They ran.
Through tall grass, over broken stone, under the skeletal bones of dead buildings Jonas and Mara didn't look back.
They didn't have to.
The shimmer was behind them.
Not chasing. Not rushing.
Following.
Every step they took felt slower, heavier as if the world itself was resisting their escape.
Jonas gritted his teeth, breath ragged. "It's still tethered to me. The Gate didn't collapse, it migrated."
Mara's voice came in gasps beside him. "Then why didn't it take you?"
"I don't think it wants to destroy me," he said. "I think it wants me whole."
They cut through an old monorail tunnel, vines curled around rusted supports. The silence pressed in.
Then flickers.
Memories stitched into the air like static film.
His childhood bedroom.
The lab where they first tested Eris.
Mara laughing in a kitchen that no longer existed.
He stumbled.
"No," he growled. "Not again."
Mara grabbed his arm. "It's feeding on you."
"I know."
They burst from the tunnel into a plaza choked with fog. The shimmer paused at the edge, its glow dimming slightly uncertain, as if it didn't know this place.
Mara noticed too. "It's hesitating."
Jonas knelt, hand on the pavement.
"It can't read this memory. Because it's not mine."
She frowned. "What are you saying?"
He looked up.
"You're leaking too."
She stiffened.
And suddenly the shimmer split.
A second ripple formed.
Feminine.
Familiar.
And it looked at her.
"Mara run!"
But it was too late.
The shimmer-Mara stepped forward, mouthing words with her voice:
"I remember the fire."
Real Mara screamed.
Jonas pulled her back, but she collapsed, hands on her head.
"I didn't mean to ..... Jonas ..... the evac ... I left them .... I....."
"Listen to me!" he shouted, grabbing her face. "It's not real. It's a weapon. It's trying to rewrite you."
Tears streaked down her cheeks. "I left my sister. I didn't go back."
The shimmer leaned closer.
"That's why you were chosen."
Jonas pulled the SELF drive from his coat.
Its light pulsed faster blue, then violet.
He stared at it.
Then at the shimmer.
"You want this?" he snarled. "You want me whole? Then take all of it."
He threw the drive into the air.
And it froze.
Caught mid-fall.
Suspended in the shimmer's glow.
"This… is enough."
The shimmer swallowed it.
And screamed.
Not with sound.
With memory.
Every copy, every echo, every failed version turned inward.
Jonas covered Mara's body with his own as the sky twisted and burned with colorless light.
Then.
Silence.
When he looked up…
The shimmer was gone.
So was the drive.
Mara stirred beneath him, eyes dazed but returning to focus.
"Did we win?" she whispered.
Jonas didn't answer right away.
He looked at his palm.
A mark was there now.
Circular.
Faint.
Glowing slightly.
A connection.
"No," he said. "We bought time."
Behind them, where the shimmer had stood, a symbol pulsed faintly in the stone.
Not a warning.
A signal.
Jonas stood.
Whatever came next…
They would face it together.