Corrupted Bonds
Chapter 110: The Constant Unravels

Chapter 110: Chapter 110: The Constant Unravels

The VTOL engines roared overhead as the sleek vessel descended through the fog-choked air, blades cutting reality with a precision the team no longer trusted. The distortion field around Havenfield shimmered one last time as the aircraft touched down and opened its hatch.

Lucian didn’t wait for the ramp to fully lower. He stepped aboard, fists clenched, eyes hollow—but beneath that emptiness was a storm he couldn’t name. His tetherlight, still erratic, pulsed dimly at his wrist like a wounded pulse refusing to stabilize.

He hadn’t spoken since Rowan disappeared. Not fully. Every sound in his throat felt like it would turn into a scream if he gave it breath. Logic told him Rowan was displaced. Protocols suggested he was recoverable.

But Lucian knew better.

He felt the moment Rowan slipped away, not just from the field—but from him. Like a bond unspooling into vacuum.

Guilt gnawed behind his ribs. He had stood inches from him, close enough to catch him, close enough to stop it—and he’d failed.

He sat, but his body didn’t rest. He didn’t breathe like the others. He just held on.

The others followed in silence, each movement slower than it should have been—like the ground beneath them was still clinging to their bones.

No one spoke of Rowan.

Not yet.

Inside, the cabin was sterile and humming with soft telemetry. Evelyn’s voice came over the channel, tight and clipped. "Acknowledged retrieval. Threadfall team, prepare for debrief en route to Zarek HQ. Your signal logs show recursive bleed outside containment parameters. We need your direct accounts—especially regarding the signature anomaly."

Lucian sat heavily, staring at the seat where Rowan should have been. "There’s no anomaly," he muttered. "It was him. And he’s gone."

Silence followed. Then:

"Not gone," Vespera said. "Taken."

Ren rubbed his eyes. "Or drawn in. There’s no signature disintegration. Just... phase loss. A displacement."

Mira folded her arms, gaze distant. "Then we find him. We’ve broken into worse places."

Sloane leaned back against the bulkhead. "But we’re not chasing coordinates. We’re chasing something we don’t understand."

Zora’s jaw worked as he stared at the floor. "Doesn’t matter. We owe him. And we don’t leave constants behind."

The VTOL rose into the clouds.

Far below, the distortion field at Havenfield pulsed once more—subtle, like a breath.

Zarek HQ

The debrief room at Zarek HQ was cold, too bright, and entirely too quiet. The lights hummed overhead as the Threadfall team sat in stiff formation before a curved holo-display showing fragmented playback from Havenfield. Evelyn stood before them, arms folded, jaw set, as she absorbed every word.

Lucian sat at the edge of the table, not looking at anyone, hands clenched in his lap. His tetherlight throbbed unevenly beneath the skin of his wrist—echoes of Vaughn_00’s power still snarled beneath the surface. He hadn’t slept since the extraction, and shadows ringed his eyes. If anyone noticed, no one mentioned it.

"The synthlord escaped before a kill strike could be confirmed," Mira was saying, her voice clipped and professional. "We inflicted substantial recursive damage, but it had one final defense: a tether echo construct targeting Rowan."

"Targeting—or mimicking?" Evelyn asked sharply.

"Both," Ren answered. "It baited him with familiarity. His tether flared. There was a spike—then nothing. No degradation, no loss-of-life signature. Just... removal."

"You believe he was extracted into recursion space." Evelyn didn’t phrase it as a question.

Lucian finally spoke, voice low but shaking with restrained fury. "No. He was pulled in. I saw it. I felt it. It didn’t just want to erase him. It wanted to rewrite him."

Vespera glanced at him sharply, then added, "There’s a pattern. This isn’t the first time recursion constructs have mimicked profiles. But it’s never held them before."

"Unless it needs them," Ren said. "To stabilize a branch. Or replicate a paradox."

Lucian stood abruptly, pacing. Sparks cracked faintly from his fingertips. "You’re not listening. It knew him. That copy—it wasn’t just a bait. It was him."

Mira leaned forward. "So you’re saying the recursion isn’t just holding Rowan. It’s building something with him."

Lucian nodded once, jaw clenched. "And every second we waste, it learns more."

Evelyn’s expression hardened. "We’re rerouting intelligence assets to comb known recursion fields. You’ll have priority clearance for cross-signal resonance tracing. We’ll start with phased timeline overlays."

Ren nodded. "We might be able to use resonance residues from his last stable sync. If he’s echoing back, even faintly, we could reconstruct a breadcrumb path."

