NINETY SECONDS
ISABELLA HART - POV
Luca's gone.
His consciousness ripped away from ours and the space where he was hurts like missing a limb. Phantom pain in my awareness. Empty. Wrong.
But the timer still burns in my vision. 0:09. 0:08.
Can't think about Luca. Can't feel it. Not yet.
The implants. Focus on the implants.
Time stretches in the mindscape. Each second lasting hours and heartbeats simultaneously. My amplified awareness pushes through the fractured bond toward the remaining brothers. Sensing something small. Mechanical. Deadly.
There. Four microscopic machines wired into brain stems.
Marco's sits at the base of his skull where spine meets brain. Cold metal I can feel through our connection. Dante's nested deeper, wrapped around neural pathways like vines. Nico's already pulsing hot, countdown accelerating faster than the others.
0:07
I reach toward them with my power. Trying to understand. The circuits are impossibly small. Wiring thinner than hair. Chemical compounds building heat. Reactions starting that end in explosion.
"Isabella." Marco through the merger. Voice strained. Controlled panic underneath. "Can you stop them?"
I don't know. I heal tissue. Accelerate cellular repair. Bone. Muscle. Blood. Living things.
But machines?
0:06
"I don't know." My voice shakes. "I've never... it's not biological."
"Try." Nico. Desperate. Young. Scared.
I push my healing power into the implants. Trying to touch them. Disable them. Make them stop counting down. The energy flows around the metal. Through it. But nothing changes. Like trying to heal stone. The implants aren't alive. Were never alive. Can't be healed.
"It's not working." Panic crawls up my throat. Tastes like copper. "They're just machines. I can't heal machines."
0:05
"Then what?" Dante. Clinical voice engaged even now. Always analyzing. Always searching for angles.
My awareness touches the implants again. Feeling where metal meets flesh. How they connect to surrounding tissue. Neural pathways feeding them bioelectric signals. The brain's own electricity keeping them powered. Running. Counting down.
Wait.
Bioelectric energy.
0:04
"I have an idea." Words coming too fast. "But it's dangerous. It's going to hurt."
"Do it." Marco. Immediate. No hesitation. Trust I don't deserve.
I can't disable them mechanically. My power doesn't work that way. But bioelectric energy? That's biological. That's in my control.
"I can flood them." My voice shakes. "Overload the circuits with so much energy they fry before they explode. But the surge... it'll go through your entire nervous system. Could cause seizures. Memory damage. Brain trauma."
0:03
Silence in the merger. Three consciousnesses weighing survival against permanent damage.
"Could kill us?" Nico asks.
"Yes."
0:02
"Better than definitely killing us." Dante. Practical. Cold. Scared underneath.
"Isabella." Marco's voice wraps around me through the bond. Gentle. "We trust you. Do it."
0:01
No more time.
I gather everything inside me. The amplified power still thrumming through merged consciousness. Energy borrowed from three lives. Four before Luca... before.
Can't think about that.
I pull deeper. Find the love tangled with desperation and terror and absolute refusal. They can't die. Won't let them. Not like this.
Marco's strategic mind. How he sees patterns nobody else can. Protection disguised as calculation.
Dante's insight. The way he understands me. Reads me. Makes me feel less alone.
Nico's chaos. Reckless and wild and free in ways I need.
The power builds. Pressure mounting behind my ribs. In my skull. Becoming something too big for one body to contain.
I release it.
Not carefully. Not controlled. A psychic scream channeling through every remaining bond at once. Pure bioelectric energy flooding three nervous systems simultaneously.
The implants light up in my awareness. Microscopic circuits suddenly drowning in power they weren't designed for. Wiring melting. Overheating. Chemical reactions destabilizing wrong. Safe.
Marco's implant fries first. Closest to the surface. Easy.
Then Dante's deeper in his brain stem. Burning out.
Nico's last. Already hot. Cooking itself into slag.
Relief hits for half a second.
Then I feel their pain.
Sharp. Electric. Lightning through water.
Marco's thoughts scattering. Strategic mind fragmenting. Can't connect patterns. Can't think.
Dante's barriers shattering. Every psychological defense dropping at once. Raw. Exposed. Terrified.
Nico's chaos becoming real chaos. No filter. No control. Just screaming.
"I'm sorry." I'm crying. Know I am even though I can't feel tears in the mindscape. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry."
The energy doesn't stop flowing. Keeps going. Through neural pathways. Across synapses. Too much. Too powerful.
The merger fractures.
Reality tears.
Our shared consciousness space explodes. Not physically. Worse. Psychically. Bonds severing. Connections breaking. Four minds thrown back into four bodies with violence that feels like being born and dying simultaneously.
