The Last Card

Nearly an entire day had passed since the chaotic infiltration of the Chronos facility and the group’s narrow escape. Hours blurred into a haze of frenetic flight, stealthy detours, and constant fear of being tracked. By the time they finally arrived at the safehouse they were exhausted and emotionally raw.

The safehouse stood at the very edge of the city’s decimated industrial zone—a battered structure that once housed factory workers but now offered only meager sanctuary. Sofia insisted on the location, calling it their “last refuge,” the one place where she might finally decrypt the Oméga fragment without fear of immediate interruption.

Inside, dim light flickered from a single overhead bulb, courtesy of a small generator sputtering in the corner. Sparse mats lined the floor, and half-collapsed crates dotted the perimeter like silent sentinels. The air smelled of engine oil, damp concrete, and the faint trace of desperation. Yet compared to the firefights, sirens, and raw terror of the previous day, it felt almost peaceful.

Elias guided Lucy to a makeshift cot against the back wall. She clung to him, her breath ragged, her weight pressing heavily on his side. By now, Lucy’s body was that of a young woman in her early twenties—gaunt, pale, with tremors occasionally making her limbs quake. But in her eyes, she was still just a frightened ten-year-old girl.

“Dad, can we rest here?” Lucy asked, her voice cracking with exhaustion.
“Yes, sweetheart,” Elias murmured, taking a seat beside her. “We’ll rest. You need to lie down.”

Lucy nodded, but her gaze never left her father’s face. When her trembling subsided enough to allow speech, she clutched the small plush turtle she’d carried all this time—its once-vivid colors now smeared with dirt and soot.

Sofia stood nearby, knees bent as she unzipped the heavy satchel that contained the precious Oméga fragment. Her fingers shook a little, either from excitement or fear—perhaps both. In the corner, Anna conferred in hushed tones with two remaining rebel fighters. Their group had dwindled to a fraction of what it once was, battered by the confrontation at the Chronos facility.

At last, Sofia slid the fragment onto a metal tray. It resembled a hexagonal device the size of a human palm, edges faintly glowing with lines of strange circuitry. Even in the gloom, it looked impossibly advanced.

“Elias,” Sofia called quietly, beckoning him closer, “I think I can begin decrypting it. But it’ll take time.”

He rose, careful not to jostle Lucy, and joined Sofia at the makeshift workstation—a battered steel table beneath the sputtering bulb. Wires, circuit boards, and half-disassembled mechanical parts lay strewn across the surface. Elias’s eyes flicked from Sofia’s intent expression to the fragment itself.

“What exactly are you hoping to find?” he asked, though desperation edged his voice. “We know it’s supposed to stabilize Lucy, but you said it’s incomplete…”

Sofia exhaled, adjusting a pair of cracked glasses on the bridge of her nose. Dark circles underscored her eyes.

“Ishida gave me partial codes back at the lab,” she explained, “enough to piece together some of Oméga’s functions. I believe it can slow or halt Lucy’s accelerated aging if we finalize the assembly. But there’s a catch…”

She paused, tapping gently on the fragment.

“The mega-bubble.” Her voice dropped. “If Ivanov activates that device over the entire city, it could warp the local timeline so badly that Lucy’s stabilizer won’t matter. She could still be… lost.”

Elias felt his heart twist. The memory of Lucy’s frightened tears—her confusion at the adult body she never asked for—throbbed like an open wound. They had come so far. Yet the threat of Ivanov’s mega-bubble overshadowed every slender hope.

“Then we stop him,” Elias said firmly. “We have to.”

At that, Anna approached, her footsteps soft on the concrete. Despite being bloodied and bruised, she still held herself with the fierce determination that had made her the rebels’ leader.

“We got word,” she said, voice low. “It’s confirmed: Ivanov’s moving fast. One of our scouts saw heavy convoys near the old central station. They’re hauling in equipment—likely the final components for his bubble generator.”

“When does he plan to unleash it?” Sofia asked, casting a quick glance at Lucy, who was now lying quietly, eyes half-lidded.

Anna shifted on her feet.

“Dawn tomorrow. Less than twenty-four hours from now.”

A heavy silence descended on the group. Lucy let out a soft moan, and Elias rushed to kneel by her side.

They spent the next hour in a tense lull. For once, gunfire did not ring in the distance, and no soldiers hammered at the safehouse door. Sofia directed Anna’s men to scavenge for tools—wire cutters, a portable battery pack, anything that might help decrypt and assemble the fragment. Anna herself nodded wearily, then left with one rebel to scout the perimeter.

