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Httoq – Present Day
Lupa stood before the main terminal, staring at the shifting equations on the screen. The numbers pulsed, glitched, rearranged themselves into patterns she could almost grasp—but never quite.
It had been days since Boris arrived.
And something was wrong.
His signal wasn’t just residual—it was evolving.
It wasn’t just a trace of where he had been.
It was an ongoing transmission.
Lupa inhaled sharply, fingers tightening on the console.
Not a memory. Not an afterimage.
A call.
And she wasn’t sure who was listening.
2020 – The Amazon Basin The baby wasn’t supposed to survive.
The men had made that clear when they left her in the clearing, naked, slick with the remnants of birth, her tiny lungs fighting for air.
They hadn’t expected the jungle to keep her.
Hadn’t expected the trees to lean inward, the air to shift, the world itself to respond.
But she had cried.
And the jungle had listened.
Frequencies traveled differently here, bending through the air like something sentient, weaving through roots and water, slipping into the bones of the rainforest.
The sound of the infant’s wail wasn’t just noise.
It was a perfect mathematical function.
And something—someone—answered it.
Present Day – Httoq Lupa exhaled.
She had never seen her own birth. But now, staring at the readings, she could hear it.
A wave.
A pattern.
A transmission that had never stopped.
The jungle had amplified her cry and sent it into the fabric of reality itself. And the world had answered—with a pandemic, with mutations, with the birth of an entire generation of minds that could hear what no one else could.
Her hands hovered over the controls. The network was still active, still moving, still reaching.
If she listened now, who would she hear?
A flicker. A pulse.
Then—
A voice.
Not Boris. Not Remo.
Not Hermes.
Something new.
Lupa’s breath caught.
Someone else had just answered the call.
Three Days Earlier – Somewhere in the Middle East Boris had been here before.
Not in this specific war-torn city. Not on this particular battlefield.
But in this feeling—this violent loop of history where men with guns fought over land they would never truly own.
It always ended the same way.
With fire.
Boris closed his eyes, his pulse in sync with the distant explosions. The people here thought he was a god. Or a demon. Something supernatural, something other.
He was neither.
Just a signal in a body that had never belonged to this world.
And now, he had been left here.
Remo had abandoned him.
Not intentionally.
But that hardly mattered now.
Boris exhaled, reaching for a sound, any sound—something to anchor him back to the network.
The music came first. Not real music. Not in the physical sense.
But an echo.
A memory.
Nina Simone, bleeding through the static of the universe.
Something cracked open inside him.
And then, he vanished.
Present Day – Httoq Remo stood at the entrance to Boris’s holding chamber, arms crossed.
“You’re not afraid of him?” Hermes asked from beside him.
Remo didn’t answer immediately. He wasn’t sure how to explain it.
Boris was a problem. That much was obvious.
But he wasn’t just some refugee.
Wasn’t just some powerful mind.
He was a cause. A disruption. A paradox that was never supposed to happen.
And Lupa—
Remo swallowed.
Lupa was part of that paradox.
“She’s been different since he got here,” Remo muttered.
Hermes raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
Remo exhaled sharply. “Yeah.”
A beat.
Then—
Hermes smirked. “Should I be jealous?”
Remo groaned. “I hate you.”
Hermes winked.
But Remo wasn’t joking.
He didn’t know what it meant yet, but something was changing.
And they weren’t ready for it.
2020 – The No Nation War Room
The men in suits stood in silence, watching the footage play on loop.
A woman in a hospital bed, gasping for air. A nurse rushing forward. The machines screaming.
Then—
The stillness of death.
The First Lady of No Nation was dead.
The pandemic had begun.
The President’s jaw was tight as he turned to his advisors. “Spin it.”
One of them cleared his throat. “We have an angle.”
The President exhaled. “Go on.”
“China.”
A beat.
Then, the President smiled.
“Good.”
Present Day – Httoq Lupa stared at the data.
She knew now.
Boris had never been random.
He had come here and triggered everything.
The virus. The mutations. The network.
And No Nation had covered it up.
Remo’s voice broke through the silence. “Lupa?”
She turned, slow, as if emerging from another reality.
“What?”
“You’re shaking.”
Lupa looked down at her hands.
She was.
Because she had just realized something else.
If Boris had triggered all of this…
Then what had she done?
Lupa was running numbers in her head.
The calculations never stopped, not really. They weren’t conscious—not like when she was engineering something, or when she was reconstructing a problem from the inside out.
No, these numbers came from somewhere deeper, like an instinct. A rhythm her mind followed without permission.
And something was wrong with the rhythm.
She tapped her fingers against the worktable, mapping equations that had no name.
Remo. Romulus. Hermes.
An imbalance that was never meant to be.
Feast had said it so casually, like a joke she had told a thousand times. But Lupa had felt it. The way reality shifted around truth, the way a real answer settled into the cracks of a question, whether you wanted it or not.
Hermes was the missing weight on the scale.
Feast found Romulus when it was time for him to mature.
But Lupa had been ready all along.
