Chapter 27: INSTINCT

Vise turned as the last pieces of his Claimed room split apart around him, expecting another door, another attack from Arch, or perhaps some failure in the structure he could still correct.

He found Sio standing behind him.

The boy’s eyes were closed.

For several seconds, that disturbed Mira more than anything else she had seen in the room. Sio had barely been breathing when Arch arrived, and nothing about the blood covering his face or the unnatural slackness around his mouth suggested he had actually regained consciousness. Yet he was standing.

His right arm hung beside him after the blow that had shattered Vise’s barrier, while his left hand remained slightly raised as though his body had prepared itself for another attack without waiting for the person inside it to wake. His breathing remained shallow, and his closed eyes never reacted to the stone collapsing around his feet.

"Sio?" Mira freed one wrist from the broken restraint and pushed herself out of the chair, though her weakened legs forced her to catch the edge of the table. "Sweetheart, can you hear me? You need to sit down before you fall."

Sio did not answer her, and Arch did not call his name. The older man was still lying among the broken stone where Vise had nearly crushed him, but his exhaustion seemed to disappear as he stared at Sio’s face.

His attention had fixed on something Mira had not noticed yet. A dark line had appeared across Sio’s cheek, beginning near the edge of his cheekbone and curving downward in a shape that had never been there before. Blood surrounded it, but the mark itself sat beneath the blood, too precise and too familiar for Arch to mistake.

His expression emptied as Mira followed his stare. Confusion crossed her face first, then something colder as memory reached her before understanding did.

She had seen that Scar before.

Silas had worn it.

For years she had known every line of her husband’s face, including the mark that had remained after the Passage wounded him. Now that same shape rested across their son’s cheek while Sio stood unconscious in the wreckage of Vise’s Claim.

Mira gripped the table harder. "Arch, why does he have that?"

Arch pushed himself onto one knee without taking his eyes from Sio. His ribs protested so sharply that one arm wrapped across his stomach, but his voice came out quieter than the pain should have allowed.

"Mira, stay where you are for a moment." Arch watched the strange stillness in Sio’s posture and felt nineteen years collapse inside his head. "I need to see what happens next."

"What happens next?" Mira stared at him, disbelief sharpening her fear. "My unconscious son is standing with my dead husband’s Scar on his face, Arch."

Vise heard her, and the surprise from losing his room changed immediately. His gaze snapped toward Sio’s cheek, while whatever fascination had survived Arch’s beating became far more focused.

Vise knew that Scar too.

Sio moved with his eyes still closed, his right foot sliding half a step forward. Arch stopped breathing for a moment.

The movement was small enough that another person might have ignored it, but Arch had stood beside Silas through too many fights to miss the way the heel settled, the slight turn of the hip or the relaxed position of the shoulders. Sio’s injured body had arranged itself into a stance it had never been taught.

Vise raised one hand, and the remnants of his Claim answered weakly. A fractured section of floor surged upward toward Sio’s ribs, but his body shifted before the stone properly accelerated.

He moved only far enough for the edge to pass beside him, then stepped forward while Vise was still trying to pull another attack from the collapsing room. His eyes never opened.

Vise’s barrier flashed across his chest, and Sio’s fist struck it. A crack spread through the shield, but the impact did more than damage the barrier.

Something inside Vise seemed to jerk half a heartbeat after his body did, a faint distortion separating from him for an instant before snapping violently back into place. Vise stumbled and pressed one hand against his chest as Arch’s eyes widened in recognition.

He remembered that too.

Vise attacked again, forcing a broken column across Sio’s path while another ridge tore toward his legs. Sio lowered himself beneath the first attack, stepped across the second and reached Vise before either piece of stone finished collapsing behind him.

His palm struck Vise’s shoulder.

The barrier appeared, but the physical impact barely moved him. Something beneath Vise cracked instead.

