Reality overload

Miriam Harlow didn't knock.

She didn't wait.

She stormed in, tablet clutched to her chest like a shield.

"Director Cross—!"

Cross didn't look up.

He sat at his desk, perfectly still, fingers steepled, eyes fixed on the wall of monitors showing global mana readings. The lights in the office flickered in time with his breathing.

"Speak," he said.

Barlow swallowed hard. "Sir, we...we detected something. A wave. A global one."

Cross's eyelid twitched.

"I know about the wave," he said. "Everyone felt the wave."

"No, sir...this was different."

She stepped closer, voice trembling. "There was a second signature. A spike. A surge of power unlike anything we've catalogued."

Cross finally lifted his head.

Slowly.

Too slowly.

"And when," he asked, "were you planning to tell me this?"

Miriam's throat bobbed. "The moment it happened. I ran here."

Cross rose from his chair.

The lights flickered.

"Show me."

She expanded the hologram. The world map zoomed into the city. Then the university district. Then a single pulsing point of light.

Cross's breath hitched.

"That," he whispered, "is not ambient magic."

"No, sir," Miriam said. "It's a person. Someone awakened with enough force to distort the entire grid."

Cross's fingers twitched. The lights flickered overhead.

"Kris," he murmured. "It has to be...he—"

The office door slammed open.

Both Cross and Miriam flinched.

Lila Moreno stumbled inside, hair disheveled, tablet clutched to her chest, breathing like she'd sprinted the entire building.

"Director Cross—!"

Cross turned his head slowly.

Too slowly.

"Lila," he said, voice thin and dangerous. "This is not the time."

"It has to be," she said, stepping forward despite the tremor in her hands. "The news cycle is exploding. Every outlet is reporting the wave. And now...now they're talking about the second surge."

Miriam stiffened.

Cross's eyes sharpened.

Lila continued, voice cracking. "Officials are connecting the dots. They're noticing the pattern of incidents. The transformations. People are realizing it's DLO, Their avatars. They're starting to point at us."

Cross stared at her.

Silent.

Still.

Then he laughed.

A soft, broken sound.

"Let them point."

Lila's face drained of color. "Sir, if they link this to DLO—to us!"

Cross cut her off with a raised hand.

"Lila. Do you know what that second surge was?"

She hesitated. "I... no."

Cross turned back to the hologram, eyes wide, pupils blown.

"It was him." he said pointing at a blurred figure surrounded by frost. As if being watched from a rooftop.

Harlow whispered, "Is that...Kris."

Lila's breath caught.

Cross's voice dropped to a whisper.

"he awakened. And Hestia thinks she can hide him from me."

The lights flickered violently.

Lila took a step back.

Harlow clutched her tablet tighter.

Cross smiled.

It was not a sane smile.

"Lock down the building," he said. "Activate Protocol Black."

Lila gasped. "Sir...that's catastrophic breach protocol—"

Cross didn't even look at her.

Lila stared at Cross, horrified. "Sir... if we do that it will trigger a federa-"

Cross waved a hand dismissively.

"It doesn't matter ."

"Sir—"

"It can ALL wait."

He stepped closer to the hologram, voice dropping to a reverent whisper.

"Kris is awake."

turned toward the two women, eyes burning.

The room shook.

"DO IT!"

Harlow scrambled to her tablet, fingers shaking as she entered the authorization codes.

Across the building, alarms began to hum, low, pulsing, not loud enough to alert the public, but unmistakable to anyone who worked here.

Doors sealed.

Elevators locked.

Surveillance systems rerouted to Cross's direct control.

Cross watched it all with a strange, hungry calm.

"Good," he whispered. "Good."

He zoomed in on the surge's epicenter.

A single point of light.

A signature he knew too well.

"Kris," he breathed. "You finally woke up."

Miriam swallowed. "Sir... what do you want us to do?"

Cross smiled.

It was not a sane smile.

"Deploy retrieval teams. Quietly. No uniforms. No insignia."

He leaned closer to the map, eyes wide.

"And if they see Vincent..."

Miriam hesitated. "Sir?"

Cross's voice dropped to a whisper.

"Bring me his body."

Lila didn't remember leaving Cross's office.

One moment she was staring at him, lights flickering, his eyes glowing with a feverish obsession.

"Kris is awake."

 The next she was stumbling down the hallway, heels clicking too loudly, breath coming too fast.

She didn't stop until she reached the operations wing.

Marcus Vale was there, leaning over a console with Harlow and Jin, reviewing the lockdown alerts that had just triggered across the building.

He looked up the moment he heard her.

"Lila?" Marcus frowned. "You look like you saw a ghost."

She grabbed his arm.

"Marcus," she whispered, "we have a problem."

Harlow raised a brow. "Bigger than the building going into Protocol Black?"

Lila shook her head. "Cross. It's Cross. He's...he's not stable."

Marcus's expression hardened. "What happened."

Lila swallowed, trying to steady her voice.

"He and Miriam were reviewing the global wave. And the secondary surge, the one in the university district. He thinks it's Kris. He thinks Hestia awakened her."

Marcus's jaw tightened.

Lila continued, voice trembling. "He ordered a full lockdown. He's taking control of the entire surveillance grid. He's ignoring federal calls. He...he said officials can 'get in line.'"

Jin stopped typing.

Harlow sat up straighter.

Marcus's eyes darkened. "What else."

Lila hesitated.

Then she said it.

"He told Miriam to bring him Vincent's body."

Marcus swore under his breath.

Harlow's face went pale. "He wants Vincent dead?"

Lila nodded. "And he's not thinking clearly. He's... unraveling. The lights were flickering. He was talking like...like this is personal. He's losing control of himself.