Lucian sat again, but didn’t stop shaking. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Whatever it’s showing him... he’s forgetting us."

Everyone fell silent.

And the lights continued to hum, oblivious to the unraveling beneath them.

But Evelyn noticed. She watched Lucian as the others filed out—watched the strain behind his movements, the way his resonance flared uncontrollably in moments he thought no one could see.

Back in his quarters, Lucian didn’t sleep. He stared at the ceiling, replaying the moment over and over. The look in Rowan’s eyes. The surge of tetherlight. The snap.

His hand trembled as he activated the system interface he hadn’t used since Vaughn_00.

"Override recursion lock," he muttered. His voice cracked. "Give me his signal. Just one frame. One second."

The system blinked red.

[Unstable recursion bridge. Interface corrupted.]

He slammed a fist into the wall. Sparks jumped from his wrist to the panel, and for a brief second—a flash.

Rowan’s resonance signature.

Lucian sank to his knees, gasping.

"I can still reach you," he whispered. "I know you remember me. I know you do."

His resonance flared again, violent, unstable.

If it took burning himself out to reach Rowan, he would.

He was already halfway there.

Cafeteria

Later, in the cafeteria, the team sat around a half-empty table, plates barely touched.

Zora leaned over his tray. "I keep thinking about his eyes. That second before he vanished. He knew."

"He didn’t fight it," Sloane murmured. "He let go."

Lucian’s chair screeched as he stood abruptly, pacing. Sparks arced softly from his wrist, his resonance reacting to the raw storm just beneath his skin. "Because he had to. Because he thought we’d figure it out."

"We will," Mira said carefully, but her tone was tempered by urgency. "But we need a real entry point. A signal tether, an emotional imprint—something that’ll let us find his frequency again."

Ren looked up from a diagnostic tablet. "Maybe we can simulate a tether echo by mimicking the resonance profile of the moment he vanished. A forced sync across multiversal bleed layers. But it would need to be stabilized—anchored by something or someone he has a deep resonance with."

Everyone turned to Lucian.

His eyes flicked up, hollow and burning. "I’m already synced to him. Always have been. But whatever’s happening in there—this backlash, this noise—it’s trying to overwrite it."

Vespera leaned forward, her voice quiet but insistent. "Then you hold onto what’s left. Anchor from here. We’ll build a projection field through you, if we have to."

Lucian trembled, fists curled. "If it takes burning through everything Vaughn gave me, I’ll do it. I just... I need him back here."

Zora’s voice was hoarse. "We’re not letting him disappear. We don’t leave constants behind. We pull them back."

Lucian sat again, slower this time, staring at the space beside him where Rowan used to sit.

"Then let’s bring him home. Before he forgets what home even is."

Scene shift — Rowan.

His hands moved without thought, fingers sorting through data pads he didn’t remember setting up. His anchor field pulsed faintly at his side, stabilized and silent. No resistance. No pushback.

The sky outside his window was bright.

Lucian’s voice echoed from the hallway—warmer than usual, lined with soft affection. "You coming to briefing, or do I need to bribe you with caffeine and concern?"

Rowan blinked.

A beat later, Lucian appeared in the doorway, his posture relaxed but his eyes sharp with quiet observation. He leaned on the frame, then stepped inside and placed a hand gently on Rowan’s shoulder.

"You okay?" Lucian asked, voice low, intimate. "You’ve been... off. Like part of you’s not here."

Rowan tried to speak, but the answer wouldn’t come. He could only look at Lucian, searching for something he didn’t know he’d lost.

Lucian’s fingers squeezed gently. "You don’t have to say it. I just need to know you’re still you."

That pulled something loose. Rowan laughed—faint, uncertain, but real.

He stood, resonance smooth and golden.

Perfect.

Lucian brushed his thumb across Rowan’s wrist where the light pulsed, grounding him. He didn’t let go right away.

"You know," he added, voice gentler now, "you always hold the weight like it’s yours alone. Even in here. Even when things are good."

Rowan’s gaze flicked up, conflicted. "Maybe that’s because I’m afraid if I set it down... I’ll forget why I carried it."

Lucian leaned in slightly, pressing his forehead to Rowan’s for just a second—an intimacy worn from years of battles, of fractures healed and reopened. "Then don’t carry it alone. Not here. Not ever."

He finally stepped back, smiling softly. "You and me, like always."

And somewhere deep in Rowan’s chest, something flickered.

A memory.

A truth.

And a warning.

