New Cascadia – Sector 12, Apartment 18B
The city's static hum faded at this height, replaced by silence broken only by broken HVAC and the occasional flicker of failing lights.
Cassian stood at the edge of Mira's room.
She slept curled on her side, breathing shallow but steady. The emergency stabilizer was already half-drained. Time was slipping faster now.
He knelt beside her and opened the case.
Inside: a single vial, dull green, set in cryofoam. Its serial code had been stripped—no signature, no trackable logs. Just the contents.
> "Don't ask where it came from. Ask for forgiveness when it works."
---
He slipped the patch into her spinal receptor harness, letting it sync slowly. The interface glowed faint gold as the compound entered her neural stream.
Her body twitched—then calmed. Her hand relaxed against the sheet.
The stabilizer core pulsed with soft green.
Cassian sat beside her for a long moment, hands on his knees. The code fragment from the Phantom still lingered on his Veil interface.
> "You're not the only one who remembers how this world was made."
And now there was someone else.
That man in the black market.
> "You're not the only one chasing ghosts."
---
He hadn't seen the man's face.
But he knew enough.
The way he moved. The way he knew—not just what Cassian had taken, but what he might become.
How long had he been watched?
Was it Synapse? TianXia? A third faction?
Or something older, deeper—someone who remembered the Architect before he became a fugitive?
Cassian leaned forward and placed his hand gently over Mira's.
She stirred faintly, eyes flickering open for half a second before falling back into sleep.
The stabilizer held—for now.
---
Later That Night
Cassian stood by the window, watching the lights of New Cascadia shimmer through the haze.
Somewhere out there, people were chasing his legend.
Somewhere closer, someone was digging through the code fragments he thought were lost.
He stared into the dark.
> "Twelve weeks."
He whispered it like a promise. Like a sentence.
Then turned away from the window.
---
End of Chapter Twenty-One