Chapter 61: The Mother in the Core

The second plant awakened with a sound that did not belong to any machine.

It sounded like a heartbeat.

The circular chamber shook. Thousands of red threads tightened above them, pulling stolen memories from the broken containers. Images flew through the air like burning pieces of glass. A child learning to walk. A soldier returning home. Two old people holding hands beside a river.

Then every memory was dragged toward the woman in the white dress.

She opened her arms.

The voices of the district poured into her body.

Kai gripped the crimson sword. His injured hand was bleeding again, and the red needle in his stomach made it difficult to breathe.

The woman smiled with his mother’s face.

"Are you going to attack your own mother?"

Kai did not answer.

Sarah stepped beside him. "Kai, don’t look into her eyes."

The woman turned toward her.

"You are the healer," she said. "The girl who believes every life can be saved."

Sarah’s face went pale.

The woman lifted one finger.

A red thread shot across the room and wrapped around Sarah’s wrist.

Sarah cried out.

Her staff fell from her hand.

The chamber disappeared around her.

She stood in a small village beneath a golden sky. People surrounded her, wounded and dying. Children cried in the streets. An old man held out both hands.

"Please," he begged. "Save my daughter."

Another woman fell at Sarah’s feet.

"Save my husband."

A child pulled at her robe.

"Save my brother."

Sarah looked from one face to another.

"I can’t save all of you," she whispered.

The woman in the white dress appeared behind her.

"That is why you will always fail."

Sarah turned and raised her hands. White light erupted around her, but the light split into hundreds of thin beams. Every beam connected to a different person.

The more she tried to heal, the more pain entered her body.

"Kai!" she screamed.

Kai saw her trapped inside the illusion.

He moved toward her, but the woman stepped between them.

"Stay," she said. "You have your own family to save."

The chamber changed for Kai.

The iron walls vanished.

He stood in the old kitchen of his childhood home. The table was clean. The windows were open. Rain tapped gently against the glass.

His mother sat near the stove, preparing tea.

Elara was beside her, folding clothes.

For one moment, Kai forgot the Tower, the Company, and the blood covering his hands.

His mother looked up.

"You’re late," she said.

Kai swallowed. "I know."

"You always come home late."

"I was busy."

Elara laughed softly. "He says that every time."

Kai looked at her. "Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Show me your wrist."

Elara held out her arm. There was no red mark around it.

Kai stared at the skin.

The woman at the stove turned around.

"Kai, sit down."

He did not move.

His mother placed a cup on the table.

"Your tea will get cold."

Kai looked at the cup. Steam rose from it.

The same steam from the false kitchen.

He remembered the fire. The silent flames. The impossible image of his mother standing inside the burning house.

"You’re not real," he said.

His mother’s face became sad.

"You came all this way to say that?"

"I came to bring you home."

"We are home."

"No. You’re a memory."

Elara stopped folding the clothes.

The room grew colder.

"You don’t remember us anymore," she said.

Kai felt his chest tighten.

"I remember everything."

"Then why do you keep leaving?"

"I had to."

"You wanted to."

Kai looked away.

The woman walked closer. Her face still looked like his mother, but her voice had changed. It was deeper now, layered with hundreds of whispers.

"You were always like this," she said. "You leave when people need you. You hide behind another name. You call it survival because you are afraid to call it selfishness."

Kai’s fingers tightened.

The room around him began to burn.

His mother and sister remained untouched as flames climbed the walls.

"Stay with us," the woman said. "You don’t need to fight anymore."

Kai looked at the table, the tea, and the old wooden chair where he used to sit as a child.

He wanted to stay.

That was the most dangerous part.

He wanted to put down the sword. He wanted to sit with his family and pretend the world had not changed. He wanted to be only Kai, not the man carrying another life inside his head.

Then he noticed the window.

Rain struck the glass, but none of it ran downward. Every drop remained frozen in place.

Kai stared at it.

The woman’s smile disappeared.

"You made the same mistake again," Kai said.

"What mistake?"

"You copied the room. You never lived in it."

Kai drove the crimson sword through the kitchen table.

The illusion broke.

The chair, the stove, the walls, and the smiling faces shattered into red fragments. Kai fell back into the core chamber, landing on one knee.

Across the room, Sarah was still trapped inside her vision.

Kael was fighting three residents whose red threads had wrapped around his arms. Jax moved through the darkness, cutting connections wherever he could. Dorian stood beneath the central cluster of threads, his body shaking as black marks spread across his neck.

The woman in the white dress turned toward Kai.

"You rejected your mother."

"You were never her."

"She loved you."