Peace

The days blurred after that.

Rowan moved through the base as if he’d always belonged there. Morning drills. Quiet meals in the mess hall. Tactical meetings where no one raised their voice. Lucian at his side, calm and steady, always within reach. The others laughed easily. Zora and Jasper sparred without bruises. Mira hummed while recalibrating equipment. Even Ren smiled when he worked.

Peace hung over everything like a memory half-remembered. Too good. Too soft.

And yet... it felt real.

Rowan let himself fall into it.

He laughed with Lucian more often. He stopped flinching when someone touched his shoulder. He walked slower, lingered longer in rooms that felt safe. For a time, he even forgot what it meant to be hunted by the recursion.

But every night, before sleep claimed him, something tugged.

A flicker in the mirror. A ripple in his resonance. An ache in his chest that felt like remembering someone else’s grief.

He’d reach for the thought—only for it to slide from his grasp like a dream lost on waking.

The illusion was holding.

And Rowan was slipping deeper.

One morning, the briefing room walls looked different.

No one else seemed to notice.

The displays were brighter. The air smelled faintly of lavender—Rowan’s mother used to keep it in sachets by the window. He hadn’t told anyone that. Not even Lucian.

"Rowan?" Mira’s voice broke the moment.

He blinked, then smiled automatically. "Right. Present."

They moved on. Tactical maps, training cycles, predictions for missions that never came. Everything was routine. Clean. And that was the problem.

He caught Lucian’s hand under the table during the briefing. A grounding gesture. Lucian squeezed once, then leaned in.

"You’ve been quiet lately," he murmured, just for him.

Rowan forced a smile. "I’m at peace."

The words sounded wrong in his mouth.

Later, as they walked the perimeter of the compound under the flawless blue sky, Rowan’s resonance pulsed once. A sudden, sharp dissonance—like someone had plucked a wrong note in a perfect song.

Lucian didn’t notice.

But Rowan stopped.

In the reflection of the guard tower glass, a figure stood behind him.

His own eyes stared back—but colder. More alert. Unconvinced.

The fake Rowan was watching again.

And this time, it smiled.

Rowan stared, frozen, as the glass seemed to deepen, as if the reflection were no longer reflecting but peering through. The smile on the other Rowan’s face wasn’t friendly—it was knowing. Cold. A blade sheathed in familiarity.

"You’re not supposed to be here," Rowan whispered.

The reflection tilted its head, mirroring the words soundlessly. And then it spoke—not aloud, but inside him.

You’re forgetting them.

Rowan stumbled back from the window, his heart thudding. His resonance pulsed irregularly, glitching at the edges. When he turned, Lucian hadn’t noticed—still walking, still smiling, still real and wrong.

"You belong here" the voice echoed again.

The world seemed to shimmer slightly around the edges. Colors a little too vivid. Air a little too still. And the reflection stepped forward within the glass—impossible, unreal, but deliberate.

Rowan shut his eyes.

When he opened them, the figure was gone.

But the unease remained.

Something inside him now knew. Knew this peace was a trap. That his memories were being rewritten, made soft, made forgettable.

And the one doing it wore his face.

That night, Rowan waited until the base settled into quiet. He found Lucian alone in the observation wing, sitting beneath the stars that never moved, sipping tea that never cooled.

Rowan sat beside him without a word.

For a while, neither spoke. Then Rowan said, "Do you ever wonder if this is too perfect?"

Lucian looked at him, amused. "That’s a strange complaint from someone who used to dream about peace."

Rowan nodded slowly. "I did. But dreams don’t last this long. And you... you haven’t had a nightmare since I got here."

Lucian set the cup down gently. "Maybe I finally stopped needing them."

Rowan’s tetherlight flickered faintly.

"I think I’m losing something," he said. "Something important. And I think you’re helping me forget."

The silence that followed was heavier than before.

Lucian turned to him, his expression soft—almost pained. "Would that be so terrible?"

Rowan stared at him. "Yes. Because if I forget... then who am I really loving here? You? Or a version of you built from what I want?"

Lucian didn’t answer. He just reached out, brushed a thumb over Rowan’s cheek.

"Does it matter?" he whispered. "When this feels real?"

Rowan closed his eyes. "It does. Because I think the real you is out there... still waiting. Still fighting. And if I give in to this, he’ll never reach me."

Lucian leaned forward, forehead touching Rowan’s again. But this time... the warmth felt thinner. The contact too still.

"Then why haven’t you left?"

Rowan’s voice cracked. "Because I don’t know how."