Elias and Lucy sat on the cot, father and daughter side by side in the tenuous calm. The overhead bulb cast a weak glow on Lucy’s face, highlighting how pale and hollow-cheeked she’d become. Yet for a moment, there was no immediate threat. Elias found himself wishing time could stop here—no more monstrous projects, no more accelerated aging—just a rare sliver of quiet between disasters.

“Dad?” Lucy asked quietly, turning her plush turtle around in her hands. “Remember when we used to have breakfast together in the kitchen, with the radio on?”

Elias smiled, though sorrow tinged the memory.

“Yeah,” he said, “you always wanted toast with strawberry jam, right? We’d listen to that old station that played classic songs early in the morning.”

Lucy’s eyes lit up with a child’s delight, even though her face belonged to a woman.

“I liked how the announcer had that funny accent. It made me laugh.” She held the turtle tighter. “I wish… I wish we could go back. I miss it all so much.”

“I do too,” Elias admitted, brushing a lock of hair from her cheek. “And we’ll find a way to have normal mornings again. No more running, no more hiding.”

A tear slipped down Lucy’s face, but she nodded, mustering a faint smile. For an instant, that fleeting glimmer of childlike joy shone in her gaze. It was enough to warm Elias’s heart in the midst of so much darkness.

A metallic clang startled them. Sofia was hunched over the Oméga fragment, hooking it up to a battered laptop and an improvised power cell. Her face was a mask of concentration, sweat beading on her brow.

“Elias,” she called, her voice urgent but not frantic, “come here, please.”

He rose and joined her at the table. A faint hum pulsed from the laptop, the screen a swirl of cryptic code.

“I’ve accessed the subsystem,” Sofia explained, eyes never leaving the lines of text. “I think I see how to finalize it. Ishida’s data included a partial blueprint for something called the ‘Oméga Key.’ If we wire it just right…”

Her fingers danced over the keyboard, inputting sequences that Elias couldn’t hope to understand. A static crackle shot through the air, and the fragment glowed momentarily with a brighter pulse.

“Does that mean it’s functional?” Elias asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

“Almost.” Sofia’s brow furrowed. “We’ll need a stable power source. And there’s another risk: The energy wave from Ivanov’s mega-bubble will override any local distortion. Even if Lucy’s stabilized for the moment, a citywide bubble will—”

She didn’t need to finish. Elias understood all too well.

“Then we have to shut Ivanov down before he triggers it.” His voice hardened. He gestured to Lucy. “She can’t survive another surge. And if that thing engulfs the city, we’ll lose thousands more.”

Sofia pressed her lips together. She carefully disconnected the device from the laptop, wrapping the fragment in a protective cloth. Her eyes flicked toward Lucy.

“There is… another possibility,” she said softly. “One I hoped we wouldn’t have to consider.”

Elias waited, dread coiling in his gut.

“I found a reference in Ishida’s notes,” Sofia continued. “Something about a controlled collapse—a local implosion that can destroy a temporal bubble from within. It’s an emergency failsafe, apparently. But… the person who triggers it doesn’t survive.”

A hush fell over them. Outside, the safehouse walls creaked in the wind, and Lucy’s pained breathing seemed magnified tenfold. Sofia cleared her throat.

“We don’t know if it’s even feasible,” she added hastily, “and we’d be risking everything. I’m hoping we won’t have to resort to that.”

“We’ll find a better way,” Elias said, determination flaring. “We have to.”

The day wore on, but the respite felt increasingly fragile. Anna’s scouts confirmed heavy Chronos presence around the industrial quarter. The hum of distant engines occasionally drifted through the cracks in the safehouse walls.

Lucy’s condition worsened by the hour. She barely managed to eat some canned fruit from their sparse supplies. When she finally tried to stand, her legs buckled, and she nearly collapsed. Elias caught her in time, his heart pounding at her frailty.

“Sofia,” he pleaded, “can you do something right now? Anything to help her?”

“Let me try stabilizing her vitals.” Sofia rummaged through her satchel, producing a small injector pen. “It’s a temporary measure—I extracted it from older Chronos tech. It might buy us some hours.”

Lucy’s eyes fluttered open, and a line of tears glistened on her cheeks.

“Dad?” she whimpered. “It hurts everywhere.”

“I know, baby,” Elias whispered, positioning her carefully on the cot. “Just hold still, okay?”

