“I have to go in with them,” I realize aloud. “Connect to the Matrix myself, guide the separations one by one.”
“No!” Magnus’s voice cracks with fear through the bond. “Lyra, you don’t know what that thing will do to you?—”
“I know exactly what it’ll do. I’ll see everything—every forced transformation, every moment of agony, every pathway Crane carved into these people.” I meet his eyes across the laboratory. “And I’ll use that knowledge to undo it. To free them.”
Crane laughs, bitter and broken. “You think you’re the hero? You’re about to experience what I did to twenty-seven people,all at once, flooding through your healer’s sense. It will destroy you.”
“Maybe.” I move toward the neural interface chair—the device Crane used to control his victims during transformation. “But I have something you never did. I have someone who’ll anchor me. Pull me back if I go too deep.”
I look at Magnus, asking without words if he understands. Through the bond, I feel his terrified acceptance. He’ll be my lifeline, my connection to reality while I dive into the Matrix’s records of horror.
I sit in the chair before I can reconsider. The neural interface activates the moment I settle, cold metal pressing against my temples, and suddenly I’m?—
—drowning in other people’s pain.
Twenty-seven prisoners, twenty-seven violations, twenty-seven transformations burning through my consciousness all at once. I’m a trader grabbed from the mountain path, needles piercing my skin, toxin like acid in my veins. I’m a scout dragged from the forest, strapped down and screaming as my bones break and reform wrong. I’m a healer like me, held down while Crane grafts eagle wings to bear shoulders, explaining his vision of perfection while I beg him to stop.
Each memory is vivid, visceral, absolute. The Matrix doesn’t just show me data—it makes me live their experiences, feel their terror, understand their suffering at the most intimate level.
I’m fracturing under the weight of it, my sense of self splintering into twenty-seven pieces of agony. This is what Crane warned about—too much trauma, too many violations, the healer’s empathy becoming a weapon that destroys from within.
But through the chaos, I feel Magnus. His presence in our bond is solid, unshakeable, a lighthouse in the storm of stolen memories. He’s not pulling me back—not yet—he’s just there, reminding me who I am, giving me something to hold onto.
And in that stability, I find clarity.
These aren’t just memories of what happened. They’re maps. Each transformation left traces in the Matrix, detailed records of exactly how Crane forced pathways open, exactly what toxins he used, exactly where the grafting points are.
I can read them. Understand them. And more importantly—I can reverse engineer them.
My consciousness expands through the Matrix, touching each prisoner’s record, learning their original forms, understanding what they were before Crane broke them. Bear shifter. Wolf pack hunter. Lynx scout. Storm Eagle courier. Each one had a natural form, a proper shape that their magic knows even if their bodies have forgotten.
I start with the most recent transformation—a young Mountain Cat captured just days ago, her feline form corrupted with forced reptilian scaling. The Matrix feeds me her pathway signature, and I adjust the resonance, teaching it to recognize what belongs and what was grafted.
Then I activate the reversal sequence.
Through the facility’s systems, I feel the Matrix reach out to that prisoner’s cell, enveloping her in the same energy that’s surrounding Magnus. But instead of scanning, it’s healing. Separating. Returning.
The prisoner screams—not with pain but with relief as her body finally finds its natural form again. Pure Mountain Cat, scales dissolving, pathways realigning. The transformation takes seconds, and when it’s done, she collapses in her cell, whole again if traumatized.
One down. Twenty-six to go.
I work faster, learning the Matrix’s rhythms, understanding how to guide it more efficiently. Each reversal teaches me more, makes the next one easier. Wolf-bear hybrid becomes wolf. Eagle-human fusion returns to human. I’m unmaking Crane’swork prisoner by prisoner, healing violations he thought were permanent.
“Impossible,” Crane breathes, watching his life’s work unmade in real-time. “The pathways can’t separate cleanly. The grafting is permanent. You’re killing them!”
But through the Matrix, I feel each prisoner’s relief as they return to their true forms. Not killing—freeing. And with each successful reversal, I understand more about how transformation works, how magic integrates or rejects, how the body knows its proper shape.
I’m halfway through when the visions hit.
Not memories this time—futures. Possibilities branching from this moment, paths spiraling out in infinite directions. The neural interface has connected me to my own precognitive gift in ways I’ve never experienced, amplifying it through the Matrix’s processing power.
I see Magnus dying, blood on laboratory floor, my healing failing just like the original visions showed. That future is still possible, still threatening, the prophesied moment approaching fast.
But I also see past it.
See the transformation that comes after. The evolution that’s only possible if we go through that moment rather than avoiding it. I see Magnus and me, bonded fully, using our merged magic to heal not just these prisoners but others, spreading the knowledge of healthy integration across all shifter clans.
I see our child—a daughter with my eyes and his strength, with wings and healing light and the ability to see futures that empower rather than paralyze.