A pale fracture flashed somewhere deeper than flesh, running through the faint outline that had separated from Vise’s body. His knees nearly folded beneath him as a sound escaped his throat that had nothing to do with the strength of Sio’s hand.

Mira stared at them. "What is he doing to him?"

Arch finally understood why every piece of him had recognized the movement before his mind was willing to accept it. He looked at the Scar on Sio’s cheek, then at the invisible wound Sio’s hand had left somewhere inside Vise.

"His body isn’t awake." Arch forced himself onto his feet as another blow passed between Sio and Vise. "Something else is moving it."

Mira turned toward him. "What does that mean?"

Arch could not answer her yet, but recognition had already reached Vise through the pain. His confidence changed for the first time since Arch entered the room, and he backed away from Sio while trying to rebuild the shield around himself, staring at the Scar as though the dead had just walked through the wall.

"No." Vise’s voice came rougher than before, his damaged ribs making the word almost breathless. "That man is dead."

Sio continued toward him with his eyes closed.

Vise threw everything left in the room at once. Stone surged from both sides, fragments of the ceiling twisted downward, and what remained of the floor rose beneath Sio’s feet.

His body moved through the collapsing geometry with an efficiency that looked almost impossible in someone so badly injured. A slab passed beside his head, and Sio caught its edge.

Instead of fighting the force, he let it turn his body and used the rotation to drive his heel into Vise’s ribs. The barrier flashed, and another fracture opened inside Vise hard enough to drag a scream from him.

Arch stared at Sio with an expression Mira had never seen on him before. There was horror in it, but beneath that horror sat recognition so intimate that Mira already knew she was going to hate whatever explanation eventually came.

Vise tried to retaliate personally, driving his fist toward Sio’s face. Sio caught his wrist without opening his eyes.

The contact lasted less than a second, but Vise’s entire arm spasmed. Fine pale cracks seemed to race beneath his skin without damaging the flesh itself, while the deeper outline around him splintered again.

He tore himself free with a strangled breath and staggered backward into the remains of the table. Arch took one step forward as the last piece finally settled into place.

"Soul." The word escaped him quietly before he could stop it, and Mira looked toward him immediately. "He’s hitting Vise’s soul."

Mira’s confusion deepened instead of clearing. "Sio can’t do that."

"I know." Arch looked back at the Scar.

Vise heard them and started laughing, though there was almost no amusement left in the sound. Blood ran from his mouth as he stared at the unconscious boy walking toward him.

"Silas." Vise forced the name through a damaged breath while his remaining shield gathered around him. "You miserable bastard."

Mira went completely still, and Sio stopped. For the first time, the sound of that name produced a reaction as his fingers slowly curled.

Then his eyes opened.

Mira almost ran to him, but Arch caught her arm. She turned on him immediately, only for whatever she saw in his face to stop her before she could pull away.

Arch was staring into Sio’s open eyes with the certainty of someone who desperately wanted to be wrong.

Those eyes were awake.

Sio was not.

The usual curiosity was absent, along with the fear, confusion and poorly timed humor Mira had spent nineteen years learning to recognize. His gaze settled on Vise with a calm emptiness that belonged to someone operating from instinct rather than thought.

"Sio?" Mira tried again despite Arch’s grip. "Look at me, sweetheart."

His eyes did not move toward her.

Vise raised both hands, and the remnants of his Claim attacked. Sio disappeared from where he stood.

A tiny black opening had formed beside his leading foot, while another appeared several steps ahead. His body passed through the shortened distance so quickly that Vise barely brought his shield around before Sio arrived.

Arch recognized Sio’s Claim.

The way it was being used was different.

Sio drove his right fist forward, and a black opening appeared directly before his knuckles. His hand vanished into it.

Vise reacted instantly, throwing his barrier around his face where Sio had struck him earlier.

The fist never came from there.

A second opening appeared beside Vise’s ribs, and the punch emerged through it. His shield flashed as the blow connected.