Sofia pressed the injector to Lucy’s upper arm. A hiss and a faint click. Lucy inhaled sharply, then exhaled a shaky breath as the medication coursed through her veins.

“All right,” Sofia said, lowering her voice. “She’ll feel a bit of relief soon. But this won’t stop the aging. The real solution is finishing Oméga—and stopping Ivanov.”

Lucy clutched Elias’s hand, tears streaking her face.

“I just want this to end,” she whispered. “I want to be me again…”

“You will,” Elias said, voice thick with emotion. “I promise.”

Evening shadows lengthened. The generator coughed and sputtered, but managed to keep a single light burning. Anna’s fighters checked their weapons, reloaded bullets—grim, silent preparations for the inevitable. Nobody talked much about the plan. They all sensed what lay ahead.

Still, amid the tension, a small moment of tenderness emerged. Sofia discovered a dusty shortwave radio in a corner, half-buried under debris. After tinkering with it for a few minutes, she managed to coax out a wavering static-laced signal. A weak melody drifted into the safehouse—something classical, or maybe an old folk tune. The tune’s gentle notes filled the air, incongruous in this battered shell of a refuge.

Lucy, her eyes drifting closed, murmured,

“It’s pretty.”

Elias felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes. The music sounded so fragile, so at odds with the destruction outside. He glanced at Sofia, who offered him a trembling smile.

“I thought,” she began, then hesitated. “I just thought we could all use… a reminder that there’s beauty left in the world.”

For a brief interval, nobody spoke. Anna, stoic as ever, closed her eyes in silent reflection. One of the rebels—an older man with a bandaged arm—leaned against the wall and let the tune wash over him, tears glistening on his unshaven cheeks. Even Lucy relaxed fractionally, her breathing slowing to something akin to normal.

Elias found Lucy’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. It was enough to sustain him for a few more beats of his heart.

The music was suddenly cut off by the slam of a metal door. Everyone tensed, weapons raised. In the entryway stood a figure in a tattered coat, breath rasping.

“Don’t shoot!” a voice called in a desperate hiss.

It was Dr. Ishida.

He staggered forward, nearly collapsing under the burden of a heavy satchel. Two rebels rushed to grab him by the arms. Anna’s weapon was already trained on him, her eyes hard.

“How did you find us?” she demanded. “If you lead Chronos here—”

“I—I came alone,” Ishida croaked, lifting trembling hands in surrender. “I used an old rebel-frequency tracker Anna once used to contact our lab. I’ve known about it for a while, but never had the courage to leave.” He took a shaky breath. “Ivanov’s men… they’d kill me if they knew I’d defected.”

Sofia stepped closer, her gaze torn between relief and suspicion.

“Ishida.” Her voice was subdued. “Why would you risk coming here?”

He swallowed thickly, then turned to Elias and Lucy. A flicker of remorse crossed his face, as though seeing Lucy’s frail form hammered home the cost of his work.

“Because Ivanov… is hours away from deploying the mega-bubble,” Ishida said, voice cracking. “All the final components are set up at the central station. He’s planning to unleash it at sunrise—maybe sooner if he suspects sabotage.”

“And you got out of there without being followed?” Anna pressed, narrowing her eyes.

“I bribed one of the junior guards,” Ishida replied, “and slipped past a secondary checkpoint. I’m sure they’ll realize I’m gone soon, but I masked my signals. I’ve done enough high-level security patches to know how to cover my tracks—at least for a little while.”

A pall of silence fell. Ishida lowered his eyes.

“I can’t keep standing by. I’ve done too much harm already. So I grabbed what data I could… and ran.”

He reached into the satchel and pulled out a thick sheaf of printed documents—pages of formulae, schematics, control codes. Sofia’s eyes widened, recognition sparking.

“These are…” she began, flipping through them with trembling fingers.

“All of Ivanov’s updated designs for the mega-bubble,” Ishida confirmed. “And a partial blueprint for an emergency meltdown sequence. He forced me to design it as a backup in case the bubble lost stability. I had no choice but to give him my best calculations, or he’d have killed me on the spot.”

“So now you’re giving them to us?” Anna asked, tone still hostile. “Why?”

Ishida turned haunted eyes on Lucy, who had pushed herself upright on the cot to watch.

“For her,” he said simply. “And for everyone else trapped in those horrors. I can’t fix what I’ve done, but maybe… I can help stop the worst.”