Marcus exhaled slowly, the weight of the situation settling on his shoulders.

"It is personal," he said. "To him, Kris is his key."

Lila gripped his sleeve. "Marcus, you have to do something. If he keeps going like this, he'll tear the world apart."

Marcus looked toward Cross's sealed office door, jaw set.

"I'll handle it."

Lila shook her head. "You can't confront him alone."

Marcus didn't look back at her.

"I wasn't planning to."

He turned to Harlow and Jin.

"Prep a shadow team. No company equipment. No comms tied to Cross's network. We're moving off‑grid."

Harlow smirked grimly. "Finally."

Jin nodded. "I'll reroute our access."

Lila exhaled shakily.

Marcus placed a steady hand on her shoulder.

"You did the right thing."

She wasn't sure she believed him.

But she hoped he was right.

Because Cross wasn't just hunting Kris.

He was hunting everyone who stood between them.

The lights in Cross's office flickered again.

Not because of a power issue.

Because he was the issue.

His magic, the one he tried to hide, the one he kept buried under layers of discipline and control, pulsed under his skin like a migraine made of static.

He ignored it.

He had bigger problems.

Vincent's last known coordinates blinked on the holo‑map. Cross didn't look at them. He stared instead at the surveillance logs Vincent had so generously left behind.

"Using company equipment," Cross whispered, voice thin and sharp. "On my network. On my time."

He laughed.

It wasn't a sane sound.

"You think I don't see you, Vincent?"

He dragged his fingers through the air, pulling up Vincent's comm logs. Every attempt to hide his tracks. Every overwritten timestamp. Every gap in the data.

Cross tilted his head.

"You're sloppy. You're sentimental. You're predictable."

"You cared."

He opened the tear‑incident footage. Vincent staring at the closing rift like it was a message written just for him.

"What did she tell you... huh."

Cross's fingers twitched.

The lights flickered again.

He opened another clip. A figure frost blooming, Vincent watching with that same look of recognition.

Cross's breath shook with fury.

"It can't be," he hissed.

He slammed his palm onto the desk. The holo‑screens rippled like water.

"She's blocking me. She's interfering. She's protecting him."

He paced, coat snapping behind him like a living shadow.

"She thinks she can keep Kris from me. She thinks she can hide him. She thinks she can rewrite the rules."

He stopped suddenly, staring at Vincent's frozen face on the screen.

"And you," Cross whispered, "you think you can betray me without consequence."

He leaned in close, voice dropping to a razor‑thin whisper.

"You're not invisible. You're not clever. You're not free."

He tapped the screen.

"You're mine."

Cross straightened, eyes wild and bright.

"Hestia can block my attempts all she wants. She can shield Kris. She can twist fate."

He smiled...wide, unhinged, hungry.

"But she can't stop me from taking you first."

The order hit the retrieval team like a shockwave.

By the time Commander Hale reached the staging bay, Horizon Veil...their own headquarters...was already sealed under Protocol Black. Doors locked. Elevators frozen. Internal comms rerouted. The entire building was in a state of controlled suffocation, every system bent toward one purpose, funneling information straight to Cross. Only their team had access to leave the facility.

 The college campus across the city, unaware. Only its surveillance had been hijacked.

Every camera feed, every hallway sensor, every motion alert was being piped directly into his visor, and Cross's desk, where he sat alone, watching the screens with a predator's stillness.

Evening pressed against the hangar windows, thick and humid, the sky bruised purple as the last light faded. The retrieval team moved under the harsh overhead lamps, their shadows long and sharp across the concrete.

Hale didn't bother with the dossier. He already knew what mattered.

"Mara," he said, striding toward the table, "is the reroute of the  entire campus security and power grid under way  

Mara didn't look up. Her tablet was already lit with dozens of live feeds, students walking, doors opening, Kris's last known location blinking in the corner.

"It is ," she said. "Every camera on campus is under his control. We're tracking Kris in real time."

Jax snapped a containment harness into place, the buckles clacking like gunshots. "And Horizon Veil's locked down. He doesn't want anyone interfering good I don't trust those tech types."

Rook powered up a drone, its rotors humming with restless energy. "Crowds outside the campus are minimal. Evening classes, study groups. No one knows we're watching them."

Hale exhaled slowly. "He wants her tonight."

Mara swallowed. "No he wants her now."

The hangar doors groaned open, letting in a wash of night air. The retrieval van's headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the team in stark white beams. Hale stepped forward, voice steady but edged.

"We deploy immediately. No waiting for backup. No waiting for dawn. We extract Kris before the situation escalates further."

The team moved fast, visors down, comms online, gear secured. The tension in the room wasn't just mission weight anymore. It was the pressure of Cross's obsession tightening around them like a noose.

As they climbed into the van, the radio crackled with Cross's voice, sharp and cold.

"Commander Hale. I have eyes on her. She's moving. You will retrieve the target immediately."

Roger sir, consider it done. He shut the door, sealing Cross's voice out.

The van lurched forward, tires grinding against the pavement as it sped into the night. The city lights blurred past, streaks of gold and red reflecting off the team's visors. No one spoke. They all felt it—the urgency, the danger, the sense that Cross had crossed a line tonight and was dragging them with him.

When the van turned the final corner, the college campus came into view.

Bright. Open. Alive.

Students were sparse between buildings, the few that were out and about unaware that every step they took was being watched by a man miles away, hunched over a wall of screens.

Hale leaned forward, eyes narrowing behind his visor.

"Everyone out," he said. "We move now."

The retrieval team hit the ground running, the van's doors slamming behind them as they sprinted toward the humanities building—toward Kris's last known location, toward the mission Cross had forced into motion.

Horizon Veil was locked down.

Cross was watching.

And the team was already inside the lion's jaws.

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