Eclipse Protocol

Chapter Three: Fracture Point

Her Umbra Drive sang. She took the hit, bled light, and smiled like winter.

"Better," she allowed.

Madix clapped, delicate. "Data, data, data."

A new shiver crawled through the chamber-the red lattice brightening, lines thickening toward the mural's center. Nyctarion's visor overlaid a ghost-map of Noxhaven; the veins converged on three nodes: Civic Grid/Spire, Sector 9 Relay, Underline Pump Hub.

"Umbros, tell me I'm wrong," Kalen said.

"You're wrong," the AI said. A beat. "You're not wrong. The Array's seeding a rhythm into city infrastructure. Push, break, reset. Voryx gets his 'correction' by collapsing the places we can't afford to lose."

Nulls reformed with unnerving grace, now mirroring Nyctarion's footwork, Azure's cadence, Crimson's feints. They attacked as the trio would attack themselves.

"Stop feeding them," Azure snapped.

"Working on a palate cleanser," Umbros said. "Also: shard budget check."

Kalen's HUD blinked.

TRANSLOCATOR SHARD
Blinks remaining: 4
Time budget: 12s

"Conserve," he muttered.

Azara cut a diagonal through them toward the mural. Crimson met her again, daggers catching Whisper Blades in a shower of pale sparks. Their eyes locked-history, hurt, and the certainty that only one of them walked out.

"You always wanted the throne," Selina said.

"I wanted the blade to matter," Azara answered. "You threw it away for a heart."

"Maybe," Selina said, and slipped inside Azara's guard like a secret. The cut was shallow. It was enough. The Umbra Drive hiccupped, flickered, recovered with a feral hiss.

Madix leaned on the rail, humming louder. "Note to self: Umbra thermal drift under micro-tox load. Delicious."

Azure broke left for the mural. Nulls piled to stop him-too slow. He slid through reality with a Phase Shift that tore a growl from his throat, reappearing with both blades buried to the hilt in the conduit's glyph heart.

"Now," he said.

"Now," Kalen echoed.

Umbros went full feral. Violet glyphs rippled off Kalen's gauntlets into the conduit, riding Lucien's blades like rails. The Array stuttered. Lights dimmed. The Nulls froze mid-gesture, then jittered through a dozen conflicting stances as their model desynchronized.

"Turds away," Umbros sang, delighted. "Enjoy the diarrhea, boys."

Madix sighed. "Vulgar."

The mural ruptured. The chamber shook. A second voice overrode everything-cold, absolute, carrying on a frequency that made the bones ache.

"I am the correction. You are the error."

Voryx didn't need a body here. His will was enough. The lattice flared white. Oblivion Chains unspooled from the ceiling like judgment-spectral links hunting Umbros and the Azure Core by scent.

Nyctarion threw himself between the chains and Azure. The first passed through his chest and found the AI instead-Umbros snarled as the world narrowed to a pinhole.

"Got me," the panther hissed. "Not for long-"

Crimson's grapple whip snapped, biting the chain and anchoring it to a turbine. It screamed across the floor, carving a glowing line.

Azure cut the second chain mid-arc. It re-knit in air, hungry. He bared his teeth. "Fine."

He hit Azure Overload-not full, just a taste. Light bled from every seam in him. Time slowed to a hateful crawl. He stepped, once, twice, three times in the space of a blink, and the chain shattered into a fan of dying comets.

The cost hit him like a flood. He staggered, breath shredded, after-images strobing uncontrolled.

Crimson's hand was already at his shoulder, steadying, casual like a secret. "Show-off."

"Addict," he rasped back.

Azara watched that touch like a blade to the throat, something unreadable flickering and gone. Then she looked up, past them, to where the catwalk now hung at an angle. Madix was already stepping backward through a mild storm of falling dust, content.

"Enough for tonight," he said. "Round two will require... louder music."

He vanished into a maintenance hatch. Azara took one step toward Selina-and stopped. The Array's veins, half-dead, pulsed again, this time drawing down, deeper into the black.

"He's moving the core," Lucien said. "Below even this."

"Sector 9 Relay, Civic Spire, Pump Hub," Nyctarion repeated. "Three fracture points. One central spine."

Crimson slid a data shard into Nyctarion's palm without looking. "Manifest. Convoy routes. The handoff you almost interrupted? Not a weapon. A key."

"To what?" Kalen asked.

Azara answered for her, voice soft as a funeral. "To lock the city shut."

Voryx's presence pressed again, colder, farther, like a tide pulling out. The chains retracted into the dark. The Nulls went still, heads down, as if in prayer.

Nyctarion checked the shard: 3 / 9s. The chamber was coming apart in stages; floor plates unlatched one by one like teeth loosening.

"Decide," Umbros said, suddenly all business. "Up, out, and race the convoys-or down, into the spine, and cut the key before it turns."

Kalen looked at Lucien-ashen, burning. At Selina-poised, hiding three truths and a wound. At Azara-still as a confession, eyes on Selina like gravity.

He chose.

"Down."

Selina nodded once, something like respect ghosting her mouth. Lucien smirked despite the pain. "Of course."

Azara's gaze cooled. "Then I will meet you where the city ends."

She stepped backward into a veil of shadow and was gone, like the end of a sentence.

Kalen took the lead. One blink to clear a collapsing gantry. 2 / 6s. One to bridge a yawning gap as the floor sheared away. 1 / 3s. He saved the last.

They dropped, again, but this time it was their choice. The red veins thinned to hairlines, then to a single cable that disappeared into a hole cut with inhuman precision.

Umbros spoke softly, for once. "Heart line."

"Cut it," Kalen said.

Above them, somewhere, Voryx's voice rolled like distant thunder.

"You descend by will. You will rise by permission."

"Come take it," Kalen whispered to the dark.

They went where the city had no name.