Chapter 72 Seventy two
The first thing I felt was the mattress. It was lumpy, smelling of stale fabric softener and old oil.
The second thing I felt was the silence. No hum of a spaceship. No scream of a void-drive. No psychic roar of a billion deleted souls.
Just the rhythmic, annoying beep-beep-beep of a digital alarm clock.
I gasped, shooting up in bed, my hands scrabbling for a weapon that wasn't there. I wasn't wearing a void-suit. I was wearing an oversized t-shirt with a grease stain on the hem. I wasn't in the Sanctuary or the Nullity Command Ship.
I was in my bedroom above the garage in Coldwater.
I slapped the alarm clock, knocking it off the milk crate I used as a nightstand. It hit the floor but kept beeping. I looked at the red LED display.
OCTOBER 14. 6:00 AM.
The date burned into my retinas. This wasn't just any day. This was The Day. The day the rainstorm hit. The day a stranger with amber eyes rolled his bike into my shop and changed the orbit of my life.
"No," I whispered, my voice sounding young, unscarred by smoke and screaming.
I scrambled out of bed and ran to the mirror cracked in the corner.
The woman staring back at me wasn't the Guardian of the Threshold. She didn't have silver-blue streaks in her hair. She didn't have the "Phase-Burn" scars on her neck from the Red-Queen’s psychic attack. Her eyes were dark, tired, and completely human.
I looked at my hands. The calluses were there, but the glowing veins of the Origin-Code were gone. I was twenty-four years old again.
"It was a simulation," I breathed, gripping the sink until my knuckles turned white. "The whole thing. The Nullity. The Architects. It was just... a dream?"
But deep down, I knew it wasn't. The muscle memory was too sharp. I knew exactly how to strip a void-engine. I knew the taste of Dax’s kiss in the rain. I knew the weight of the iron gavel.
You don't dream sixty-six chapters of trauma.
I threw on my coveralls the grey ones with the patch that said Chen’s Auto and ran downstairs. The garage was exactly as I remembered it: cluttered, smelling of rust and damp earth, with half-finished projects scattered across the benches.
My father, Chen Wei, wasn't there. In this timeline, he had "disappeared" two years ago. I was alone. Just a girl trying to keep the lights on.
BOOM.
Thunder shook the corrugated tin roof. The rain started, a sudden, torrential downpour that hammered against the bay doors.
My heart stopped. The script. It was running exactly as it had before.
Any second now, I would hear it.
VROOOM.
The sound of a heavy, custom engine cut through the rain. It wasn't the whine of a sportbike or the rattle of a Scavenger rig. It was the deep, guttural thrum of a Norton Interceptor.
I stood frozen in the center of the shop floor. My hand drifted to the back pocket of my coveralls, reaching for a wrench.
The headlights swept across the frosted glass of the bay door. The engine cut. Footsteps heavy, booted footsteps crunched on the gravel outside.
The small service door opened.
A man stepped out of the storm. He was soaked, water dripping from his black leather vest. He took off his helmet, shaking out his dark hair.
Dax.
He looked younger. The grey in his beard was gone. The scar on his jaw was fresh and angry red, not the faded white line I had traced a thousand times. His eyes were the same piercing amber, but they held the guarded, dangerous look of a man who didn't trust anyone.
He looked around the shop, his gaze landing on me.
"I'm looking for the mechanic," he said. His voice was rough, gravelly. The exact same words he had said in Chapter One.
I stared at him. My chest ached with a sudden, overwhelming grief. He didn't know me. To him, I was just a random NPC in his story. I was just the girl who fixed his bike.
"I'm the mechanic," I said, my voice shaking slightly. I forced myself to stick to the script. "If you're looking for charity, the mission is three blocks over."
Dax paused. He tilted his head, his eyes narrowing.
"Charity isn't my style," he replied, walking closer. "I have a bike that's overheating. Can you fix it, or are you just going to stand there looking like you've seen a ghost?"
He stopped three feet away. The smell of him rain, leather, and ozone hit me like a physical blow.
I couldn't do it. I couldn't play the game again. I couldn't pretend I didn't know that he took his coffee black, that he slept on his left side, that he would burn the world down for me.
"The intake valve on your Interceptor is clogged because you run the fuel mixture too rich," I said, cutting off his next line. "And your rear suspension is stiff because you haven't adjusted the pre-load since you left the Citadel three days ago."
Dax froze. His hand moved instinctively toward his belt where he kept a knife in this timeline.
"How do you know where I came from?" he asked, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Who are you?"
"I'm the one who knows you're looking for the Ghost Wolf code," I said, stepping closer, reckless with the truth. "I know you're running from the Board. And I know that in about five minutes, three Grey-Claw SUVs are going to pull up outside and try to kill us."
Dax stared at me. The suspicion in his eyes warred with confusion.
"That's impossible," he muttered. "Nobody knows about the Wolf."
"I do," I said. "Because I was there when you found it."
I reached out and took his hand. His skin was warm, calloused, real. He flinched, but he didn't pull away.
"Dax," I whispered. "It’s me. Mia."
He looked at my hand holding his. He looked at my eyes.
And then, something flickered.
It wasn't a glitch in the Matrix. It was a glitch in him. His amber eyes widened. His breath hitched. The guarded mask of the "Stranger" cracked, revealing the man beneath.
He squeezed my hand. Hard.
"Mia?" he rasped, his voice sounding like it was breaking. "Why... why are we in the garage?"
I let out a sob of relief. He remembered. We weren't reset. We were Reloaded.
"The Architects," I gasped. "They pulled us back. They reset the server."
"They put us back at the start," Dax realized, looking around the shop with wild eyes. "Everything we did... the revolution, the war, the Nullity... it’s all gone?"
"It’s not gone," I said, gripping his vest. "It’s in here." I tapped his chest. "We remember."
SCREEECH.
Tires squealed on the wet pavement outside. Heavy doors slammed.
"The Grey-Claws," Dax said, his head snapping toward the bay door. "Just like last time."
"Last time," I said, grabbing a heavy wrench from the bench, "we ran. We hid in the basement."
Dax looked at me. A slow, terrifying grin spread across his face the grin of a man who had killed gods and was now being asked to fight level-one goons.
"I'm not hiding in the basement," Dax growled. He reached into his boot and pulled out his combat knife. "I'm in a bad mood, Mia. And I feel like skipping the tutorial."
"Let's speedrun this," I agreed.
Dax kicked the service door open and walked out into the rain, not as a fugitive, but as a predator who knew exactly where the enemies were going to spawn.
\[NEW GAME+\]