The footsteps echo down the corridor—hollow, resonant—like the metal walls themselves remember everything:
every scream, every broken will, every final breath.
The air isn't really air here.
It's a compression of memory, so thick it burns even when you're not breathing.
The "Cobalt" station isn't a facility.
It's an altar.
An altar of interrogation where the future of civilizations isn't weighed—it's carved out like a tumor, with words and pain.
The lights pulse dimly overhead.
Cameras rotate too smoothly, too precisely.
They see everything.
There is no shadow here deep enough to hide the truth.
Ragnar is bound to a chair.
The curved brace across his chest resembles some new kind of crucifixion.
He sits like he's carved from basalt.
His face—severe. His gaze—steady.
But in the depths of his eyes, irony glimmers.
Even shackled, he is still a threat.
Before him stands President Marcus.
Impeccable suit. Perfect silhouette. A stare like a laser scalpel.
He hasn't come to interrogate.
He's come to conquer the truth—and bend it to his will.
"You claim that Hanaris's followers can return from the dead,"
his voice laces through the air like a wire under tension.
"Then where are they? Why do they vanish?
Where is your immortality, Ragnar?"
Ragnar smirks, eyes lowered.
The half-light makes his face a mask—like he's not performing his own death, but someone else's revelation.
"There's a war between Hanaris and his brother Kairus,"
he says it like a child revealing a bedtime secret.
"It doesn't just shatter planets. It tears at the very fabric of rebirth.
You want to understand? You won't. Not fully.
Even we barely do. But it's real."
"You want logic—I offer you paradox."
"You seek weakness—I give you a god."
His words settle in the air like venom.
Marcus freezes—a fraction of a second.
But Ragnar sees it.
Control is slipping. Like sand through clenched fingers.
But Marcus recovers quickly.
"So the ones infected by Kairus's virus... they're your enemies?"
"Without a doubt,"
Ragnar smiles slowly, savoring the bitterness on his tongue.
"They don't live. They serve.
They carry out his will the way fire carries death."
"Two god-amulets. That's all it takes.
That's what happened to Jamal.
That's what will happen to everyone. Even you.
Unless you understand who you're talking to."
Marcus clenches his jaw.
"How do you know this?"
The current in his voice sharpens like a live wire.
"You're bound. Isolated.
No access to people, no access to networks.
You're a dead man who breathes.
Where does your intel come from?"
Then something changes in Ragnar's eyes.
Not defiance. Not provocation.
Something colder.
Something bottomless.
"Hanaris allows us to link our minds,"
his voice is low, each word a blow to the chest.
"Even here, even in chains—I travel.
I dream the dreams of others.
I plant thoughts in minds that don't know they serve.
I've walked through the minds of your people, Marcus."
"Are you afraid?"
The room thickens.
It feels like the walls start breathing.
A guard steps forward.
His fingers twitch near the holster.
Ragnar doesn't blink.
His stare cuts through the soul.
Marcus steps closer. Abruptly. Too abruptly.
Too human.
He draws the paralyzer.
Pulls the trigger.
Flash.
Ragnar's body slumps like a marionette with its strings cut.
Silence.
The lamp swings slightly overhead—like a pendulum over a stranger's end.
Minutes pass.
Ragnar opens his eyes.
Focus. Breath. Pain.
Marcus is still standing there.
Unmoving.
Like an inquisitor waiting for a confession.
"Looks like the machine rebooted,"
he says evenly. No mockery. No pity.
Only cold. Only function.
"Shall we continue?"
Ragnar looks around, as if checking that the world still exists.
"Kairus is building a platform. Right above Earth.
It's not just a structure. It's a gate.
Maybe a prison. Maybe a weapon.
I don't know exactly.
But it's meant for him—not for you, Marcus."
"You're building your world.
But you've already lost.
And you know it."
Marcus doesn't answer.
But his fist tightens by his side.
"You shot me,"
Ragnar's voice almost sounds amused now.
"Did I hit a nerve? Or scare you?"
"You're shaking, Marcus.
Even dressed in your costume of power.
Your emotions are too alive.
Too human.
And that's what stops you from hearing.
But you should know how to listen… shouldn't you?"
Again, no words.
Only the squeeze of a trigger.
Flash.
Darkness.
"We'll resume when he returns,"
Marcus says to the guards.
His voice is glass—smooth, hard, impersonal.
There is nothing human in it now.
Only cold.
The cold of these corridors.
The cold of the machine-world to come.
The cold of the abyss where Kairus lives.
And maybe—just maybe—where Marcus now belongs.