The rhythm stuttered again.
Lupa inhaled.
Time to run it back.
Five Years Ago – The Amazon Jungle
Ana's hands were steady as she unzipped the tent.
They shouldn’t have been.
Something in the air was wrong—not just the silence of the jungle, but the way the entire forest seemed to be holding its breath.
Ícaro stood behind her, eyes flicking between the tablet in his hands and the dark gaps between the trees. The instruments had been spitting out nonsense for hours.
Electromagnetic fields behaving like tidal waves.
Heat signatures appearing and vanishing like flashes of lightning.
The laws of physics bending, but only in certain places.
“We’re close,” Ícaro murmured.
Ana nodded. She knew.
And then they heard it.
Soft, at first. A sound that barely registered above the stillness of the jungle.
A whimper.
Another.
A third.
Ana pulled the tent open.
Inside, three newborns lay in perfect unison. Crying.
Lupa exhaled.
She hadn’t known, back then, what she was hearing. But now, five years later, she could see the pattern.
There had been something in the way the forest reacted—not as if it were merely sheltering them, but as if it had been constructed to.
Not consciously. Not by human hands.
But by something deeper, something mathematical.
She traced her fingers over the worktable.
A rhythm. A code.
They hadn’t just been born there.
They had been placed there.
By what?
She didn’t know.
Not yet.
Three Years Ago – The Fall of Borders
The headlines had come fast.
One country collapsed. Then another.
At first, the world called it a coincidence. A cycle of political instability.
But then, something else started happening.
Not just war.
Not just riots.
People… disappeared.
No bodies. No mass graves. Just… gone.
Lupa had only been two years old, but she remembered. Not in the way normal people remembered.
In patterns.
In equations.
And there had been a consistent variable in every incident.
No Nation.
Not just No Nation as a government.
But as an effect.
It spread like an algorithm, not a revolution. Not one big takeover, but a million tiny erasures, rewriting the world beneath people’s feet until they had already lost and hadn’t even noticed.
It had worked.
Because the world let it happen.
Lupa tapped the table again.
She had thought they had been running from something.
Now she wondered if they had been led to something instead.
One Year Ago – The First Federated Minds
Boris had been floating.
Not in the physical sense, but in the way that a signal drifts between channels, unmoored, waiting for reception.
At first, he hadn’t realized what was happening.
He had only known that there was a hum in his head, something vast, something alive.
And then, one day, the hum answered him.
Lupa hadn’t been there when it happened, but she understood it now.
It wasn’t instantaneous.
It wasn’t natural.
It had been triggered.
Boris wasn’t just part of the Federated Network.
He was its amplifier.
She closed her eyes.
This wasn’t just a connection of minds.
It was an infrastructure.
A system with rules. Laws.
And those laws had been interfered with.
By No Nation.
By whatever had brought them into the jungle in the first place.
By something she still couldn’t see.
She opened her eyes.
Not yet.
But soon.
Back to the Present – The Pattern Reveals Itself
The rhythm was off.
Not because something was wrong.
But because something unfinished was finally trying to resolve itself.
She exhaled.
There was one thing left to check.
Lupa turned, pushing up from the worktable, moving toward the main data hub of Httoq.
If her numbers were correct—
And they always were—
Then something was about to shift.
And she needed to be ready for it.
Httoq, The Morning After
Romulus woke up feeling different.
Not weak.
Not drained.
But changed.
And that was worse.
He could still feel Feast, even after she had disappeared into the depths of Httoq. The energy transfer had been seamless, not stolen, not forced—just… inevitable. She had wanted. He had given.
That should have made it easier to accept.
It didn’t.
And that was all he would allow himself to think about it.
The Mind That Can Solve Anything
Lupa already knew what Feast was.
She just didn’t know why she was here.
She had assumed, at first, that Feast’s attachment to Romulus was purely transactional. She consumed energy. He generated it. Simple. Logical.
But that wasn’t entirely true, was it?
Feast could have taken from anyone. Could have left after she had fed. But she hadn’t.
And now, as she watched Feast pacing through the lower tunnels of Httoq, fingers dragging against cold metal walls as if listening for something, Lupa understood.
“You’re not here for Rom,” she said quietly.
Feast stilled. Then turned.
A slow, wicked smile. “Took you long enough.”
Lupa folded her arms. “Why me?”
Feast took a step closer. “Because you see the world in numbers.”
Lupa’s pulse ticked.
Feast tilted her head, eyes gleaming with amusement. “You ever wonder why you don’t just solve problems, Lupa? Why you reconstruct reality itself to fit the right answer?”
Lupa didn’t respond.
Because, of course, she had.
Feast’s voice softened, her smirk fading. “You’re on the edge of something. Something no one else has ever touched. But you’ll never reach it without help.”
A pause.
And then—
Lupa whispered, “It’s a pattern.”
Feast smiled. “Now you’re paying attention.”
Lupa’s hands clenched.
She had felt its presence in the way reality shifted around them, in the way the Federated Network connected minds like unseen threads on a vast loom.
