Nate sat in the back of Mallory's Jeep as it rattled over broken streets, the crystal shard wrapped in an insulated box between his feet. Rain streaked the windshield. Thunder rolled over New Orleans like the growl of something ancient and angry. Lightning flared behind the clouds, casting brief silver shadows on the shattered street signs and hollowed buildings.
Mallory didn't say much. She drove fast, fingers drumming the wheel, eyes sharp and distant.
Finally, Nate broke the silence. "I saw something. When I touched it."
She glanced at him through the mirror. "More visions?"
He nodded. "You were bleeding. Dante was... different. Mechanical. Like he wasn't even human anymore. And me—I was just watching it all fall apart. Detached. Cold."
Mallory's jaw tensed. She didn't look at him. "Future isn't fixed, Nate. It reacts to what we do. What we choose."
He leaned his head against the glass. "Then we better start choosing better."
---
Their destination was a burned-out mansion in Garden District—an old safehouse from Cross family days, long abandoned after the fire. The main floor was charred bones and scorched marble, but deep underground, it was still alive.
Beneath the husk of the house lay Nate's private lab, one of the last gifts left to him by his father's forgotten empire. The elevator creaked and groaned as it descended. The ride was slow, the kind that gave you too much time to think.
When they stepped out, low emergency lights glowed across the vault-like chamber. Walls lined with tools and shattered projects. Dust danced in the air like ash.
"Still works," Nate muttered, flipping a breaker. The hum of power returned like a beast waking from hibernation.
He moved like a man who had done this before. He placed the shard carefully on a padded pedestal in the center. Activated field dampeners. The hum shifted as energy barriers surrounded the crystal.
"This'll keep the signal hidden. For now."
Mallory pulled off her gloves, set them beside the console. "We need to figure out what it does. Before someone else does."
Nate opened a drawer and removed a sleek device—circular, metal, no bigger than a dinner plate. It gleamed under the lab lights, etched with runes that weren't quite language.
"I built this to interface with unknown data clusters. If the theories are right, this'll interpret the shard's broadcast and filter the raw data." He paused. "Just... don't stand too close."
Mallory smirked, but her eyes didn't leave the crystal. "Noted."
He powered it on. The device came alive, its center spinning with light. The shard pulsed in rhythm.
A hum filled the room—low, like a choir whispering secrets.
The interface blinked once. Twice. Then it screamed to life, projecting a chaotic hologram into the air. Data, numbers, shifting equations, maps, unknown glyphs. Too fast. Too dense.
"Slow it down," Mallory shouted over the rising sound.
"I can't!" Nate yelled back. "It's dumping everything at once!"
Suddenly the projection paused.
A chamber, carved from stone, lit with faint blue lights. A platform in its center held what looked like another crystal—larger. A shard socket.
Coordinates blinked at the bottom.
"This isn't a storage device," Nate whispered. "It's a key. And that place... might be the lock."
Mallory leaned in. "This river bend—it's heavily patrolled. CoreTech has research stations all along the Delta corridor."
"Then we find a way in. Quietly."
---
Three hours later, a knock echoed through the mansion's front shell.
Mallory opened the cracked door to reveal an older man—Vietnamese-American, maybe late fifties, weathered face, leather jacket, a limp in his right leg. His eyes sparkled with mischief and intelligence. He carried a beat-up duffel and the smell of bourbon.
"Tuck," she said. "You're early."
"I was bored," he replied with a grin. Then he looked at Nate. "So this is the prodigal son. Heard a lot about you."
"Depends on who you heard it from," Nate said.
Tuck chuckled. "Mostly angry bounty boards and broken collectors. I'm guessing it was all true."
"You'll fit right in."
Tuck tipped an imaginary hat. "Mallory says you've got a job. I say I need hazard pay."
"You'll get it," Nate said. "Ever smuggle a high-energy artifact through a megacorp border?"
"Son, I once snuck a meteorite out of Beijing in a guitar case."
"Then you're hired."
---
Plans took shape quickly. Maps littered the table. Patrol routes. Satellite pings. Water depth readings.
The target? A substation platform sunk into the bend of the Mississippi River. CoreTech controlled it, but the river wasn't entirely theirs. Not yet.
Nate moved like a man on borrowed time. Coding hacks. Printing thermal cloaks. Mallory practiced dive timings in the mansion's empty pool.
Once, she found Nate staring into the shard again. Not working. Just... staring.
"You alright?" she asked.
He blinked, as if waking. "It's... talking to me."
She stepped closer. "Talking how?"
"Not words. Just... impressions. Images. Concepts." He tapped his temple. "It knows things. Personal things."
She narrowed her eyes. "Like what?"
"Your real name isn't Mallory."
She froze.
He stood slowly, hands raised. "I didn't look it up. It just... appeared in my head."
She stared for a long moment. Then turned away. "Stop listening to it. The last guy who tried didn't come back with a soul."
"I didn't mean to."
She softened. "I know. But it's getting stronger. It's reaching out."
They both looked at the shard. Its core pulsed gently, like a heart under glass.
"Maybe it doesn't want to be found," Nate said quietly.
"Or maybe it wants to be free," Mallory replied.
---
At midnight, Tuck returned from his recon run, dripping wet from the Delta rain.
"CoreTech's rerouting power to the Delta Line for the next two days," he said, shaking off his jacket. "That gives us one window. Forty-eight hours. After that, they'll flood the area with drones."
Nate stared at the map. "Then we hit it tomorrow night. Quick insertion. No errors."
Mallory nodded. "We go in quiet. We come out rich—or not at all."
She extended her hand.
Nate hesitated. Then took it.
A pact, sealed in silence.
Outside, the city slept, ignorant of the storm that churned beneath its streets.
And in the depths of Nate's lab, the shard pulsed again—steady, sentient, waiting.