Before Vise could turn, Sio had already pulled his arm back through the first opening and punched again. Another exit opened behind Vise’s shoulder, then another near his stomach, his jaw and beneath his ribs.

Sio’s body remained several steps away while his arm hammered into the same entrance again and again, each strike disappearing beside his fist before erupting from another black opening around Vise.

The barrage accelerated until Mira could no longer follow individual punches. Black circles blinked into existence around Vise faster than his body could turn, and fists seemed to arrive from every direction at once.

His barrier flashed across his chest, back, face, ribs and legs in frantic succession as it tried to intercept attacks with no stable origin. Vise shouted and pulled his arms around himself while the shield began to crack.

Sio kept punching.

Every physical blow struck the barrier with the strength of an exhausted nineteen-year-old body, but something deeper accompanied each contact. The faint shape within Vise fractured again and again until the cracks overlapped one another.

Arch watched with a mixture of disbelief and recognition. Sio had invented the openings, but the rhythm belonged to somebody else.

Vise’s shield managed to stop another strike near his throat, only for an opening to appear against his back almost simultaneously. A fist drove out of it, and the deeper impact bent him forward.

Another opening waited beneath his face.

Sio’s fist came upward, snapping Vise’s head back.

The barrier finally broke.

Sio did not stop.

Black openings surrounded Vise as his fist entered one portal beside his own hand and seemed to become countless fists around the collapsing man. Each blow appeared from a new angle before the previous opening had completely vanished, leaving Vise’s body jerking between impacts while the invisible thing inside him fractured further with every hit.

His knees hit the floor, but the barrage continued long enough to drive him onto one hand. Blood struck the stone beneath his mouth.

Vise tried to raise his shield again, but the transparent surface barely formed before another portal-born fist smashed through it. His body folded sideways and crashed into the remains of his own table.

Sio’s arm finally stopped, and the black opening beside his fist disappeared. Vise lay on the floor barely conscious while silence settled over the ruined chamber.

Mira looked between Vise and her son, trying to understand how Sio had gone from nearly dead to dismantling the man who had tortured them. The harder question sat in Arch’s grip around her arm and in the way he refused to call the person standing across the room by Sio’s name.

"Arch." Mira’s voice shook now that the immediate violence had stopped. "Tell me what you know."

Arch loosened his hand around her arm but still did not answer.

The building answered for him.

An alarm began somewhere beyond the shattered room. The sound had been muffled while Vise’s Claim enclosed them, but with the domain collapsing, it suddenly poured through the exposed structure in repeating bursts.

Emergency lights came alive beyond the broken walls, washing corridors and office partitions in sharp pulses. Mira looked around properly for the first time and realized Vise’s Claim had hidden how ordinary the location around them actually was.

The stone chamber had been wrapped through the interior of a Central Nexus administrative floor.

As the last pieces of the Claim lost their shape, walls that had seemed solid peeled away into the remains of offices, reinforced corridors and open workspaces. Desks had been crushed beneath Vise’s expansion, ceiling panels hung from broken supports, and several large windows revealed the surrounding city beyond the building.

Doors opened throughout the floor, and Wayfarers poured into the corridors. Some wore Central Nexus retrieval equipment while others looked like ordinary personnel dragged into an emergency response, but every one of them carried the subtle signs of people accustomed to using abilities.

A woman near the front had luminous threads winding around both forearms, another man’s skin hardened along his shoulders as he moved, and several others carried Claims or Scars that gave no obvious indication of what they could do. None of them looked remotely comparable to Vise or Arch, but there were a lot of them.

Arch counted the first corridor and stopped bothering after twelve. More footsteps thundered from the stairwell while voices spread through the floor, calling out the breach, Vise’s condition and the presence of wanted Wayfarers inside a restricted Central Nexus facility.

One of the responders saw Arch, and recognition travelled through the group immediately. "Arch is inside!" The man raised one arm while the Wayfarers around him spread through the office entrances. "Contain the floor and keep him away from any stable surface until retrieval command arrives."