It wasn’t just an equation.
It was the key to something else.
Feast stepped closer, lowering her voice. “You think you and your brothers were born like this by accident?”
Lupa held her breath.
Feast touched the wall beside them, fingertips barely grazing the surface. “Remo moves things. Romulus stabilizes things. You… alter things. But you are all imbalanced.”
Lupa swallowed. “And Hermes?”
Feast smiled. “Hermes is the missing weight on the scale.”
Lupa exhaled, the realization settling into place like a final piece in an impossibly large puzzle.
Feast leaned in, voice low. “He appeared when he was needed. I found Romulus when it was time for him to grow up. But you, Lupa—you were already ready.”
Global Tensions & The No Nation Regime
The world was restless.
No Nation had spent the last decade absorbing territories, erasing borders, and installing algorithmic governance that dictated who lived, who worked, who vanished.
Hit-her’s rule had begun with violence in the open—executions broadcast as warnings, dissidents erased before they could become symbols.
But something was changing.
Cities had started going dark—not out of fear, but out of strategy. Entire populations disconnecting, choosing silence over surveillance.
No Nation called it anomalous unrest.
The rest of the world called it a signal.
And somewhere in the ice, deep beneath Httoq, Lupa had just discovered the key to breaking everything.
Remo & Hermes’s Rock Concert Escape
Remo was not in the mood for games.
Which meant, of course, Hermes was about to push him into one.
“You wanna train your jump?” Hermes asked casually, tossing a pebble in the air.
Remo shot him a look. “I know that tone.”
“What tone?”
“The one where you’re about to get me killed.”
Hermes grinned. “C’mon, Remo. You’re getting better. You only lose control when you’re distracted, right?”
Remo narrowed his eyes. “...What are you suggesting?”
Hermes rocked back on his heels, stuffing his hands into his jacket. “There’s a concert happening right now.”
“No.”
“In São Paulo.”
“No.”
“Massive crowd, loud music—”
“Hermes.”
“—a perfect place to test your landing.”
Remo exhaled through his nose. “Why the hell would I take you to a concert?”
Hermes smirked. “Because it’s the first time I’ve actually asked you for something.”
Remo hesitated.
Damn it.
That was true.
“…Fine,” he muttered. “But if we get caught, you’re explaining it to Lupa.”
Hermes threw an arm around him. “Relax. What’s the worst that could happen?”
São Paulo, Brazil – Heavy Metal & A Confrontation
The roar of a thousand voices swallowed them the moment they landed.
Remo stumbled, swearing, adjusting to the sudden shift in gravity, temperature, noise. A heavy bassline vibrated through the air, shaking the ground beneath their feet.
Hermes grinned. “See? Perfect.”
“Fuck you,” Remo muttered.
Hermes ignored him, already moving toward the bathroom line. “I need to piss. Don’t disappear.”
Remo rolled his eyes but said nothing.
Hermes pulled off his denim jacket, tying it around his waist.
“Hey, asshole.”
Remo turned before Hermes did.
A young man, lean but solid, stood a few feet away, arms crossed. His dark hair was shaved short on the sides, longer on top, and his jaw was set like someone who had already spent too much time following orders.
He looked like a soldier.
Or someone about to become one.
Hermes raised an eyebrow. “Gonna need specifics, man. There are a lot of assholes in this place.”
The guy pointed at his shirt. “What the fuck is this supposed to mean?”
Hermes looked down at himself. IF YOU CAN READ THIS, TALK TO ME. YOU’RE FEDERATED.
He blinked. “Oh. That.”
The guy was still glaring.
“You got a problem with it?” Hermes asked lazily.
The guy hesitated. “I—”
And that was all Hermes needed to know.
“Oh, shit.” He grinned. “You actually read it.”
The guy took a step back. “No, I just—”
“Nah,” Hermes said, already reading the flicker of realization in the man’s face. “You wouldn’t be pissed if you didn’t know exactly what it meant.”
Remo groaned. “Wait. This is why we came here? You already knew?”
Hermes smirked. “Obviously.”
“You’re recruiting without talking to the rest of us?”
“Yes.”
Remo sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “And?”
Hermes clapped the guy on the back.
“Look at us. We’re the Pretty Decentra—” He stopped mid-word, scrunching his nose. “Ugh. That’s too long.”
The guy frowned. “The what?”
Hermes shrugged. “A Pretty Decent Squad, tho.”
He paused, then snorted. “Huh. That’s actually a good name.”
Remo groaned.
“P.D.S. for short,” Hermes continued, ignoring him. “Easy to remember. Sounds official.”
The guy’s fists unclenched slightly, but his shoulders were still tense.
Hermes studied him. “Last show before something big?”
The guy hesitated. Then nodded.
Hermes smiled. “Yeah. I thought so.”
The man didn’t realize it yet.
But he would prove useful.
The Unseen and the Unforgotten
The light in Httoq was artificial, engineered to mimic day and night cycles, but the shadows were real.
Lupa saw them first.
Noticed how they stretched and warped across the stone walls.
