Corrupted Bonds
Chapter 114: Flicker

Chapter 114: Chapter 114: Flicker

The illusion held.

But not as tightly.

Rowan awoke late, blinking up at a ceiling that for the first time in weeks felt unfamiliar. Something was off. The simulated sunlight filtering through the vents cast a strange glow across the floor—just a few degrees too warm, too orange. He stared at it for a long time, brow furrowed, unable to name the dread creeping into his chest.

The bed beside him was empty. The fake Lucian had already left, no doubt preparing breakfast or checking false patrol logs. But the warmth left behind in the sheets felt staged. Engineered. Too even. Like someone had remembered to heat the bed, but not why.

Rowan sat up slowly. His heart was beating faster than it should have. He rubbed his face hard, trying to clear the fog that refused to lift. The dream—he remembered it this time. Not the image, but the feeling. Longing. A presence just outside of reach. A voice...

You wrote me.

The words surfaced like breath from beneath water. He didn’t remember hearing them. But they rang with a gravity that made his throat tighten.

He pulled on his uniform too quickly, fumbling with the collar, breath catching in short waves. He moved through Havenfield like someone newly aware of the seams. The garden gate creaked when it never had before. A conversation looped unnaturally—three people laughing, then laughing again, word for word.

He bumped into Elias, and the man’s reaction felt... off. He blinked too slowly. Smiled too late. Like he was catching up to a line of code.

In the central plaza, Mira and Quinn played a quiet round of chess, just like yesterday. Exactly like yesterday. Rowan stood there and watched, bile rising in his throat as he realized neither of them was actually looking at the board.

His hands trembled. His breath shook.

Something was wrong.

He needed to see. To confirm that something—anything—was real.

He sought out Ren, sprinted halfway across the facility. But Ren’s workspace was locked. The lights were dimmed.

"On assignment," said a voice behind him.

He spun around.

No one was there.

The air in his lungs turned heavy. His vision swam at the edges. Panic licked at his spine.

He returned to his quarters with tension coiled deep in his gut, every step too loud, too sharp.

The fake Lucian was there. Smiling. Holding a tray of food. Too perfect. Too calm.

"You’re quiet today," he said again.

Rowan stared at him. At the way his hand didn’t tremble. At the flawlessness of his smile. And—for just a moment—he didn’t see warmth. He saw programming. He saw mimicry. Precision.

His mouth opened, but no sound came.

He forced a smile. "Just tired."

But inside, a flicker grew.

And this time, it didn’t fade.

Zarek HQ

Far beyond the recursion—where his physical body remained anchored—Lucian paced the observation deck like a tethered storm. He hadn’t slept since the resonance spike. The memory had replayed in his mind with agonizing clarity—the breath caught in Rowan’s throat, the hesitation before he followed the fake Lucian’s voice.

That hesitation was everything.

Mira and Vespera had begun recalibrating the projection interface. They spoke in hushed tones, conscious of the strain etched across Lucian’s face. Zora offered him a protein bar earlier—he hadn’t touched it.

"He’s slipping," Lucian murmured, almost to himself.

Ren stood at the edge of the equipment housing, monitoring waveform readouts. "He’s also resisting. That spike from earlier? That wasn’t random. His resonance tried to reach out."

Lucian turned toward him, exhausted but burning. "Then we amplify it. I don’t care how unstable the field gets. I don’t care if the recursion tries to erase me again—I need him to remember me. I need Rowan."

He slammed a fist to his chest. "I’m still anchored. I can feel him."

Ren gave him a quiet nod, his fingers dancing across interface panels. Lucian’s consciousness was still embedded in the recursion, but this exterior anchor—their control hub—allowed them to stabilize his projection and track every fluctuation from Rowan’s side. "Then let’s keep that connection alive."

Lucian stepped forward, palms flat on the projection console, voice low. "No more waiting. The next flicker? I’m going to be standing in front of him when it hits."

And somewhere within the illusion, Rowan’s heart began to race for reasons he could not explain.

Lucian didn’t wait for approval. ... His final breath before immersion was a name.

"Rowan."

Disorientation

Rowan stood in front of the mirror, fingers pressed to his temples. His reflection stared back—too still. Too polished. There was no smudge on the glass, no fog from his breath. Just silence.

Something in his chest wouldn’t stop trembling.

He turned away, suddenly breathless, and leaned against the counter.

It was happening again. That awful pressure. The tightening in his ribs. He walked to the window, stared out across Havenfield.

Everything shimmered, golden and serene. But his gut told him it was wrong. All of it.

He clutched the edge of the windowsill. "What’s happening to me?"

No one answered.

Rowan turned back into the room and found a sketchbook waiting on his bed—he didn’t remember putting it there. Pages filled with faces, most of them faded or incomplete.

One stood out.

Sharp eyes. A tilted grin.

There was comfort in that face—too much. It stirred not just a memory, but something deeper, more layered. Longing. Regret. Intimacy.

