“I know.” Lyra straightens, medical pack secure on her back, determination replacing fear in her expression. “But he’s also showing us where to go. The laboratory—that’s where we need to be anyway. That’s where the decision plays out.”
She’s right. Every vision, every path she’s seen leads to the laboratory. To facing Crane directly. To the transformation she’s afraid of but knows is necessary.
“Then let’s not keep him waiting,” I say, shifting back to leopard form.
We move through corridors that are simultaneously familiar and changed—Crane has fortified, added security measures, created kill zones. But we navigate them with the precision of our bond, each of us covering the other’s weaknesses.
More Broken attack. More fights that leave us wounded but alive, drained but determined. I take a claw across my shoulder—painful but not critical. Lyra gets slammed into a wall hard enough to leave her limping, but she refuses to slow down.
Finally, we reach the laboratory doors. The same ones we barely escaped through before, now sealed and reinforced. But through the observation windows, I can see him:
Dr. Hal Crane, even more degraded than before.
His chimera form is breaking down catastrophically. Patches of scales war with fur, his human features distorted by partial shifts that never complete. One arm is elongated and tippedwith raptor talons, the other covered in thick bear fur. His wings—stolen eagle wings grafted to his shoulders—hang at wrong angles, clearly non-functional.
But it’s his eyes that are worst. Fevered, brilliant with pain and madness, burning with desperate need.
“There you are,” he says, his voice coming through speakers but also somehow from everywhere at once. “My little miracle worker. Come to save me after all?”
“I’ve come to stop you,” Lyra says clearly. “To free your prisoners and destroy everything you’ve built here.”
“Such righteousness. Such conviction.” Crane gestures, and the laboratory doors slide open with a hiss. “Please, come in. Let me show you what I’ve really built. What we could create together, if you’d just open your mind to the possibilities.”
We enter because we have no choice. This is the path Lyra saw, the branch point that leads to either catastrophe or transformation. The laboratory is different from before—more equipment, more stations, and in the center, a massive apparatus that makes my ice magic recoil instinctively.
“The Integration Matrix,” Crane says proudly, gesturing to the device. “My masterwork. It can graft multiple magical pathways simultaneously, create true chimera forms that don’t degrade. But it requires...” He looks at Lyra with hungry desperation. “It requires a healer who understands integration at the cellular level. Someone who can guide the process, stabilize the conflicting magics as they merge. Someone exactly like you.”
“You want me to help you transform yourself,” Lyra says flatly.
“Help us all transform!” Crane’s voice rises to a scream. “Don’t you see? Shifters limited to one form are obsolete! We could be so much more, so much stronger, if we just embraced evolution!”
“That’s not evolution,” I snarl. “That’s mutilation. Those prisoners you’ve tortured weren’t volunteers for your grand vision. They were people you stole and broke.”
“Sacrifices for progress!” Crane waves dismissively. “But with Lyra’s help, there won’t need to be more sacrifices. The process will be perfected, stabilized, ready for willing participants.”
“I’ll never help you,” Lyra says.
Crane’s expression shifts to something darker. “Then I’ll make you.” He signals, and the walls explode with movement—Broken emerging from hidden compartments, dozens of them, all focused on us with murderous intent.
The fight that follows is chaos.
I shift to leopard form, my wings spreading for balance and striking as I tear into the first wave of Broken. Lyra fights beside me, her healing light weaponized into precise attacks that disrupt nervous systems and overload warring biological processes.
But there are too many.
For every Broken we drop, two more appear. They’re coordinated, driven by Crane’s will more than their own instincts. He’s controlling them somehow, using his own chimera nature to create a hive mind that makes them deadly effective.
I take hits—claws raking across my flanks, teeth finding purchase in my shoulder, toxin beginning to seep into my system again. Lyra is bleeding from multiple wounds, her magical reserves depleting rapidly as she tries to fight and heal us simultaneously.
“The Matrix!” Crane shouts over the chaos. “Lyra, one word from you and I’ll stop this! Just say you’ll help me, and your mate lives!”
She looks at me, and through the bond I feel her desperation. This is the moment. The choice she saw in her visions. She can surrender, try to save me by cooperating with Crane’s madness. Or she can refuse, and we fight to the death against overwhelming odds.
“Don’t,” I send through the bond, even as a massive bear-hybrid slams into me, driving me to the ground. “Don’t give in to him. We finish this our way.”
“Our way might get you killed,” she sends back, and I feel her hands on me, healing light pouring into my wounds even as more Broken close in.
“Then we die free,” I say aloud, forcing myself upright despite the toxin burning through my veins. “Not as his puppets.”