Romulus, seated in his throne of wires, cast the deepest shadow, thick and unwavering, tethered to him like a second spine. Remo’s shadow was restless, shifting even when he stood still, as if his body wanted to disappear before the world could catch him. Lupa’s own shadow moved before she did, anticipating her thoughts, shaping itself into ideas before she had words for them.
And Hermes—
Hermes had no shadow at all.
She turned, focusing on where he stood near the threshold, arms crossed, watching them all. The light hit him. The floor beneath his feet should have darkened. But nothing was there.
She tensed. “Why don’t you have a shadow?”
Hermes barely reacted. “Because I was born perfect?”
Romulus chuckled. Remo rolled his eyes. Remo moved first, circling him, his brows furrowing. He shifted, angling his body, stepping into different patches of light, but no matter where he stood, Hermes left nothing behind. No outline. No trace.
“That’s not normal,” Romulus muttered.
“No,” Lupa agreed. “It’s a problem.”
Lupa didn’t laugh.
“You knew,” she said, staring at him. “This whole time, you knew.”
Hermes exhaled through his nose. “Figured it out a while ago. People without the gene? They can’t see me. I could stand right in front of a No Nation officer and they’d look straight through me.”
Romulus frowned. “So that means—”
“It means,” Lupa interrupted, “that if someone can see Hermes, they’re Federated.”
A beat of silence.
Then Remo laughed softly. “That’s actually useful.”
Hermes smirked. “You’re welcome.”
Lupa didn’t respond. She wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking at the shadow on the floor that didn’t belong.
A shape that wasn’t theirs.
A shape that shouldn’t be there.
And then, slowly, it rose.
The Devourer of Shadows
The temperature shifted first—subtle, like breath against the back of the neck. Then came the weight, something unseen pressing into the air, thick and expectant. The shadows deepened, stretching in ways they shouldn’t. The light dimmed—not fading, but folding, surrendering to something else.
And then, she stepped through.
The darkness peeled away from the floor, stretching into limbs, curving into a mouth. A woman emerged from the void, her body flickering like something unfinished, her edges dissolving into the air before reforming.
Feast had arrived.
She inhaled deeply, tasting the room before she even spoke.
“You,” she murmured, eyes landing on Lupa. “You called me.”
Lupa’s breath caught. “I didn’t—”
“But you did,” Feast interrupted, stepping forward. “Not with words. With knowing. That is enough.”
She turned her gaze, scanning them all. Reading them.
Then, she looked at Romulus.
And she smiled.
The Sin in the Dark
Romulus had been silent. Felt his breath turn shallow. His body was responding, sharp and urgent, but his mind recoiled. It wasn’t just the touch—it was the knowing. The way she unraveled him with every word. The way his body betrayed him, moving before he could think, reacting before he could reason.
“You’re trembling,” she whispered.
He clenched his jaw. “No, I’m not.”
Feast laughed. “Oh, Rom,” she purred, her fingers pressing lightly against his pulse. “You don’t even know how to lie yet.”
He had watched. Listened. Calculated.
And yet, when Feast’s eyes landed on him again, he felt the air tighten.
“You,” she said, voice curling around him like smoke. “You will do.”
Romulus raised an eyebrow. “For what?”
She stepped closer, flickering as she moved. “I consume power. You generate it. I need to feed.”
Lupa’s voice was flat. “It’s simple efficiency.”
Romulus scoffed. “Sure, because ‘efficiency’ is exactly what I’m thinking about right now.”
Feast’s lips curled into a smile. “Oh, darling. I know exactly what you’re thinking about.”
She touched his collarbone, feather-light.
Romulus, for all his strength, did not move.
Feast leaned in, her lips brushing the shell of his ear.
“You don’t understand your body, do you?” she whispered.
Romulus tensed.
“You grew too fast,” she continued. “You weren’t supposed to exist like this. The forest abandoned you. Your sister kept you alive. You are a symbiote to her, incapable of surviving without her close. And you—” she let out a soft laugh “—you aged thirty years in five.”
Romulus swallowed.
Feast’s voice was velvet. “You should have had your first woman at eighteen. By my calculations, that means at three and a half years old, your body was twenty-one.”
He let out a slow, shaky breath.
“Tell me,” she whispered against his jaw, “how does it feel to have a body that wants what the mind doesn’t understand?”
His fists clenched at his sides.
“How does it feel,” she murmured, “to be starving and not know what for?”
The big man wanted to step back.
But he didn’t.
Because she was right.
The triplets had never been meant to separate. They were a system, an equation that functioned only when all variables were present. Lupa needed them close.
Maybe that was why Remo had never resisted Hermes. Maybe Lupa’s desire had bled into him, made him feel it as his own.
And maybe, for the first time, it was Romulus’s turn.
Feast placed a hand on his chest, just over his heartbeat.
“Let me show you,” she whispered.
Romulus let out a ragged breath.
“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted.
Feast smiled, slow and dangerous.
“Oh, darling,” she whispered. “That’s the best part.”