He didn’t know the name, not consciously. But the feeling that accompanied it punched through him like a suppressed truth tearing itself free.

Moments flashed behind his eyes—glimpses of hands intertwined in lamplight, whispers shared in the quiet between dreams, a phantom warmth in his bed that his heart reacted to faster than his mind.

He stumbled back, heart pounding, breath caught between fear and recognition.

The lights dimmed—responding to no command.

His fingers trembled as he whispered, "Lucian...?"

The name tasted like truth.

A flicker.

And then, without warning, a searing heat lanced behind his eyes—as if his mind had been split wide open.

Rowan dropped to one knee with a strangled cry, fingers digging into his scalp. The pressure in his skull wasn’t just pain—it was like something was tearing through layers of memory and illusion all at once, clawing its way into his awareness.

Blinding pulses of resonance cracked against the edge of his vision, distorting sound, space, and time. The air itself warped around him in jagged pulses—breath catching, skin crawling as if the atmosphere had turned electric.

From deep within the recursion, something ancient and wrong screamed, not in sound but in sensation—resentment and panic clashing.

A presence was coming.

And it wasn’t part of this world.

Rowan gasped for breath as memories that didn’t belong to this place pressed against the inside of his skull—flickers of something truer than Havenfield’s serenity. The taste of cold air after a mission. The smell of Lucian’s jacket in a downed transport. Pain and laughter layered over silence. Images too raw, too specific to be part of any illusion.

The recursion tried to smooth over it. The air sweetened. The window brightened. His datapad lit with a new, cheerful message from a friend who never used to message at all.

But Rowan couldn’t look away from the sketch.

The man with the sharp eyes.

The grin like a challenge.

His hand reached for the page, fingertips brushing graphite that shouldn’t have existed. The lines buzzed under his touch.

He dropped the book and staggered back, panic breaking through confusion like a dam cracking. "This isn’t real," he breathed. "This—this isn’t right."

The walls pulsed gently, trying to soothe. The lights adjusted warmer. A knock sounded at the door. A voice, Lucian’s voice—but too calm, too rehearsed—called, "Rowan? You okay in there?"

He backed away from the door, eyes wide, the name echoing through his mind again.

Lucian.

Not the voice outside.

The voice in his bones.

The one that never let go.

He dropped to his knees again, gripping his head.

And the recursion shuddered.

For the first time since it began, the world around Rowan faltered.

A crack split through the illusion—and a memory slipped in.

It wasn’t a memory he had summoned. It seized him with no warning.

It hit him with brutal clarity: a battle zone seared into memory, one where Lucian had teetered on the edge of collapse.

Rowan saw it through the haze of recalled adrenaline—the psychic tendrils lashing out of Lucian’s hands, the unnatural violet crackle of power gone too far, the rising spike on his portable sync meter.

He remembered what he did next. The guiding booster. The injector. The white-hot sting of resonance forced into his chest.

He remembered screaming.

Then Lucian—his body faltering, eyes wild—had turned just in time for Rowan to reach him. The touch to his jaw. The bond locking into place like the final piece of a storm-battered circuit.

Rowan had poured everything into him.

And Lucian had lived.

That moment—breathless, ragged, brimming with unspoken things—flashed like lightning behind Rowan’s eyes. The echo of it ripped through the illusion’s soft edges and cracked the ground beneath it.

Rowan’s body curled inward around the memory, shaking.

The recursion screamed.

But it wasn’t finished with him.

Another memory surged through the widening gap.

A darker one.

Rowan found himself back at Site V9. Cold, metal-tiled floors. Dim emergency lighting flickering. A soundless pressure filled the space, like a world holding its breath.

They had found Lucian in a collapsed chamber at the edge of a warped containment node. Time had frayed there—everything around them suspended, distorted.

And Lucian...

He was slumped against the wall like a discarded weapon. His scythe lay cracked beside him. Armor shredded, blood dried and blackened at his ribs and throat. Fingertips split. His eyes—those vibrant silver-grays—vacant, sunken, no longer seeing.

Rowan’s breath hitched just remembering it.

He had stepped forward then, knees trembling, whispering his name. "Lucian?"

Nothing. Not even recognition. Just shallow, broken breathing. No spark. No soul. A shell.

The others had spoken. He’s not responsive.He’s broken.What the hell did this place do to him?

But Rowan had reached out, hand cupping Lucian’s cheek.

And Lucian had flinched.

Even now, the memory lanced through him. Not just the pain of seeing him like that—but the feeling that somehow, Lucian had been lost not in battle, but in mind. In spirit.

Back then, Rowan had whispered: "Please... come back."

Now, the same plea trembled through him.

The recursion buckled.

Because Rowan was remembering what they had survived—and what they had nearly lost.

And with that remembrance came resistance.

The fracture gaped open.

And light flooded in.

Rowan collapsed against the wall, sobs heaving through his chest as his body fought to comprehend the emotional weight tearing through him. It was too much—grief, memory, love, and terror all folding over each other. He clawed at his chest like he could make sense of the resonance ripping through his soul.