"My mother would never ask me to abandon the people trapped in this place."

The woman raised both hands.

Every red thread in the room snapped toward Kai.

They wrapped around his arms, legs, and throat. The stolen memories inside them rushed into his mind all at once.

A man begging for food.

A girl waiting beside a hospital bed.

A soldier watching his village burn.

A mother holding the body of her son.

Kai screamed.

He fell to the floor as thousands of lives struck him at once. His body could not bear the weight. His heart beat wildly, and the red needle inside his stomach burned through his nerves.

The woman walked toward him.

"Feel them," she whispered. "Every life the Company collected. Every regret. Every failure. This is what you wanted to save."

Kai pressed both hands against the floor.

He wanted to tear the threads away, but there were too many. His fingers slipped in his own blood.

The woman stopped in front of him.

"Give up, Kai."

He looked up at her.

His vision was blurred. He could barely see her face.

"Do you know what the worst thing about you is?" she asked.

Kai breathed with difficulty. "You talk too much."

The woman struck him across the face.

His mask was not there to protect him. His head snapped sideways, and blood filled his mouth.

"Your arrogance," she said. "You think understanding a structure means you can save everyone inside it."

Kai laughed once.

It hurt.

"Maybe not everyone."

He looked toward Sarah.

"But I can save her."

Kai pulled one red thread from his throat and wrapped it around his wrist. The thread cut deeply into his skin.

The woman frowned. "What are you doing?"

Kai yanked the thread toward himself.

The memory connected to it entered his mind. He saw Sarah as a child, standing beside a dying woman. He saw her mother reaching for her hand. He saw Sarah promise that she would become strong enough to save everyone.

Kai understood the shape of the illusion.

It did not feed on pain alone.

It used a person’s greatest wish and twisted it into a prison.

"Sarah!" Kai shouted.

She did not hear him.

He pulled the thread harder.

"Sarah, you cannot save everyone!"

Inside the village illusion, Sarah stopped moving.

The old man still held out his hands.

"Please," he begged.

Sarah looked at him. "I can’t save everyone."

The woman in the white dress appeared behind her.

"That is what I have been telling you."

Sarah turned toward the woman.

"No," she said. "You’re the one making them suffer."

The illusion trembled.

"I can’t save everyone," Sarah continued, "but I can save the person standing in front of me."

White light exploded through the village.

The red thread around her wrist snapped.

Sarah returned to the core chamber and collapsed on one hand, gasping for air.

Kai pulled the remaining threads away from his body.

The woman screamed.

The stolen memories flew back toward the containers, but many of the containers were already broken. The memories did not return to the plant. They spread through the chamber and entered the people trapped behind the windows.

The residents began to wake.

The red lines across their bodies faded one by one.

Kael broke free from the three figures surrounding him and struck the nearest thread with his sword. The connection snapped, and the resident collapsed without a sound.

Jax moved faster, cutting the red lines across the walls.

"Dorian!" Kai shouted. "How do we shut it down?"

Dorian looked toward the center of the room.

"The core is behind her."

"How do we reach it?"

"You don’t."

Dorian raised his remaining blade.

"I do."

He charged.

The woman in the white dress turned toward him and sent a storm of red threads across the room. Dorian cut through the first wave, then the second. The threads pierced his arms, chest, and legs, but he kept moving.

"Kai!" he shouted. "Take the others and leave!"

Kai saw the black marks covering Dorian’s body.

"What happens if you reach the core?"

Dorian looked back once.

"I stop being useful."

The woman wrapped both arms around him.

The red threads pulled Dorian into her body.

His blade fell to the floor.

Kai moved before he could think.

He ran across the chamber, ignoring the pain in his side. His legs were weak, and his vision kept fading, but Sarah stepped beside him and released a healing pulse into his body.

It did not heal him completely.

It gave him enough strength for three more steps.

Kael charged from the other side and slammed his sword into the woman’s shoulder.

Jax appeared behind her and cut the threads around Dorian’s neck.

Kai reached the center.

He grabbed the woman’s white dress with both hands.

She turned toward him, and for a moment, she wore his mother’s face again.

"Kai," she whispered. "Please don’t."

His hands shook.

Then he saw Dorian trapped inside her chest, still conscious, still fighting.

Kai pulled.

The dress tore open like wet paper.

Behind it was not a body, but a giant red heart made of hundreds of memories fused together. Dorian’s blackened hand reached from inside it.

"Kai," Dorian said. "Now."

Kai drove the crimson sword into the heart.

The chamber went silent.

Then the core exploded.

Red light swallowed everything.