And then she kissed him.
It wasn’t soft.
It wasn’t kind.
It was hungry, like she had waited lifetimes for this moment.
Her lips were warm, tasting of something sweet and forbidden—peaches soaked in honey and citrus, a perfume of spring rain, of something fresh yet sinful.
Her skin was bronzed like the morning after a storm, her mouth too large to be delicate, yet impossibly perfect, full and lush, the kind of mouth that devoured and blessed at the same time.
She smelled like rose milk spilled on warm skin, something faintly creamy and floral, like the ghost of a garden tangled in sin.
She pressed against him, and he felt her breath at his throat, warm, damp, intoxicating.
He was drowning.
Her body was heat.
Heat pooling between her knees, wrapping around him, teasing, threatening.
Romulus gasped into her mouth, his hands finally moving, gripping her waist, pulling her against him.
And then—
The shadows moved.
Like liquid ink spilling across the room, they coiled around them, bending the light, swallowing them whole.
Suddenly, the fortress wasn’t quiet anymore.
A city roared around them.
The hum of engines, the murmur of voices, footsteps against pavement. Somewhere, a car horn blared.
Romulus tensed.
They were still in Httoq.
But they weren’t.
They were making love in the middle of a city street, in broad daylight, surrounded by a sea of invisible people.
And no one could see them.
The sound, the movement, the rush of bodies—it was everywhere.
Feast moaned against his lips, her fingers in his hair, dragging him deeper, pressing her body to his, letting him feel everything.
He was hard. Desperate. Terrified.
She felt it.
Smirked against his lips.
“You’ve never had this before, have you, Rom?”
He shuddered.
She kissed his throat. Bit softly at his jaw.
“Then let me have you first.”
Romulus let out a sound—half a groan, half surrender.
His fingers dug into her hips, her thighs—warm, soft, strong.
Feast moved against him, slow, teasing, her heat pressing against his hardness, the friction a perfect, agonizing torture.
Romulus had never been touched like this.
Never been wanted like this.
And she knew.
She whispered it against his ear.
“You are mine now.”
Romulus should have pulled away. Should have fought it. But his body was already answering, pressing closer, surrendering to something larger than want, larger than thought. It was hunger, raw and aching, written into the very bones of his existence.
And for the first time, he had no desire to fight it.
Chapter Three – Between Fire and Ice
Remo stood at the edge of the underground fortress, watching the lights shimmer over the ice-rimmed horizon. The bunker was deep enough that the cold never truly reached them, but up here, above the tunnels and steel-reinforced halls of Httoq, the air could kill a man in minutes.
He inhaled deeply. Felt the burn in his lungs.
Behind him, the city was alive.
Lupa was training—she never stopped. He could sense her somewhere below, refining herself into something sharper, something untouchable. Romulus was resting, his body absorbing the energy he needed from the last supply run. That was all he could do. He wasn’t like them. He didn’t teleport. He didn’t shape the world. His gift was simpler, heavier—his existence kept Httoq standing.
And below, locked in the very center of the bunker, was the only man who had ever surprised him.
Remo closed his eyes and reached for him.
“Are you awake?”
A pause. A flicker of warmth.
“If I say no, will you leave me alone?”
Remo smiled. “Not a chance.”
The First Mission After The Pizza Guy
Remo had brought Hermes here by accident. A government checkpoint. An inspection. A pizza box with something inside that wasn’t pizza, shackled to a briefcase inside a delivery bag. The moment Hermes had crossed the threshold of Httoq, it was too late to let him go.
Romulus had wanted to kill him—clean, simple, a loose end tied.
But Remo had heard Hermes’s thoughts before he even spoke.
He wasn’t just some delivery guy.
He was one of them.
He was Federated.
It had been Hermes who gave them a name.
“They’ll never question it,” he had said, arms crossed over his chest. “It sounds like bureaucratic nonsense. That’s what they trust—papers, protocols, pointless systems. If we have a name, we exist on their terms. We get past inspections. We get inside.”
Remo had laughed. “We don’t need a name.”
“You do if you don’t want to get caught.”
Hermes had smiled then, that sharp, knowing smile of his. “ASP: The Activity Sup Protocol.”
Lupa had frowned. “That’s not even a real thing.”
“Sure it is,” Hermes had said. “Well, it is now.”
“Why Sup?” Remo had asked.
Hermes shrugged. “That’s how you three talk to each other. Always in a hurry, always running, always trying not to disappear. Sup, Sup, Sup.”
Lupa had narrowed her eyes. “How do you know that?”
Hermes just smirked. “I notice things.”
Romulus had crossed his arms. “You just like making up names.”
Hermes had chuckled. “Yeah. Always have.”
There was a pause, just long enough to be noticed.
Lupa caught it first. “Who else?”
Hermes’s smile didn’t waver, but something behind his eyes shifted. “No one important.”
No one had believed him.
But no one had asked again.
And so ASP was born.
The Lesson in Separation
Lupa had always asked the questions. That was her nature. The first time they had separated for too long, she had been the one to figure out what was happening—and she had been the one to watch it unfold.
