05-31-2025, 08:35 PM
The holograms rose. Two versions of Nox spun slowly between them. Green-lit ghosts suspended in the dark, rotating in sterile symmetry. The body with the Power. The body without. At a glance, identical. But then, Nikolai saw it, subtle and chilling. A shadow within the mind.
Then, not.
He didn’t speak at first. Not because there was nothing to say, but because every part of him, every instinct, was pulling inward, recalibrating. Anger had not solved this. Force had not clarified it.
He stepped back from the chair.
The shadowweave dissolved fully into the air like breath fading on glass, and the darkness retreated. Light bled back into the corners of the room like color returning to a corpse. The glamour of power lifted, but the tension lingered.
Nikolai turned without a word and walked toward the window. His hands were behind his back, but they were clenched. Not from fury. From restraint.
He needed to see the sky.
The snow outside had picked up again, frosting the capital in white. The golden domes of Moscow’s skyline shimmered beyond the glass, beautiful and ancient and solid. He closed his eyes for the space of a single breath. Then he spoke.
“When you leave this office,” he said, voice flat, low, and cold, “you will go directly to the Facility. I’ll make sure Dr. Weston is expecting you.”
He didn’t look back. “You will not be leaving the Kremlin until those tests are complete.”
There was a pause. Not for emphasis. He didn’t believe in wasting time that way. It was simply the space necessary to file his next words away in perfect, deadly order. “If you do not go willingly, you will go regardless.” Still, he did not turn. But the weight of his attention focused on the horizon as if he was studying the future itself. Nox would feel it as surely as if Nikolai had laid a hand on his shoulder. “This is not punishment,” he added. “This is necessity. And if your data is real. If this is replicable, even in theory, then the implications are far larger than you understand. You are not a weapon now, Nox Durante. You are something … rarer.”
His reflection shimmered faintly in the glass: dark, austere, backlit by winter.
“You are a precedent.”
The word lingered. It tasted wrong in his mouth. Like admitting gravity could be optional. He watched the horizon a little longer, waiting for the fear inside him to settle into something more useful. Strategy. Resolve. Control. And with that, Nikolai stood in the silence as if he was still enveloped by the blanket of shadow, staring out at a world that had just begun to shift beneath his feet.
Then, not.
He didn’t speak at first. Not because there was nothing to say, but because every part of him, every instinct, was pulling inward, recalibrating. Anger had not solved this. Force had not clarified it.
He stepped back from the chair.
The shadowweave dissolved fully into the air like breath fading on glass, and the darkness retreated. Light bled back into the corners of the room like color returning to a corpse. The glamour of power lifted, but the tension lingered.
Nikolai turned without a word and walked toward the window. His hands were behind his back, but they were clenched. Not from fury. From restraint.
He needed to see the sky.
The snow outside had picked up again, frosting the capital in white. The golden domes of Moscow’s skyline shimmered beyond the glass, beautiful and ancient and solid. He closed his eyes for the space of a single breath. Then he spoke.
“When you leave this office,” he said, voice flat, low, and cold, “you will go directly to the Facility. I’ll make sure Dr. Weston is expecting you.”
He didn’t look back. “You will not be leaving the Kremlin until those tests are complete.”
There was a pause. Not for emphasis. He didn’t believe in wasting time that way. It was simply the space necessary to file his next words away in perfect, deadly order. “If you do not go willingly, you will go regardless.” Still, he did not turn. But the weight of his attention focused on the horizon as if he was studying the future itself. Nox would feel it as surely as if Nikolai had laid a hand on his shoulder. “This is not punishment,” he added. “This is necessity. And if your data is real. If this is replicable, even in theory, then the implications are far larger than you understand. You are not a weapon now, Nox Durante. You are something … rarer.”
His reflection shimmered faintly in the glass: dark, austere, backlit by winter.
“You are a precedent.”
The word lingered. It tasted wrong in his mouth. Like admitting gravity could be optional. He watched the horizon a little longer, waiting for the fear inside him to settle into something more useful. Strategy. Resolve. Control. And with that, Nikolai stood in the silence as if he was still enveloped by the blanket of shadow, staring out at a world that had just begun to shift beneath his feet.