Arch looked around at the shattered walls as his mouth tightened. "Of course there are more of you." He shifted his aching body between the incoming Wayfarers and Mira despite barely being able to remain upright. "Apparently kidnapping people requires an impressive amount of administrative support."

Mira grabbed his sleeve. "You can barely stand."

"I’m doing an excellent impression."

Across the room, Sio turned toward the new voices, and Arch immediately became more concerned. His eyes remained open, but there was still no sign that he understood where he was or who surrounded him.

His body had identified another threat, and whatever controlled the next decision seemed perfectly willing to keep fighting until there was nothing left capable of reaching Mira.

The first Nexus Wayfarer attacked, sending a ribbon of compressed air across the ruined office toward Arch. Sio moved first.

One black opening appeared in front of the attack, while another formed near the ceiling above the advancing group. The blast disappeared through the first and crashed downward from the second, scattering several responders before they understood what had happened.

The floor erupted with abilities. Glowing threads shot toward Sio from the left while a section of metal framework twisted free from a broken office wall and bent toward Arch, and a third Wayfarer drove both hands forward with enough force to send shattered furniture sliding across the floor.

Arch ducked beneath the metal as Mira pulled herself behind the remains of a desk. Sio stepped directly into the incoming threads.

They should have wrapped around his torso.

A portal opened across their path.

The threads vanished and emerged behind the woman controlling them, forcing her to cut her own ability before it closed around two of her allies. Sio continued forward while Arch watched him and understood another terrible part of what was happening.

Silas did not understand Sio’s life. He did not understand the Nexus building, the bounty, Vise’s investigation or the strange Claim his son had somehow acquired.

His body understood danger.

His instincts understood combat.

And somehow, through Sio’s Claim, those instincts were learning faster than conscious thought ever could.

More Wayfarers flooded onto the floor, spreading through the broken offices until Arch stopped bothering to count them. None carried anything close to Vise’s presence, but there were enough Claims and Scars gathering around them that numbers alone were becoming a problem.

Arch tried another door while Sio stood between Mira and the advancing responders. The outline began forming against a surviving wall, but an incoming attack shattered the surface before the handle could finish, forcing Arch away as several Nexus Wayfarers pushed through the wreckage.

A compressed blast crossed the room toward him, but Sio moved first. One black opening appeared in the attack’s path and another formed above the advancing group, sending their own force crashing back down among them and scattering several Wayfarers across the ruined office.

That only brought more movement from the corridor, where two familiar figures suddenly forced their way through the gathering responders.

Caspian entered first with Fern close behind him, both stopping when they saw the state of the room. Vise lay barely conscious among the wreckage, Mira’s wrists were raw from the restraints, Arch could hardly remain upright, and Sio stood covered in enough blood that Fern’s expression changed before anyone had explained a word.

One of the Nexus officers pointed toward Arch and Sio. "Kudzu is down. The anomaly is hostile, and Arch is assisting his escape. Help us contain them."

Caspian looked at Sio for several seconds, then at Mira and what remained of Vise’s room. Whatever decision he reached showed in his face before Fern quietly muttered, "Caspian, think very carefully about what you’re about to do."

"I have." Caspian stepped forward just as one of the responders launched an attack toward Arch, and the force curved violently around him before tearing into an empty section of the office instead. "That’s the problem."

The Nexus Wayfarers nearest him immediately changed their stance. Fern stared at Caspian for a moment, then looked once more at Sio’s injuries and Mira’s wrists.

She exhaled through her nose, stepped beside him and raised her hands toward the people who had been their colleagues only moments earlier. "You always pick the worst possible time to grow a conscience."

Her voice remained tired, but there was no hesitation left in her posture. "Move over."

Caspian made room for her as Arch tried another door behind them and Sio faced the remaining Wayfarers without saying a word. In front of them, Central Nexus personnel began preparing their Claims while Caspian and Fern took position between both sides.

Neither of them wore the Nexus colors like allies anymore.