She could still see it.
She had stayed behind in a ruined gas station while Remo and Rom went ahead. They were just scouting for supplies. It had only been ten hours.
But by the time they came back, Romulus looked different. His shoulders had slumped, his breathing had changed—too slow, too shallow.
And Remo—Remo had the beginnings of lines around his eyes.
She had seen it first. And she had felt it, too.
Something had pulled at her skin, like the very fabric of her being was thinning, stretching toward them. When they finally came back, it snapped back into place, and the sensation was so intense it nearly knocked her off her feet.
That night, they didn’t sleep.
Instead, they tested it. Timed it.
It was twenty-four hours exactly. The moment they crossed that threshold, the aging began—slow at first, but then exponential.
Lupa had never let them forget it.
And now, watching Remo prepare to leave again, she wanted to stop him.
“You’re running out of time,” she said.
Remo smirked. “I’ll be back before you miss me.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
“You don’t even know how to control it yet.”
His smirk faded. That was the only time she ever saw fear in him—when she pointed out something he already knew was true.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” she added, softer now.
“I do,” Remo said.
And then, just like before, he was gone.
A Mistake in the Movement of Space
Somewhere in the Middle East, Boris appeared in a war zone.
He wasn’t supposed to be here.
Remo had only meant to jump himself. But something about Boris—something about his stillness, his weightlessness, his lack of gravity—had pulled him along.
And now, Boris was alone.
This wasn’t a war he had started. It wasn’t even his war.
It was just war.
Shouting. Fire. Smoke. A burning tank.
A man raised his weapon—saw Boris, hesitated.
Boris didn’t move.
He didn’t need to.
Because in the next second, he vanished.
And in an instant, he was back in Httoq.
Lupa’s First Real Decision When Remo returned alone, Lupa didn’t speak.
She just stared at him.
“You’re back early,” she said finally.
Remo exhaled. “Not exactly.”
He didn’t have to explain. She already knew.
“Where is he?” she asked.
Remo hesitated. Then, for the first time in his life, he said the words out loud.
“I lost him.”
For once, Lupa didn’t hesitate.
“Then we’re bringing him back,” she said.
Not a question. A decision.
For the first time, she didn’t wait for them to act. She acted.
Remo blinked at her. Then, despite everything, he smiled.
“Looks like I’m rubbing off on you.”
“Shut up,” Lupa muttered.
But this time, when he vanished, she went with him.
The Child in the Signal
Before he was called Boris, before he had a body, he existed in waves and frequencies. He floated in the Universal Listening Chamber, suspended in his mother’s being, before the weight of gravity and flesh could bind him to a single place, a single name.
His mother was a weaver of chaos. She could bend uncertainty into creation, shape the unpredictable into something new. The child inside her would one day become her greatest work—a being crafted from genuine, unfiltered expression.
She drifted through the void, scanning infinite signals, searching for the perfect song.
Then, she heard Nina Simone.
She nearly changed the station. But something stopped her.
Inside her, the child pulsed a synaptic signal, flickering against her mind.
“Keep it.”
She smiled. “You like this one?”
There was no language yet, only instinct, but she understood. Every time she tried to switch signals, her child sent another pulse, a refusal to let go.
So she left it on.
Nina’s voice became his first lullaby, her words the first structure his mind wrapped itself around.
But his mother sensed something more—something deeper than melody, something that should have been impossible.
On Earth, they believed sound could not travel through the vacuum of space. But something greater could.
Not love.
Not memory.
But frequency—the raw signal of existence itself.
A force older than any civilization, something her people had always understood. And in Nina Simone’s voice, she heard something impossible: an echo of that force, burning across galaxies, unbroken by silence.
Her pain tore through the void, refusing to be silenced, refusing to vanish into the cold.
And that was why Boris held on.
Because to exist was to suffer. To suffer was to sing. And to sing—to truly, deeply, unapologetically sing—was to cross galaxies.
His mother followed the signal to its source—to a planet where this music could be heard, where sound lived in open air, where it did not have to be remembered because it was still alive.
She brought him to Earth.
But Earth did not bring her back.
The refugees were hunted. They died at the border of No Nation. The last of them never crossed.
And Boris—B.O.R.I.S., the Bio-Organic Reconnaissance and Infiltration System—was taken.
Httoq – The Icebound Sanctuary
Remo walked through the dim corridors of Httoq, each footstep echoing against steel and frost. The bunker hummed softly, powered by Romulus’s last meal, its warmth threading through the underground halls.
He had spent years mastering movement, jumping between cities, placing things where they didn’t belong. But Hermes had been a mistake.
Or maybe not.
He stopped at the door to the holding chamber. Closed his eyes.
“Are you awake?”
A slow, deliberate pause.
“Depends. Are you coming in, or are you just going to stand there like a coward?”
Remo smiled. He opened the door.
The First Recruit
Hermes sat on the cot, one knee drawn up, arms folded behind his head. He had the kind of presence that made stillness look like control—like he was waiting for you to slip, for the game to start.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” Remo said.
