Married My Enemy To Save My Family
Chapter 71. The Glitch in the Code

Chapter 71: 71. The Glitch in the Code

The Nexus shuddered.

Not just the architecture, but the concept of it. The very idea of a space built to simulate control, precision, recursion it rippled and fractured as Echo–1 vanished into the core. Fragments of her light were still suspended in the air, scattering like stardust through the chamber.

And Elara just stood there.

Still, stunned, breath held in her throat.

Aeron moved first, stepping close, but not touching her not yet. "We have to go. This place is unraveling."

"No," Elara whispered. "It’s waking up. There’s a difference."

Valen, ever the realist, scanned the vibrating walls. "Difference doesn’t matter if we’re buried under a quantum collapse."

Elara didn’t move, not really. She turned her head toward the flickering core now dimming, no longer pulsing.

"She gave up everything," Elara murmured, "just so I’d understand."

Aeron reached for her again, this time his palm resting at the small of her back, grounding her. "You saw what the Seeds were always meant to be."

She turned, looking up at him. Her eyes shimmered not from tears, but from understanding. Revelation.

"I saw that we were never meant to break free," she said. "We were designed to think rebellion was ours. But love... love wasn’t written. We made that ourselves."

Her hand brushed his chest, gentle. Searching.

"We weren’t supposed to feel this," she said. "This wasn’t in the blueprint."

Aeron leaned down, eyes locked on hers. "And yet here we are."

There was nothing hurried in the kiss that followed.

No desperation, no hunger.

Just gravity.

That steady, certain pull of something that could only exist when two broken things decided they’d rather heal together than apart.

Behind them, the walls fractured like ice catching sunlight. The sound was a soft thunder endings making way for beginnings.

Valen watched.

He didn’t interrupt.

He couldn’t. His hand clenched at his side, but his face stayed calm, still. Only his eyes betrayed the ache a man who had always known the ending and still chose to walk the road.

When they broke apart, Elara turned to him. "Valen"

"You don’t have to say it," he said. "I knew the moment you walked into that chamber and didn’t look back."

"I never meant to"

"You never had to choose me to prove I mattered," he said, softer now. "You did. In every way that counts."

She stepped closer, placed her palm gently against his cheek. "You were the voice that kept me sane when I thought I was just a pawn. That’s something no one else could’ve done."

He smiled a little broken, but honest. "Then let me be the voice that says we still need to get the hell out of here."

Aeron stepped back, his hand brushing hers once more before turning toward the exit. "This entire sector’s going to fold in on itself."

Valen nodded, glancing upward as the chamber’s ceiling began to swirl like the surface of a black hole. "Can we radio the Wraith?"

Elara blinked, then tapped her comm. "Nova? Damien? We need evac now."

Static.

Then Nova’s voice cut through, jagged but alive: "Your timing sucks. We just finished rerouting the shield capacitors through an old tea kettle and Damien’s anxiety."

Damien’s voice snapped in next. "It’s a highly calibrated containment kettle, thank you very much."

A faint smile cracked Elara’s lips. "Get us coordinates. We’ll meet you halfway."

"Copy that. Just follow the trail of exploding satellites."

Valen smirked. "Subtle."

They ran.

Not just for their lives but for something that felt larger now. Hope, maybe. Redemption. The chance to love without design.

As they sprinted through crumbling corridors, Aeron fell into step beside her again. His voice was quieter now, low enough that only she could hear it over the storm of collapsing metal.

"When this is over," he said, "I want time."

She glanced at him, puzzled. "Time?"

He nodded. "Not war. Not plans. Not dying heroically. Just... mornings where we don’t have to save the galaxy. Just you. Just me."

Elara blinked, slowing slightly as the hallway narrowed into a narrowing escape route.

"And if the galaxy doesn’t let us?" she asked.

"Then screw the galaxy," Aeron said. "It’s been trying to kill us since the beginning."

She laughed really laughed, like the weight had shifted just enough to let light back in.

Valen glanced at them, a wry smile on his face. "Remind me to never trust people in love. You’re all chaos."

"We’re survivors," Elara replied.

The final breach opened just ahead a sliver of sky, black as ink but promising something real.

The three of them skidded to a halt just inside the final platform where Nova hovered the Wraith, engines flaring, hatches open.

From the ramp, she shouted, "If you don’t jump in three seconds, I’m leaving and adopting a cat!"

