Chapter 63: Mira
The fever climbed higher through the night, Julian’s body twisting restless against the damp sheets, murmured words spilling out broken and half-formed between labored breaths.
"...Mira," he mumbled, voice cracking, sweat soaking through hair plastered to his forehead. "Mira, watch out, behind you..."
Vess watched from her corner, unmoving, unblinking, registering the words with the same flat, clinical attention she gave everything else. Whatever had once made her capable of concern, of fear, of anything resembling human feeling, had long since been stripped away, leaving only patient, hollow observation behind. She felt nothing watching him deteriorate. Not pity. Not curiosity. Simply data, cataloged and reported when required.
"mom," Julian breathed, thrashing weakly against the blankets, voice cracking with a grief too raw and old to have anything to do with the fever alone. "dad... I told you to run, why didn’t you run..."
His breathing hitched, ragged and uneven, fever burning hotter with every passing hour, his body seeming to strain against something far heavier than simple illness, some old wound tearing back open beneath the delirium.
"I lost you both already," Julian whispered, voice breaking apart entirely now, tears slipping from beneath closed eyes even in his unconscious state. "I’m not losing anyone else. I’m not... Mira, please, just run, just get out, I’ll hold them off, I’ll hold the line, just RUN..."
His whole body seized, back arching slightly off the bed, breath catching hard and wrong in his throat, and for one terrible, suspended moment it looked like something in him might simply stop entirely, the fever finally pushing past whatever threshold his exhausted, overtaxed body could withstand.
Vess remained perfectly still, watching, cataloging, reporting nothing yet because nothing had technically changed enough to warrant it.
"Mira," Julian gasped one final time, voice thin and desperate, reaching for someone who existed only in memory now, someone he’d pulled from a collapsing building with his own bare hands only to lose her three months later anyway when the wall finally failed. "I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t..."
The words trailed off into ragged, shallow breathing, his body finally going still, exhaustion and fever dragging him down past even the reach of dreams, and Vess, after a long, silent moment, finally pressed her fingers to her own throat again, murmuring low words toward whoever waited on the other end of whatever connection she maintained.
"his condition is worsening," she said, flat and toneless. "he may not survive the night."
---
The capital’s war room sat heavy with grief the following morning, the survivors of the failed expedition gathered around a table that felt far too large now, empty seats marking losses nobody had fully processed yet.
"we lost thirty-one Sentinels," Reid said, voice hollow, staring down at the casualty count like it might somehow rearrange itself into something more bearable the longer he looked at it. "thirty-one. and we didn’t get within a mile of actually finding him."
The Emperor sat at the head of the table, exhaustion and grief carved deep into every line of his face, hands folded tight in front of him. "and those creatures," he said quietly. "those two, fused together from dozens of stolen lives. if that’s what Xavier and Ian consider one of their finer achievements, I dread to imagine what waits closer to wherever they’re actually keeping him."
"we have to consider," Jayden started, voice tight, clearly hating every word even as he forced them out, "whether continuing like this is even viable. we lost a third of our force in a single expedition, and we gained nothing. not even a location."
The room fell into heavy, uncomfortable silence.
"Are you suggesting we stop looking," Logan said, voice sharp, disbelief and fury both cracking through his exhaustion.
"I’m suggesting," Jayden said, "that throwing more people at the same wall isn’t strategy, it’s just more grief. we need a different approach entirely. better intelligence. allies. something beyond brute force, because brute force just cost us thirty-one lives and accomplished nothing."
"so what do you propose instead," Reid said, voice rough. "waiting? just... sitting here, while he’s out there, however he’s being kept, for however long it takes us to magically stumble onto a better plan?"
"I don’t have an answer yet," Jayden admitted, frustration and grief bleeding through every word. "but I know throwing more Sentinels at that toxic zone gets us more casualties, not more information. we need to think, not just charge forward out of desperation."
The Emperor sat silent through the exchange, jaw tight, weighing the brutal calculus neither of them wanted to say out loud... how many more lives could the Empire afford to spend chasing a single Guide, however valuable, however loved, against an enemy that had already proven capable of shredding a well-prepared expedition without lifting more than two hands themselves.
"we don’t have to abandon him," the Emperor said finally, voice quiet but absolute, cutting through the tense debate. "that isn’t in question. what is in question is how we proceed without simply bleeding ourselves dry against an enemy we clearly don’t understand well enough yet."
"so we pause," Reid said slowly, testing the word like it tasted foul in his mouth. "regroup. gather better intelligence before attempting anything else."
"we pause the expeditions," the Emperor said. "not the effort. I want scouts, informants, anything that can give us real information without costing more lives outright. I want to understand exactly what we’re facing before we lose another thirty-one people for nothing."
Logan’s jaw tightened, clearly hating the necessity of it even as he nodded, grudging and grim. "and if he doesn’t have that kind of time," he said quietly. "if whatever’s happening to him right now can’t wait for us to gather perfect intelligence."
Nobody had an answer for that, the question hanging heavy and unanswered over the whole room, every single person present carrying the same unbearable weight of not knowing whether the choice to be careful now might cost them everything later.
The Emperor closed his eyes briefly, exhaustion and grief and impossible responsibility all pressing down at once, before finally speaking again, voice quiet but resolute.
"then we move as fast as careful allows," he said. "and we pray it’s fast enough."