Chapter 140: The Threads That Binds Us

Ethan scrolled. The video was fuzzy but enough. The figure’s profile matched a professor who had been vocal in funding the genetics program — Dr. Anthony Leland. Quiet, well-liked, a man with a tidy lab and tidy hair. “He’s a known figure in genetics,” Ethan said. “He has access to the systems. He’s also on the board of a private research foundation that sponsors the university.”

I felt bile rise. Someone within the university had betrayed its students to make new anchors. Someone was using the campus as a seedbed for a wider network.

“Get his records,” Aidan said. “And his associates. Ethan, pull every access log and crosscheck them. Elena, shadow the senior staff. Echo, watch the exits. Mara, help Rhea with the wounded. I’ll go to campus security and demand names.”

We moved like a machine. The team found rhythm in the chaos — the only thing keeping panic from swallowing us whole. We coordinated: signals, check-ins, where to take the wounded, how to secure the lab area until professional teams arrived. We did the work the way people do when they have no other choice: one step in front of the other, no dramatic speeches, just hands and plans.

Late in the afternoon, when the worst of the immediate rescue was done, and the medics had taken over, I went back into the ruin reluctantly. I needed to see the space where the tanks had been, the console that hummed under dust. The lab was a study in broken glass and flickering monitors. On a scorched table was a small, charred notebook that hadn’t been incinerated — somebody’s research notes. I picked it up and felt a pulse like the book itself was held together by habit.

There was a single entry at the top of a page, in a hurried scrawl: Sequence R active. Field units hired. Professor Leland signed off. Hollow Creed liaison cleared at 0300 hours. Patient zero succeeded. Awaiting Phase Two.

My breath stopped. The words confirmed the leak. The Creed were not a rumor anymore. They’d sold dark certainty in exchange for a plan. And Leland’s name confirmed the academic betrayal.

I stuck the page back into the notebook and slid it into my jacket. It felt heavier than the journal had, as if it had the weight of other people’s mistakes.

Outside, Aidan found me. He took the notebook from my hand and read, eyes narrowing. He looked up slowly. “We expose him,” he said. “We bring him down publicly. We shred any cover. We keep the students safe.”

“Yes,” I said. But under the crisp “yes” another thought rose like a slow tide: Selene had gone. The blast had not killed her. She had vanished into the weave of what she’d started. She had bought time to replicate anchors. The Creed were in the mix. People with rings and tidy hair who signed papers and shook hands while children in lab tanks slept with marks on their wrists.

We had to run faster. Not just to stop Selene’s net, but to get to the sources before the Creed could build a second city.

When night finally fell, the campus was ringed with lights and official cars and the smell of the burnt. Students were being bused away under blankets like refugees. The war room at the estate was a ring of monitors where Ethan had set up a broadcast and Aidan turned people away if they were a threat. We had lists, targets, names. Selene was a ghost at large and Leland a likely live threat inside the university. The city felt too small and the work too big.

I lay awake that night for a long time, a tide of images rolling through my head: the Harbinger in the sea, Selene in the cathedral, the anchor pulsing in the pool, the student whispering that he’d been called home. I could feel the glow under my skin — not just a heat anymore, but a pressure that was both warning and invitation.

Aidan slept with his hand curled over mine, fingers not wanting to loosen their grip. I clung to that small, human touch like a raft. Outside, the world moved — the Creed moved, the city moved, Selene moved. We would have to move faster.

At the edge of sleep a plan began to take shape, not fully formed but real enough. Ethan would pull deeper into the logs and find every access Leland had, every purchase order and every contact. Echo and Elena would run a sweep of the campus, find anyone who had taught or mentored under Leland recently. Rhea and Mara would work for survivors and dig for clues in the journals. I would go after Selene’s trail: the anchors she’d activated, the places where the brand had burned. Aidan would go with me. We would not run away or hide.

And if we had to, we would break more seals to buy time. We would sacrifice pieces of ourselves the way soldiers hand over gear at dawn. We would not be naive. We would be furious, focused, and careful.

I slipped my hand from Aidan’s in the night, careful not to wake him, and walked to the window. The stars were thin and the fog still sat low on the distant hills. The Harbinger inside me thrummed — not content, not asleep. It was a thing that waited for a name and for a choice.

I picked up Dr. Leland’s notebook again and set it on the desk beside Rhea’s ancient journal. Two books, two kinds of knowledge. Both pointed to the same ugly thing: we were not the only ones trying to shape a future.

Tomorrow we would begin dismantling it.

Tomorrow we would show Creed what happens when people weaponize a city.

Tomorrow we would go after Selene.

But tonight, for a few fragile hours, I let the world be small. Aidan’s breathing in the kitchen. Elena laughing softly as she convinced Ethan to eat something warm. Rhea whisper-reading a line from the Harbinger’s journal like a prayer. These were the stitches that held us together.

We had lost ground; we had taken some back. We were tired and loved and terrified. The net had been thrown. We had time — a currency we would spend carefully.

And when morning came, we would move.