
His eyes—still molten gold—locked on hers. Slowly, painfully, the fur receded. Bones reset. His skin split and mended. When it was done, he collapsed to his knees, naked and shaking.
Lana wrapped her coat around his shoulders.
Jason knelt beside them, voice low. "He's not done. This was foreplay."
A sound echoed across the ridge. Not a voice.
Laughter.
Lysander stood untouched at the epicenter, hybrids writhing around him. He stepped over their bodies like a priest through candles.
"Well played," he called. "Jason, was it? You always did know how to make an entrance."
Jason raised his rifle. "I'll put one in your spine."
Lysander smiled. "You already did. Didn't take."
Then his face turned grim. "But this? This was never meant for them."
He looked at Lana.
"It was meant for you."
Lana stood slowly.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
He reached into his coat and pulled something small—an old cassette tape, its reel damaged.
"This was your mother's final message. Not the ones you've seen. Not the ones she left for Kieran. This one was hidden in the prototype's neural core."
He threw it to her. Lana caught it, startled.
Jason hissed, "Don't trust him—"
"She says your name, girl. She says it like she regrets every moment of your birth."
Lana's jaw clenched.
Kieran staggered to his feet. "You son of a bitch—"
But Lysander didn't strike. He simply walked backward, melting into the shadows behind the ice wall as the remaining hybrids twitched and moaned.
"You'll come to me," he called. "When you're tired of lies. When you want the truth from the only one who never asked to love you."
Then he was gone.
They waited until the last hybrid stopped twitching.
Kieran sat on a broken concrete slab near the edge of the field, arms crossed over his knees, the coat Lana had wrapped around him still damp from snow and blood. His breath came in short bursts, but he said nothing. The expression on his face wasn't pain. It was dread.
Lana knelt beside him with the cassette still clenched in her hand.
Jason paced, rifle slung across his chest, his eyes never still.
"Don't play it," he said for the third time. "It's bait. He knew you'd want to hear her voice. You don't know what's encoded on that thing."
"She deserves to hear it," Kieran said quietly.
Jason turned. "From Lysander?"
"From her mother," Kieran replied. "Even if he twisted it, she still deserves to know."
Lana stared at the cassette.
The plastic felt too warm in her hand. Like it had a pulse.
"I have to hear it," she said.
Jason looked like he wanted to argue again. Instead, he pulled a battered field comm from his bag, flipped open a hidden compartment, and slid the tape in.
The machine whirred.
For a moment, only static.
Then Evelyn Carter's voice broke through.
"Lana... if you're hearing this, I failed."
Lana's breath caught. She leaned in, eyes wide.
"I tried to stop them. To burn everything before they could use it. But you can't burn blood. You can't bury what's already inside you."
Jason looked away. Kieran didn't move.
"You were always special. Not because of your DNA. Not because of your father—whoever he really was. You were special because you loved without hesitation. You trusted people even when they didn't deserve it. Like I once did. Like Kieran once did."
The name landed like a stone.
Lana looked at him. He didn't flinch.
"I told him to protect you," Evelyn said. "And he did. But not without cost. Not without choosing silence over bloodshed. If he's still alive, if he's still with you... then he chose right. Don't punish him for what I asked him not to say."
Lana's heart twisted.
The tape hissed again, then continued.
"But if Lysander has this message, it means he found my last backup. It means he still believes he can control what comes next. He's wrong. You're not his experiment. You're not mine. You're the last spark of something older. Something he'll never understand."
The voice cracked.
"I love you. Even if I failed. Even if I broke every rule to keep you alive."
Then the tape ended.
Silence settled again.
Jason finally said, "She didn't say what you are."
"No," Lana murmured. "But she said enough."
Kieran looked at her. His voice was low, rough. "I wanted to tell you about Berlin. About the night she died. But she made me promise I wouldn't. That if you ever found out, it would be her voice that told you, not mine."
"You kept that promise."
"It cost me everything," he said. "And I'd do it again."
Lana walked a few paces away. The stars were clearer now—sharpened by cold. The vessel pulsed softly beside her feet.
"I'm tired of secrets," she said. "I'm tired of being someone else's plan."
Jason asked, "Then what now?"
Lana looked back at them—at the man who had lied to protect her, and the one who had killed to keep her alive.
"We finish it. On my terms. My blood. My rules."
She picked up the vessel.
Kieran stood.
Jason shouldered his rifle.
And together, they walked into the dark.