The storm had passed, though remnants of it still clung to the world—the smell of wet metal and scorched earth, the low hum of wind moving through broken trees. Inside Carter’s bunker, they tried to rest, but unease lingered in every breath.

  Lior sat on the cold step outside the door, head tipped back toward the fractured sky. Each time he blinked, the day replayed—too many scenes layered until they hurt to hold. He saw Brock and Anya again, gone in an instant, swallowed by fire when Potestas leveled the house. The heat, the ringing in his ears, the way the walls had folded inward like paper—all of it returned too vividly. I couldn’t save them.

  Kalu’s voice echoed from the van, followed by Trigger’s shot snapping the world in half—blood on glass, silence where laughter had been. They died… because of me.

  He remembered Trigger in the tunnel, the crushing pressure like a hand on his throat, his own Niche tearing open under that weight—Pulsebreak. Rei swallowed by smoke, then re-emerging like a blade through fog. And the storm—the sky turning into a weapon. I have to get stronger. I have to.

  Lior rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and let out a breath that felt too big for his chest. “How were there enough hours in the day for all that to happen?” he whispered. The night didn’t answer; it just listened.

  Carter’s palm slammed the war table. THUD! The sound cracked through the bunker like a shot. “For the record,” he said, tone serious for once, “not only is it almost impossible to reach the North Pole, I’ll bet they’ve got at least one Rank Two stationed there. At both poles.”

  Blue light from the projected globe washed over their faces. Two pulses blinked at opposite ends of the earth like twin heartbeats. Rei studied them, arms folded. “We aren’t suited to face someone like that,” she said evenly—no bravado, just fact.

  At the doorway, Lior turned back inside. “Hey, Carter,” he said, brows knit, “I never asked—do any of you Lieutenants have Niches?”

  “Yeah, man. Mine’s insanely powerful. It’s called sarcasm.”

  WHACK! Rei smacked the back of his head without looking. “Idiot.”

  He hissed, rubbing the spot, but a small grin tugged at his mouth.

  Rei faced Lior. “No. None of us Lieutenants had Niches—not me, not Anya, not Kalu, not this clown. And not Brock.” Her gaze slid to the twin pulses on the map, then back. “Back then, Brock captained a unit with Echo and three gifted Niche users. We were still watching from the sidelines.”

  Her tone softened, remembering. “When those three were promoted, Brock kept Echo. Almost a year before Echo left on his sleeper mission into Potestas, Brock took new cadets—me, Anya, Kalu, and Carter—and he kept your father with him. Brock believed Niches didn’t make the person. Power was a tool; character was the edge. His favorite line—he’d say—”

  But Lior’s eyes had already gone far away. The bunker faded.

  ?

  He was small again, knees pulled tight to his chest on the hill beside the neighborhood playground, shirt torn, eye swollen, dirt on his face and salt on his lips. Brock dropped down beside him, long legs stretched out, hands braced behind him as he stared up at the patch of blue between clouds.

  “Ahh, what a beautiful day. With all the bad in the world, you’ve still got the sky… just shine like it does, no matter what.”

  “I’m too weak to protect anyone,” Lior muttered into his knees. “You train me, you say the strong protect the weak, but… how can the weak stop the strong?”

  Brock eased back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “I felt the same. Everyone around me was incredibly strong. Then someone told me something I never forgot. You wanna know what he told me?”

  Lior lifted his head, one eye puffy, the other bright. “What?”

  The memory let go.

  ?

  Back in the bunker, Lior finished the line for Rei, voice quiet but sure. “Some have power, some don’t—but worth is measured the same for both: who rises when tested.”

  Silence followed. Carter’s mouth pressed into a line; Rei’s eyes softened, pride and ache sharing the same space. On the map, the two distant pulses went on beating—patient, cold.

  Like the pillar he had always been, the thought of Brock steadied them all. His words reached not only Lior but Carter and Rei, pulling them—if only for a moment—out of the suffocating weight that had hung over them.

  For the first time in days, silence didn’t feel like a threat. It felt like peace.

  That peace fractured with the sound of Cael’s voice. “Lior,” he called softly from the corridor.

  Lior blinked, drawn back to the present. Cael’s head tilted toward the back exit. “Come outside for a bit. There’s something we need to talk about.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  The night air was damp and cool against Lior’s skin as he stepped out with Cael. The storm had left its scars—trees bent, the earth muddied—but the world carried a strange stillness, as if holding its breath.

  Ayasha was already waiting near the bunker’s edge, arms folded loosely, eyes cast upward at the fractured sky. Lior joined them, hands shoved in his pockets. “So… what did you want to talk about?”

  Cael adjusted his glasses, then sat against the wall. “Niches. Ours. Yours. Everything.”

  Ayasha gave a crooked smile, but her voice carried weight. “You’ve seen us fight, but you don’t know how it started.”

  “Then tell me,” Lior said.

  Ayasha exhaled slowly. “We were brought to Potestas when we were four. Same camp, same day. I remember his face.” She glanced at Cael, lips quirking faintly. “He was tiny— even scrawnier than now.”

  Cael rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. “We were nothing to them. Just more kids in cages.”

  Ayasha’s hands curled. “The guards… they liked to remind us of that. One day they had Cael surrounded—six of them—beating him like it meant nothing. I tried to stop them. One threw me down and laughed, said he was weak, not worth keeping alive. He lifted his boot to crush him.”

