Married My Enemy To Save My Family
Chapter 75.The Version That Stayed

Chapter 75: 75.The Version That Stayed

The Wraith sliced through the torn atmosphere of the Architect ruin world, its hull shimmering with charged plasma as it dove into the belly of the storm. Below, the Revenant’s fortress bloomed like a tumor across the wreckage of the Nexus an impossible structure that breathed in light and exhaled darkness.

Twisted Architect vessels hovered like skeletal guardians around the outer shell of the fortress, no longer piloted just puppeted. Their sync signatures were empty, but they moved with the precision of intent.

On the bridge, Nova muttered under her breath, chewing a stim tab. "If I die, someone better throw me into something expensive."

"You are expensive," Damien replied, fingers dancing across the console. "You’re just not refundable."

"Charming," she said, cracking her neck.

Valen stood at the center console, fully armored, his expression stone. "ETA to breach range?"

"Seventy-two seconds," Damien replied. "But once we hit the outer field, there’s no turning back. Every nav signal dies in there. The AI fog is absolute."

Elara entered, her silhouette striking against the backlight of the corridor. Armored, prepared, and terrifyingly calm. Her voice cut through the tension.

"Then we fly blind."

Aeron was right behind her, fastening the final seals of his combat harness. "We’ve done worse."

"Not with the fate of recursion riding on it," Valen muttered.

Elara walked to the holotable and pulled up the map what little they had. The Revenant’s stronghold wasn’t just massive; it was alive. Architect tendrils pulsed outward like arteries, drawing power from fractured satellites and long dead Seeds.

"Three paths," she said. "Nova and Damien lead the distraction team keep the aerial systems tangled. Valen takes Team Delta through the north artery, destabilizes the seed cradle’s energy anchor."

She turned to Aeron, her voice quieter now.

"And you come with me. To the core."

A beat passed.

"Where she’s waiting."

Aeron nodded once. "Till the end."

Nova smirked. "If we die, I’m haunting you both. Passionately."

The Wraith hit the edge of the fortress, and everything went white.

Reality twisted. Navigation failed. The stars disappeared.

For a moment, it felt like the ship had entered the Revenant’s memory a world built not from physics, but emotion.

Screams echoed through the comms some recognizably theirs, some not. A thousand lives that weren’t lived.

Damien shouted over the interference. "Ghost echoes! Not real! Stay focused!"

Then the storm broke.

And the fortress opened.

Nova peeled the Wraith into a death spiral, avoiding a spire of sharpened light. "Let’s make her regret having a face."

Missiles launched. Shields flared. The assault began.

Below, drop pods ejected.

Valen led Delta through a spiral corridor of twisted glass and bone.

Elara and Aeron dropped through the central shaft, deep into the core.

The light grew colder.

The silence more complete.

Until

She spoke.

"You finally came."

The core chamber bloomed open an impossible cathedral of glass and memory.

And at the center stood the Revenant.

Elara’s face. Elara’s stance. But something fundamentally wrong. Her eyes shimmered like dying stars, too bright. Her smile was fixed and false.

"I wondered how many versions of us would have to die before one came home," the Revenant said.

Elara stepped forward. "I’m not home. I’m here to break this."

"You are this," the Revenant whispered. "I’m not your enemy, Elara. I’m your conclusion."

Aeron raised his weapon. "Back away."

The Revenant tilted her head at him. "You never learned, did you? Loyalty is just control with prettier language."

"And you gave up your soul to be in control," Elara snapped.

The Revenant walked toward her, almost lovingly. "No. I preserved it. I took our pain, our failure, and I made it beautiful. Ordered. Eternal."

"You made it sterile."

"You made it chaotic."

They stood face to face now, mirror images fractured by choice.

"I remember the mission that broke you," the Revenant whispered. "I remember the boy who died because you hesitated. The comrade who begged you to run. I remember the moment you decided to never trust emotion again."

Elara’s voice was steady. "Then you only remember the pain."

The Revenant’s tone cracked. "Emotion is error. Compassion is inefficiency."

Elara reached for her belt pulled the neural disruptor.

"And love?" she asked. "What about love?"

The Revenant blinked.

And hesitated.

Just long enough.

Aeron fired.

The shot tore into the floor, not the Revenant but it distracted her.

Elara lunged, striking her twin with the disruptor point-blank.

Screams echoed through the chamber not physical, but mental.

The fortress began to shake.

Behind them, the seed cradle lit up like a dying sun.

From the Revenant’s lips:

"If I die... recursion dies with me..."

Elara’s eyes burned with something ancient.

"No," she said. "It begins with you. But it ends with me."

She triggered the pulse.

And everything unraveled.

Later, as the Wraith fled the collapse of the Revenant core, Elara sat in the medbay.

Her hands shook.

Not from fear.

From release.

Aeron sat beside her, silent. Then he touched her wrist.

"You came back."

"I almost didn’t."

"But you did."

She looked at him. "She wasn’t just a villain. She was... tired."

Aeron nodded. "We all are."