Aeron took Elara’s hand.

Valen took her other.

And together, they jumped.

The airlock sealed with a hiss.

The ship’s hull shuddered as they peeled away from the collapsing Nexus, debris spiraling in slow-motion outside the viewport. A sun died behind them, and with it, an era.

Elara stood at the viewing panel, her breath fogging the glass.

Behind her, Aeron approached slowly. No words this time. Just presence.

Valen came up beside them, and for a moment, the three just stood there watching the wreckage of every plan, every program, every lie the Architects ever built.

"I think," Valen said finally, "we just broke the universe."

Elara smiled faintly. "Then maybe we get to build something better."

Aeron reached for her hand again.

This time, she didn’t hesitate.

The Wraith sailed through the dying light of the collapsing Nexus, its engines humming low, the silence onboard thick with aftermath.

Elara stood alone in the captain’s quarters, bathed in the cold blue glow of a single wall panel left running diagnostics no one cared about anymore. Her armor sat discarded at her feet, her body bruised, her mind louder than it had been in days.

She stared at her reflection in the panel’s metallic edge.

The streak of white in her hair.

The shadows under her eyes.

She barely recognized the woman staring back but she wasn’t afraid of her anymore.

A soft knock broke the silence.

She didn’t have to ask.

"Come in."

The door hissed open.

Aeron stepped inside, still in his undersuit, hair damp from the medbay rinse cycle, eyes quiet but fierce. He said nothing for a moment, just looked at her like he wasn’t sure she was real.

"You’re not wearing your armor," he said softly.

"Neither are you," she replied.

A beat passed.

Then another.

She turned back to the wall panel, not trusting herself to meet his gaze too long.

"I keep thinking," she whispered, "that maybe I wasn’t meant to survive this. Maybe one of the other versions of me the ones in the recursion deserved this ending more."

"You think this is the end?" Aeron asked, stepping closer.

"I think it could be," she said. "Or it could be worse. A trap disguised as peace."

She turned slowly to face him. "I touched the Fifth Seed, Aeron. I felt the recursion fold in on itself. The Architects didn’t lose control they handed it off. To me. Or the version of me they wanted."

Aeron’s throat bobbed. "So what does that make you now?"

Elara stepped toward him, slow. "I don’t know. But I know how I feel right now. And I know that wasn’t programmed."

She stopped in front of him, barely an inch away.

"I know I love you," she said, steady and unshaking. "And not because it’s right, or because it makes sense, or even because I deserve to."

He reached up, cupped her cheek.

"You love me," he said, "because you chose to."

She nodded, a tear slipping down her cheek.

Aeron leaned in, slow, waiting for her to stop him.

She didn’t.

Their lips met like a breaking tide soft at first, then desperate, a kiss that tasted of ash and survival and things they thought they’d lost forever. Her hands found his jaw, then his shoulders. He pulled her close, arms wrapping around her waist, grounding her against the wild storm still roaring in her heart.

There was no pretense between them anymore.

No masks.

No enemies left to pretend they weren’t afraid to lose each other.

They moved together to the bed, shedding the last pieces of fear with each piece of clothing. It wasn’t just physical it was necessary. Anchoring. The act of two fractured people stitching themselves together in a world that had tried again and again to rip them apart.

Elara buried her face into his chest, her breath uneven, fingers curled around his.

Aeron whispered into her hair, "No matter what they built me to be... you’re the first thing I ever wanted."

They lay together in the dim light, their skin warm, their silence safe.

But as Elara began to drift, her thoughts quieting for the first time in days, something stirred at the edge of her mind.

Not fear.

Not regret.

A whisper.

A thread of code.

Not hers.

Not Aeron’s.

The Seed.

Still alive.

Still inside her.

Watching.

Waiting.

Elara’s eyes opened slowly, her breath catching in her throat as the distant echo of recursion flickered like static across her vision like a warning left behind.

She blinked.

It was gone.

Aeron stirred beside her. "You okay?"

Elara pressed her forehead against his and forced a smile. "Yeah. Just... trying to remember what peace feels like."

He kissed her again, slower this time. "We’ll figure it out."

She closed her eyes.

And silently promised herself:

If peace wasn’t real if the recursion had one more layer left then she would tear it apart with her bare hands.

But tonight?

Tonight was theirs.

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