I'm screaming.
Then nothing.
Cold.
That's the first thing. Cold concrete under my back. In my bones.
I try to remember. Try to think. Everything's fog. Gray. Empty.
Slowly sensation returns. Dust in my lungs. Stale air. Metallic taste in my mouth. Blood maybe. Or just fear.
My eyes won't open. Eyelids too heavy. Takes three tries. Four.
The warehouse. Still here. Silver symbols faded to almost nothing on concrete. Ritual circle broken. Scattered.
How long?
I turn my head. Everything hurts. Muscles don't work right. Signals getting scrambled between brain and body.
Marco. Wheelchair tipped sideways. Him sprawled on concrete. Not moving.
Terror floods cold through my chest.
Dante face down. Arms spread. Still.
Nico curled small. Fetal. Vulnerable.
No. No no no.
I try to sit up. My body ignores me. Neural pathways still scrambled from the backlash. Nothing responds right.
"Please." Voice barely sound. Broken. "Please be alive please be alive."
Movement. Small. Nico's hand twitching.
Marco's chest rises. Falls. Breathing.
Dante groans. Low. Pained. Most beautiful sound I've ever heard.
I start crying. Relief so strong it hurts worse than fear. Alive. They're alive.
But something's wrong.
Dust everywhere. Thick on surfaces. Like it's been sitting undisturbed for days not hours.
How long were we out?
I force my body to cooperate. Inches first. Crawling. Concrete scraping my palms. Reaching for Marco.
His eyes open. Unfocused. Lost.
"Isabella?" Voice rough. Unused.
"Here." I take his hand. Squeeze. Feel him squeeze back weak. "You're okay. We're okay."
"How long?" He asks.
Before I can answer, sound cuts through the warehouse. Voice. Tinny. Electronic.
Dante stirs. Pushes up slow. "What's that?"
Nico uncurls. Looks around confused. "Where's Sophia?"
Gone. Warehouse empty except us four. No sign she was here except symbols she painted.
I crawl toward the sound. Find a phone on concrete. Not mine. Cracked screen still working. News broadcast playing.
Reporter's face. Serious. Practiced sympathy.
"...bodies recovered from the warehouse fire three days ago."
Three days?
"Authorities have identified the victims as members of the Romano crime family. Marco Romano, twenty-eight. Dante Romano, twenty-six. Nico Romano, twenty-four. And Isabella Hart, twenty-two."
My blood stops. Everything stops.
"Investigators suspect terrorist attack given the family's criminal connections. Remains burned beyond recognition. Identification through dental records."
Can't breathe. Can't process.
"Isabella." Marco's voice. Understanding dawning. "Are they saying..."
I turn. Meet his eyes. Watch realization hit Dante. Nico. All of us.
We're dead.
The world thinks we're dead.
"Sophia did this." Dante says slowly. Putting pieces together. "She staged it. Gave us an exit."
"Or a trap." Nico.
The broadcast continues. Background noise explaining our deaths to a world that believes it.
"We need to move." Marco. Strategic mind engaging despite trauma. "If we're dead, we stay dead. Can't be found here."
"Where?" I ask. Voice small. "We have nothing. No resources. No safe houses. The Romano name is..."
"Dead." Dante finishes. "We're ghosts now."
"We have maybe an hour." Marco calculating. "Before someone checks this location. Police. Press. Someone."
"Then we go." Nico getting to his feet. Unsteady. Swaying. "We disappear."
Marco rights his wheelchair. Pulls himself up. Movements slower than usual. Damaged from the neural trauma still.
"What about Luca?" The question tears out of me. Can't hold it back.
Silence.
Heavy. Terrible.
Because we all felt it. The bond breaking. Him tearing away. Gone.
"Later." Marco's voice gentler than I've ever heard it. "We mourn later. Right now we survive. That's what he died for."
The words hit like fists. He died. Luca died. Sacrificed himself. And we're alive because of it.
Can't think about that. Can't feel it. Will break if I do.
"Move." Dante heading for the door.
We follow. Four ghosts in bodies that don't feel like ours anymore. Leaving behind our lives in dust and faded symbols.
The broadcast continues behind us. Romano family refusing comment. Vincent unreachable.
Vincent. Who put the implants in our heads. Who tried to live forever in our merged consciousness. Who we fragmented and destroyed.
Is he really gone? Or just scattered too thin to hear?
We step into afternoon sunlight. Alive when the world thinks we're dead.
Free when we've never been more trapped.
And somewhere Sophia knows the truth.
The question burning through me as we disappear into Chicago's streets: what does she want in return?