Chapter 123 Hope
LUCA
The session was in Bardon’s workroom, which had become something of a research center over the past weeks, with Elara’s notes integrated into Bardon’s existing work in a way that suggested the two of them had found a professional respect that neither of them had expected.
Arya explained the dual anchor mechanism. The ward heartbeat. The way it might function as a backup independent of both the mate bond and any direct void connection.
Elara confirmed the theoretical viability from the void-side mechanics. Bardon outlined the monitoring systems.
I listened.
When they finished, everyone in the room was looking at me.
“Ask your questions,” Arya said. Her voice was gentle. She knew what I was doing and she was giving me room to do it properly.
“How long would the retrieval take?”
“Best estimate, six to twelve hours,” Elara said. “The void doesn’t experience time the way we do, but her anchor connection does. Twelve hours inside at maximum stress. We want to be out well before the bond and the ward connection show fatigue markers.”
“What are the fatigue markers?”
“Degradation in the signal quality. The bond transmits emotional and physical state. Luca, you’d feel it if she started losing coherence. The ward network would register a weakening in the heartbeat signal.” Bardon had charts. He showed them to me. “These are the thresholds below which we interrupt the operation and attempt emergency extraction.”
“What does emergency extraction look like?”
“We pull through the ward connection. It’s—not comfortable. But it’s possible.”
“How sure are you that it’s possible?”
“Less sure than I’d like,” Bardon said honestly. “It’s never been tested because the preconditions for it didn’t exist before Arya developed the ward resonance ability.”
“So you’re asking me to send my mate into the void relying on a system that has worked in controlled tests but has never been used in the actual operation.” I kept my voice level. “And the fallback if the system fails is also untested.”
“Yes,” Elara said. “That’s accurate.”
I looked at Arya.
She looked back at me with the particular steadiness that was her and only her. The thing that made her dangerous and extraordinary and absolutely impossible to stop once she’d decided. And as much as I wished I could stop her, I knew that wasn’t going to be possible.
“Tell me what I can do,” I said. “Specifically. What does my role look like from my end.”
Bardon’s expression was something close to relief. He pulled up a different chart. “The bond monitoring is the primary real-time feedback mechanism. You’ll need to be stationary and in close proximity to the entry point. The bond will carry emotional and physical information — you’ll feel what she feels, and she’ll feel what you feel. That’s both an asset and a liability.”
“If I panic—”
“She’ll feel it. Yes.” He looked at me directly. “I’d recommend finding a way to be genuinely, functionally calm rather than performing calm. The bond reads through performance.”
“I know.” I did know. She’d told me that the void had made her feel me reaching for her even at distance. The bond didn’t lie and it didn’t simplify. “What’s the minimum preparation time?”
“Two weeks. Possibly three.” He glanced at Elara. “We need to run controlled smaller-scale tests of the ward heartbeat mechanism. Build in monitoring systems. And Arya needs practice sustaining the dual connection under stress.”
“Three weeks,” I said.
“The runoff election result should be known within the week,” Arya said quietly. “Whichever way it goes, the council situation will be clearer. Better to have that resolved before we—”
“Before we do something that requires your complete attention,” I finished.
“Yes.”
I looked at the charts. The threshold markers and the monitoring systems and the theoretical framework for something that had never been done before and might not work and would require me to sit on solid ground and feel through the bond everything that happened to her inside the void.
“Three weeks,” I said again. “We prepare and then we decide if we’re ready.”
“That’s all I’m asking,” Arya said.
I looked at Elara Voss, who’d spent thirty years building toward this moment for reasons I understood in a way I wished I didn’t.
“Your daughter’s name is Mira,” I said.
She looked at me. “Yes.”
“How old would she be now?”
A pause. “She’d be fifty.”
“You don’t know what thirty years in the void has done to her.”
“No.” Her voice was steady but the steadiness cost her something. “I don’t. The void doesn’t age people the way time does. She may be exactly as I last saw her. She may be—different. The way Mordecai is different.” She held my gaze. “I’ve thought about that every day for thirty years. I’m going anyway.”
“I’m not trying to talk you out of it,” I said. “I’m trying to understand what you actually know so I can help protect her.” I gestured to Arya. “Effectively.”
Elara looked at Arya and then back at me with the expression of someone who’d expected an obstacle and received something more complicated.
“What do you need to know?” she said.
“The patterns,” I said. “Everything you’ve observed about how the void changes people over time. Not theory. Not assumptions. Actual documented behavior.”
Elara didn’t answer immediately. She moved closer to the worktable instead, pulling a set of notes toward her. It was older than the rest, the edges worn in a way that suggested they’d been handled often.
“There are consistencies,” she said finally. “Not guarantees. But consistencies.” Her fingers rested lightly on the page without turning it. “The longer someone is exposed, the more the void strips away external identity first. Memory becomes fragmented. Not erased, but… unanchored. It loses sequence.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“They remember things without context. Names without faces. Emotions without cause.” Her gaze flicked briefly to Arya before returning to me. “What remains longest is attachment. Emotional bonds seem to persist even when everything else degrades.”
The bond.
I felt it then, faint but present, steady where everything else in the room felt sharp.
“And physically?” I asked.
“Alteration,” Bardon said quietly. “The void doesn’t destroy matter so much as it… reinterprets it. The more unstable the anchor, the more extreme the reinterpretation.”
I nodded once, absorbing that.
“And recovery?” I said. “If we get her out.”
Another pause. This one heavier.
“We don’t know,” Elara said. “Not fully. Mordecai retained enough of himself to function, but he’s not what he was.” Her voice lowered. “Mira was stronger. More stable. If anyone could hold on to themselves through that kind of exposure…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to.
I looked at Arya again, just for a second this time, grounding myself in something that wasn’t theoretical, wasn’t uncertain.
Then I looked back at Elara.
“Then we plan for worst-case retention and best-case recovery,” I said. “And we don’t rely on hope to fill in the gaps.”