His breaths came ragged, voice cracking on whispers that had no audience.

"Lucian... please. Please."

He wasn’t sure if he was asking to see him again or begging for forgiveness. The lines had blurred—between memory and presence, between loss and hope.

Then the light sharpened.

It coalesced—slow, deliberate—into a ripple at the far edge of the room.

Rowan blinked through the blur of his tears.

And Lucian stepped through.

Not the illusion.

The real one.

Not flawless, not polished. Tired. Frayed. But real.

Their eyes locked.

Lucian’s chest rose with a deep, unsteady breath, like the sight of Rowan was both an anchor and a blade.

Rowan stared, silent, throat burning, unsure if he was hallucinating.

But something in him knew.

This wasn’t a memory.

It was him.

Lucian’s voice was hoarse when it came. "I’m here. I found you."

Rowan’s knees buckled. He didn’t fall. Lucian was already there.

And for the first time in this warped echo of paradise, reality reasserted itself—in the shape of a hand catching his fall.

In the shape of the truth.

The aftermath

The recursion did not accept him.

Not willingly.

The moment Lucian crossed the breach, the illusion convulsed. Havenfield’s golden skies dimmed unnaturally, like clouds rolling in on fast-forward. Walls shimmered at the edges, flickering between states—corridors extended and shortened, rooms vanished, doors led nowhere.

The ground beneath Lucian’s feet warped with a low-frequency hum, like the recursion itself was growling.

It knew he wasn’t part of the script.

Lucian tightened his stance, resonance flaring around him like static. His presence disrupted the harmony of the illusion, forcing its seams to strain. Artificial light sources crackled. The air thickened.

Rowan gasped as the world around him wavered again—colors desaturated, then over-saturated in violent pulses. A low tone rang out like an alarm, though there was no source, no direction.

The fake Lucian appeared in the hallway outside their quarters, eyes narrowed in something too sharp to be concern.

Rowan flinched. His breath hitched. The copy looked at him, then at the real Lucian.

And something snarled beneath its skin.

Lucian stepped forward, eyes locked with the illusion.

The recursion faltered harder.

It began to rewrite—attempting to fold the real Lucian into new roles: background staff, forgotten soldier, wandering face. But his resonance—burning violet, threaded with gold—resisted every rewrite. He refused to be diminished.

Rowan could feel it. The storm building inside the world they had trapped him in.

And now—faced with the truth—the recursion began to fracture in earnest.

Not just a crack this time.

A collapse.

Rowan gripped the edge of the wall, blinking against the surge of conflicting realities. He couldn’t breathe—because now, with Lucian standing there and the recursion twisting around them, everything hurt. The sharpness of truth was agony.

He looked from one Lucian to the other. The real one—tired, shaken, raw. The fake—perfect posture, calm smile fraying at the edges.

His voice cracked. "Why are there two of you?"

The illusion’s smile twisted into something too smooth. "He’s no one. A projection. A memory glitch. Come back to bed, Rowan. You need rest."

Lucian stepped forward. "Don’t listen to it. You know what’s real. You’ve felt me."

The fake Lucian’s form shimmered. The recursion fought to solidify him, but its seams pulsed—barely holding. His tone dipped, softer, laced with something dangerously intimate. "He’s confusing you, Rowan. After everything we’ve shared here—after every night, every promise—you’re going to throw it away for him? Look at him. He’s broken. He doesn’t belong here."

"I know where I belong," Lucian growled.

He surged forward.

The fake Lucian met him with a hiss of resonance and bare fists wreathed in shifting light. Their energies collided—gold and violet flaring against glitching silver mimicry. The floor fractured under their feet, the recursion’s geometry trembling like a body in convulsion.

Lucian slammed the fake back with a shoulder-check, following with a telekinetic burst that shredded the hallway wall. Plaster and false light exploded outward, raining static and dust.

But the illusion twisted unnaturally, rebounding. The fake’s face warped mid-punch, expression flickering between rage and adoration. He snarled something raw—"He’s mine! He chose me!"

Lucian ducked, pivoted, landed a blow so hard it sent the fake crashing through a door that never existed before. He chased him through it, the space rearranging, buckling. Their fists collided again, this time mid-air, sending a ripple of visible distortion through the recursion.

Each strike wasn’t just physical—it unwrote code. Hallways folded in on themselves. Lighting shattered and pulsed. Time skipped.

The fake Lucian retaliated with mirrored movements—Lucian’s own fighting style turned against him. "You think you can just take him back? After what we shared? After how he needed me?"

Lucian growled. "You’re not him. You’re a placeholder. A cage."

They crashed into each other again, fists blazing. Rowan reeled back, vision flashing from the overload. His heart thundered. Tears streamed freely now, resonance reacting violently with his confusion, fear, and the looming edge of truth.

The real Lucian, blood at his temple, turned to him. Voice trembling but steady. "Rowan—say it. Say you remember. Choose me."

Rowan’s breath caught.

The recursion howled.

And he opened his mouth—