A long pause.

Then, a whisper:

"Stay tired with me?"

He smiled faintly.

"For as long as you’ll have me."

"No," Elara said. "It begins with you. But it ends with me."

She triggered the pulse.

The disruptor’s wave flared white-hot, crackling across the Revenant’s spine like lightning shattering glass. The air rippled. Memory bled.

The Revenant screamed not out of pain, but loss.

"You don’t understand," she gasped, eyes flickering, breaking. "I kept the recursion stable. I was holding it together"

"No," Elara whispered, tears springing unbidden. "You were holding us hostage."

A second pulse fired, and the chamber fractured.

The walls buckled.

The lattice of code that formed the Revenant’s cathedral dissolved into cascading patterns of ancient language and data.

Reality stuttered.

Behind her, Aeron grabbed Elara’s arm. "We need to go this place is unraveling!"

Valen’s voice buzzed over comms, distorted. "All charges set north artery compromised. We’re pulling out repeat, we’re pulling out!"

"Copy!" Elara shouted, half-pulling Aeron as the catwalk beneath them groaned, cracked, and gave way.

They ran, sprinting through the shifting wreckage of what had once been her. The Revenant’s voice followed them, increasingly fragmented.

"You’ll just... build again... fracture again... recursion cannot end... not like this..."

And then the voice was gone.

Just like that.

The chamber caved in on itself, vanishing in a soft burst of white code.

The Wraith circled the collapse zone like a wolf waiting for the pack. Nova whooped when the comms flickered back to life.

"Did she do it?"

"She did it," Aeron’s voice confirmed. "Bring us home."

The extraction tunnel opened and the Wraith dipped low, engines flaring.

A moment later, Elara and Aeron burst through the final energy corridor, leaping onto the magnetic lift as debris fell behind them.

Valen and Nova met them at the airlock, each covered in dust and blood. Valen pulled off his helmet, eyes searching.

"Is it done?"

Elara nodded, breath ragged. "She’s gone."

Valen didn’t speak. He only stepped back, giving her space.

Aeron stood beside her, unmoving.

Damien’s voice came over the comm again. "The Revenant’s neural lattice is dissolving across the Nexus. Signal decay is spreading to all controlled systems. They’re... falling apart."

"Then that’s our cue," Nova said, strapping back into the pilot seat. "Let’s disappear before the entire fortress decides to collapse on our pretty faces."

Hours passed.

The Wraith cruised quietly through a radiation-free corridor of space, just beyond the reach of known systems.

No pursuit.

No Architects.

No war for now.

Elara sat alone in the observation deck, wrapped in a blanket, her hair still damp from a hastily cleared med-bay shower. She stared at the stars, unmoving. Unblinking.

Behind her, soft footsteps.

Aeron.

He didn’t speak at first. He just sat beside her.

She broke the silence.

"She looked like me. Moved like me. But she wasn’t me."

"She was you," Aeron said carefully. "A version. A possibility. But not the one you chose to be."

"She gave up love. Humanity. All of it for order."

"She gave up you."

Elara blinked fast, breathing hard. "She called me weak... for choosing feelings over function."

"You chose." Aeron turned toward her, his voice gentler now. "That’s strength. You didn’t let fear make the decision for you."

She looked at him finally, her voice cracking. "I’m so tired, Aeron."

"I know," he whispered, reaching out. His fingers brushed hers, hesitant until she didn’t pull away.

"I lost so many versions of myself," she said. "But in the end... she was the one I pitied most."

He leaned in. "Because she didn’t know what it meant to feel?"

Elara nodded slowly. "Because she forgot what it meant to hope."

There was a silence. And then, slowly, Aeron leaned closer not with hunger, not with fire, but with peace. A softness earned through storms.

His forehead rested against hers. Their breath slowed together.

And for the first time in what felt like lifetimes, Elara closed her eyes... and let herself be held.

On a distant relay buoy orbiting the ruins of the Nexus, faint signals pulsed.

Not from the Revenant.

Not from the Architects.

From the Seeds themselves.

Slumbering in fractured echoes of recursion, they whispered across time and space.

"One has fallen."

"The Cycle fractures."

"The anomaly still breathes."

And somewhere, deep beneath the shattered crust of Drift Hollow, a piece of the Fourth Seed flickered back to life.

Its eye opened.

Alone.

And aware.

In the mess hall, Nova and Damien sat surrounded by half-eaten ration packs and three cups of synth-wine.

"You think we’re actually done?" Nova asked, swirling her drink.

Damien smirked. "You’ve met us, right?"

She grinned back. "Fair."

Valen walked in then, wordless, a bandage around his side and a distant look in his eyes.

Nova raised a brow. "You good?"

Valen nodded. "Just... figuring out what it means to be free."

Damien raised his glass. "To figuring it out."

Nova clinked his cup. "And not dying in the process."

Valen raised his slowly. "To the ones who didn’t have the chance."

They drank.

And outside the viewport, the stars turned slowly.

Waiting.

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