Hermes arched an eyebrow. “You’re supposed to be interrogating me.”
“I already know what I need to know.”
Hermes smirked. “That’s funny. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be guilty of.”
Remo stepped closer, letting the door slide shut behind him. The space between them was small, the air just warm enough to make skin feel sensitive after hours of cold.
“You saw something you shouldn’t have,” Remo said.
Hermes shifted. “That’s the thing about delivery jobs. You see a lot of doors you’re not supposed to open.”
His voice was calm, but his mind wasn’t. Remo could hear the static hum of his thoughts beneath the surface, restless, searching, testing.
Remo moved forward. Slow. Close enough that he could feel the heat between them, but not touching.
“Say I am what you think I am,” Hermes murmured. “Say I’m one of you. What then?”
Remo tilted his head. “Then you’re the first person I’ve met who didn't even realize it.”
Hermes exhaled. For the first time, he hesitated.
Remo smiled. “Got you.”
“He’s in.”
The words flickered through the network, silent but immediate. Romulus and Lupa would feel it. Hermes was now part of them, whether he knew it yet or not.
The silence stretched.
Hermes studied him. Then, he smirked.
“You know, for someone so used to control, you really want me to take the first step.”
Remo’s expression didn’t change. “It’s polite to let a man dig his own grave.”
Hermes laughed softly. Then, in one sharp motion, he closed the gap between them.
Remo didn’t move away.
His breath ghosted against Hermes’s cheek, waiting. Letting him make the choice.
And then Hermes kissed him.
It wasn’t slow. It wasn’t careful. It was a test, a challenge, a sharp collision of lips and breath and something tangled between fear and need.
Remo let him push, let him take. Let the heat of it cut through the ice that had settled into his body long ago.
Then he flipped them—one smooth, precise motion, pinning Hermes back against the cot.
A flicker of surprise in Hermes’s thoughts—he hadn’t expected to lose control so fast.
Remo leaned down, lips brushing against his ear.
“You’re one of us now,” he murmured. “Better get used to it.”
Chapter One – The First Day
2020
The jungle felt uneasy that night. The thick, wet heat made the leaves sweat, fat drops sliding down tree trunks and sinking into the black earth. The cicadas had fallen silent. The frogs had stopped croaking. The only sound was the careful crunch of boots pressing into the damp soil.
Ana gripped her flashlight, its weight grounding her. Behind her, Ícaro hunched over a tablet, scanning the readings. The sensors had detected something—something that shouldn't be there. The soil, the air, the very pulse of the rainforest—something had changed.
“We're close,” Ícaro murmured.
Ana didn't answer. The closer they got, the heavier the air became. The jungle was watching. It held its breath.
Ahead, nestled between the exposed roots of a towering kapok tree, stood a beige tent. The fabric rippled slightly in the breeze. But inside, there was no movement.
Ícaro hesitated before unzipping the flap.
Then, they heard it.
A sound, soft at first—a whimper. Then another. And a third. Small, fragile, barely more than the jungle whispering.
Ana lunged forward and pulled the flap open.
Inside the tent, three newborns lay in perfect unison. Crying.
2025 – The Second Term of Hit-her
The name No Nation (NN) had not been given lightly. The country had collapsed—shattered into fear, into hatred, into something unrecognizable.
It had begun on the very first day of Hit-her’s presidency. A press conference. A question he didn’t like. A journalist who stood her ground. And then, a slap. Broadcast live, in high definition. The moment his palm struck her face, the headlines wrote themselves.
The president who ruled with his fists.
Now, five years later, the world was no longer what it had been. The pandemic was over, but something had lingered in its wake. Something inside people had changed.
First, the elderly began to die—not of sickness, but of something slower, something unexplainable. Next came the children, their minds altered in ways no one could predict. And then there were the young—the ones who walked away from the plague with something else entirely.
No one knew when it started. Or how.
But one day, minds began to whisper to each other.
The press called it the Federated Network, a silent web of thoughts linking the scattered survivors. At first, it was dismissed as conspiracy, the kind of nonsense that spreads in dark corners of the internet. But when the first cases of “anomalies” were confirmed, the disappearances began.
If they found you, you were taken.
That was why Httoq was built.
That was why the three of them began to recruit.
Httoq – Fortress of Ice, Eastern Greenland
Remo shrugged off his coat and tossed it onto a chair. The underground city groaned above them, its frozen bones shifting as the wind howled over the ice.
A tray sat on the table beside him, steam curling from two thick slices of chocolate cake. He pushed one toward the man across from him.
“Eat slowly,” he said.
Romulus picked up his fork, cutting off a small bite. The moment he swallowed, the lights in the room flickered, and somewhere in the depths of Httoq, the generators rumbled back to life.
Remo watched him carefully. It was still strange to think about—his brother, the engine of the city, his body an unseen current pulsing beneath the ice. All he needed was food. Not just any food, but the kind that made him feel… safe. Nostalgic.
Comfort food.