  Her jaw tightened. “That’s when it happened. I don’t remember deciding anything. My body just moved. I kicked, and he flew— not stumbled—flew. He hit the wall and didn’t get up. The strength was too much for me. I blacked out. When I woke up two days later, Cael was still there. He hadn’t left once.”

  Cael’s mouth twitched faintly, half a smile. “What else was I supposed to do? She saved me. I wasn’t going to let her wake up alone.”

  “My Niche came later,” he went on. “I was eight. Veritas had already rescued us by then.”

  Lior blinked. “Rescued?”

  Ayasha nodded. “We escaped. Or tried to. By then I had a Niche, so I was untouchable. Potestas doesn’t let go of weapons once they find them. But Cael… he wasn’t. They planned to separate us. We couldn’t let that happen. One of the boys there—he was our friend—gave us food, said he’d cause a commotion so we could run. He stayed behind.”

  Cael’s voice flattened. “He did. We ran. Took nothing but what we could hold. We lasted a week before collapsing—hunger, fatigue, everything. When we woke, we were on a Veritas plane. Soldiers had found us.”

  Ayasha’s eyes glistened faintly. “Veritas saved us when no one else would.”

  Cael adjusted his glasses again, voice low. “But even there, I almost broke. During a neophyte simulation, they were deciding who would join Ayasha on the mission to watch over you. I panicked—tried to calculate every route, every possible failure. My brain wouldn’t stop. I thought I’d fail her. That’s when it triggered. My Niche, Mindframe. I saw the paths, the outcomes—all at once. It nearly broke me, but it saved me too. I was able to complete the simulation with flying colors.”

  Ayasha reached over and squeezed his hand. “You didn’t fail. You never do.”

  Lior’s voice softened. “Do you… remember your families?”

  Ayasha hesitated, then nodded. “I do. My mother was Native American. My father was from a tiny town in Georgia—Appling. I remember visiting my family there. He met my mother in college, married her, and moved to the reservation with her. But Potestas doesn’t leave loose ends. When they came for me, they didn’t just take me. They erased everyone.”

  Cael’s gaze dropped. “I was in an orphanage. A bad one. No family, no one to care. Potestas came in with money—more than my matron had probably seen in her life. She looked the other way. I was four. I watched her rip up my papers while they took me.”

  The words hung between them, heavy and cold.

  Ayasha finally exhaled. “That’s Potestas. If you have the DNA strand they want, they come for you—and they make sure there’s nothing left to come back to.”

  Lior clenched his fists. “Then we won’t let them do it again.”

  Ayasha’s gaze lingered a heartbeat longer than it should have. A small, weary smile flickered across her face—warm for a moment, gone the next. Their silence wasn’t denial; it was agreement.

  “Okay,” Lior said, leaning forward. “Veritas… what is it, exactly?”

  Cael rested his chin on his hand. “The easiest way to explain it is that Veritas was formed to counter Potestas. They don’t belong to any country or government; they act entirely on their own.”

  Lior nodded slowly, thinking. “So… what’s stopping them from becoming Potestas?”

  Ayasha crossed her arms, voice soft. “I couldn’t tell you. They saved us, and there are good people inside it—Brock, the Lieutenants, your dad. They were raised by Veritas. But like anything, bad apples exist.” She looked down for a moment, then back. “I never thought much about it.”

  She straightened, forcing a lighter tone. “Okay, enough heavy talk. Let’s get out of this slump. Lior, can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “When your Niche—or Niches—activated, did the name just… come to you?”

  Lior thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. It was strange. Like someone whispered it in my ear. The first one was Slipstream.”

  Cael’s eyes lit. “Oh wow. That’s a cool name. And the second?”

  “Pulse Break,” Lior said simply.

  Ayasha smirked. “I still can’t believe you have two Niches.”

  “I know,” Cael added. “That’s crazy.”

  “Has it ever happened before?” Lior asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Cael said. “Judging by Trigger’s reaction, I’d say even Potestas had no clue either. Mine’s called Mindframe. It lets me simulate near-futures from movement, posture, routes—even emotion.”

  Ayasha cracked her knuckles. “Mine’s Kinetic Vault. Every movement builds pressure inside me; the more I move, the more I can unleash. If I build too much, it’ll wreck my body.”

  “Sounds like a walking time bomb,” Lior teased.

  She shoved him lightly, but laughter followed. Cael cracked a rare smile, and for a moment the three weren’t fugitives or soldiers—they were just teenagers, bantering under a quiet sky.

  ?

  Back inside, Carter sank into a chair with a long sigh, frustration etched across his face.

  Rei crossed her arms. “Then we find someone who does.”

  Carter’s smirk flickered, then faded again. He turned back to the console, punching in a long code sequence. “There’s one man Brock said we should call if something happened to him,” he said, voice low. “But we haven’t spoken in years.”

  The screen flickered to life:

  [INCOMING SIGNAL.]

  [VERITAS CHANNEL LOCKED.]

  [WAITING ON RESPONSE…]

  Rei’s gaze narrowed. “Do we tell the kids?”

  “Not yet,” Carter said, his voice stripped of humor. “Let’s see if the past still answers when we knock.”

  End of Chapter 12