Remo leaned back, rubbing his temples. The last mission had been messy. He’d brought someone here by accident. A baker—just some guy who had no business in Httoq. A mistake.
But mistakes had a way of revealing things.
The door creaked open, and Lupa stepped inside, brushing snow from her coat. She trailed her fingers over a dried seed pod in her palm, and as she moved, tiny green sprouts curled out from its edges, drinking in the air.
Romulus finished his cake, wiped his mouth, and met Remo’s eyes.
“We have a target,” he said.
The weight in the room shifted.
“The boy.”
Remo didn’t need to ask who that was. He already knew. The president’s son.
Across the room, the television buzzed softly. Hit-her stood at the podium, his stone-carved face catching the harsh light. The crowd didn’t cheer. They only feared.
And then, in the background—a shadow, a boy.
Boris.
To most, the broadcast had been ordinary.
But the three of them were not most people. They saw more than others did.
And there—just for a second—in Boris’s eyes…
There had been sparks.
The city had teeth, and she could feel them at her back.
She sat by the window, a silhouette carved against the restless glow of the metropolis. Her hair curled in restless tangles, framing a face that time had touched too soon. Shadows pooled under her eyes, thick as ink.
The apartment was too small, too close. A single bulb flickered overhead, throwing erratic shapes across peeling wallpaper. The air smelled of damp concrete and coffee left too long on the burner, bitter enough to linger on the tongue.
Outside, the city sprawled like a living thing, its veins pulsing with neon and shadow. It wasn’t New York, but it could have been. Towers of glass rose high, reflecting the restless churn of the streets below.
Alleyways twisted into dead ends. Signs buzzed in languages she couldn’t read. The hum of hovercars, the wail of sirens, the murmur of voices—constant, unbroken. The city never slept, never slowed. It had no patience for hesitation.
Her fingers tapped the table, an absent rhythm, a song half-forgotten. She thought like them—men. She knew that. She had learned their walk, their laughter, their sharp-edged certainty. But there was something else, something beneath the surface.
A thing she couldn’t name. Not just the way they moved through space as if they owned it. Not just the ease in their voices. It was deeper, threaded through bone and breath, as instinctive as hunger.
“You’re overthinking,” he said from the doorway, exhaling smoke into the dim room. His jacket hung open, sleeves pushed to his elbows. He leaned against the frame like he belonged there. Like he belonged anywhere.
“Am I?” Flat. No curiosity in it. He wouldn’t understand. He had it. Whatever it was. The thing that made existence seamless, effortless. She could only chase the shape of it, the echo.
The walls pressed closer. She stood, chair scraping. “I’m going out.” Coat in hand. He didn’t stop her. He never did.
The streets pulsed around her. The press of bodies. The flicker of lights. She walked fast, moving between strangers like a shadow. A bar loomed ahead, spilling heat and laughter into the cold air. She hesitated, fingertips grazing the doorway.
Inside, the promise of noise, of movement, of distraction. She nearly stepped forward. But what would she find? Another reflection of what she wasn’t?
She kept walking.
The city blurred, neon and night bleeding together. Somewhere, a street performer plucked an instrument she didn’t recognize. Somewhere, a deal was struck in an alley where no one spoke above a whisper. Somewhere, someone laughed without hesitation.
She passed a shop window. The glass caught her image, but something in the reflection didn’t belong to her. A flicker in the eyes, a hollowness just beneath the surface.
She stopped.
For a moment, the world pulled back. The voices, the sirens, the hum of electricity—muted.
It wasn’t about men. It wasn’t about women. It wasn’t about anything she could name. It was the space between—between moments, between people, between knowing and not knowing. The silence between stars. The empty place where something should have been.
She turned from the glass. The city was waiting.
It had teeth. And sooner or later, it would bite.
She tried. Her arm stretched, her fingers twitched, but the couch swallowed her back. The room darkened, but the clock didn’t move. Dry mouth, full bladder. Nothing. The invisible force pressed down, like cold hands on her shoulders, as if the air conspired against her.
When she finally broke free, it was too much. Water dripped down her chin, the bread crumbled on the table. She chewed without hunger, swallowed without thirst. Her body no longer felt like hers, as if it were borrowed, stolen from someone who knew how to use it better. Every movement was slow, and heavy, as if time had stuck to her skin.
Night came, and with it, the Other. It lay on the bed, motionless but breathing. She observed it, and it returned her gaze. Neither blinked. Its breath was ragged as if carrying the weight of something she couldn’t see. She wondered if it was also trapped if it also fought against a force it couldn’t name.
She sat on the edge of the bed, her hands trembling. The Other didn’t move, but its eyes seemed to say something. Maybe a warning. Perhaps a plea for help. She didn’t know. The silence between them was thick, cutting, like a blade that didn’t bleed but still hurt.
When she finally lay down, the Other stayed there, breathing, watching. She closed her eyes, but she knew it was still there. And, somehow, that comforted her. Maybe it was just another part of her, something she couldn’t control but that wouldn’t leave her alone either.