Over the next hour, Sofia cross-referenced Ishida’s documents with the partial code in her laptop. Elias hovered behind her, arms folded tight across his chest, glancing occasionally at Lucy to ensure she was all right. The rebels watched from a short distance, guns never straying far from Ishida’s direction.

Finally, Sofia lifted her head, voice shaking.

“It’s real. Everything in here confirms it: The mega-bubble will envelop at least the entire city. Chronos is using specialized frequency dampeners to lock the bubble in place. Once that happens, we can’t evacuate; we’ll be trapped in a distortion zone.”

Ishida nodded, face grim.

“Ivanov wants to prove his ultimate deterrent—a show of power no rival nation could ignore. He’ll manipulate the city’s time flow, maybe years in the span of hours, or freeze entire districts. Thousands will die.”

“Unless we go with the meltdown,” Anna said bluntly, glancing between Sofia and Elias. “That local implosion you mentioned.”

Sofia’s gaze flicked to the new data. She swallowed hard, then addressed them all.

“The meltdown code is in here. I can adapt it, but… it matches what I found before: The person who triggers that implosion from within the bubble’s core won’t survive.”

A hollow ache settled over the group. Lucy’s eyes darted anxiously from face to face.

“No,” she whispered. “That’s… that’s too awful.”

Sofia closed the file, her voice subdued.

“We’ll do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t come to that. The first priority is preventing Ivanov from activating the bubble at all.”

Elias gripped Lucy’s hand.

“Exactly. We won’t let it happen.”

Night deepened. The generator rumbled as it labored to keep the lone bulb alight. Outside, the air turned cold, and through the cracks in the makeshift walls, Elias could smell the faint metallic tang of approaching rain.

Anna set up a guard rotation with her two fighters. Dr. Ishida, exhausted from his flight, huddled near the corner, half-dozing. Sofia continued to refine the Oméga fragment. Every so often, a spark of clarity crossed her face, a sign she was getting closer. She jotted down notes, typed a few lines of code, then paused to cough into her sleeve—a wracking, desperate cough that left her shaking.

“Let me take over,” Elias offered softly, though he had no idea how to handle advanced code. “You need rest too.”

She shook her head.

“I’ve been running on borrowed time for years,” she said, a sad smile tugging at her lips. “One more night won’t kill me.”

Unable to argue, Elias returned to Lucy’s side. She was awake but shivering. Her eyes, now ringed with exhaustion, found his with childlike desperation.

“Dad?” Lucy asked, her voice little more than a whisper. “What if… I don’t want you to leave me?”

Elias’s chest constricted. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.

“I’m here,” he promised, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “We’re all getting out of this together. No one’s leaving you behind.”

Lucy curled against him, as though trying to fit her grown body into the small shape it once was.

“I’m so scared.”

“Me too,” Elias admitted softly. “But we’ll be brave together, okay?”

Tears slipped from Lucy’s eyes, and for a moment, they just held each other, letting the muted hum of the generator lull them toward a half-sleep. Elias found a sliver of peace in that embrace—an almost painful sweetness, knowing how fragile it was.

Sometime after midnight, a rebel guard slipped inside, face tight with urgency.

“We have incoming,” he said. “A messenger—one of Anna’s contacts.”

Anna hurried to the door. Moments later, a wiry man with soot-streaked cheeks stumbled into the safehouse, panting as though he’d run miles. His eyes darted over the group. When he spoke, his tone was bleak.

“Ivanov has accelerated his timetable. Scouts spotted him transporting a final piece of equipment into the central station.” He paused for breath. “Word is, he’s powering up the mega-bubble in a few hours—by sunrise, at the latest.”

Sofia exchanged a grim look with Elias and Anna. The rebel leader’s mouth pressed into a taut line.

“So it’s happening sooner than we thought.”

At Lucy’s cot, Elias felt her stiffen. He knelt, brushing her hair back, while Anna led the messenger away for further debriefing. Across the safehouse, Dr. Ishida’s face was ashen, as though all his fears were confirmed.

“We can’t wait any longer,” Sofia declared, wiping sweat from her brow. “We have to move on Ivanov’s position—stop him before the city is lost.”

Her words landed like a pronouncement of doom. Lucy swallowed, glancing fearfully between them.

“But… but I’m not ready…”

“It’s all right,” Elias murmured, gripping her hand. “We’ll protect you.”

Yet deep inside, every single person there knew that the confrontation at dawn would be like no other. This was the final stand—the last chance to save Lucy, and to prevent a temporal catastrophe from wiping out countless lives. Around them, the rebels steeled themselves, checking weapons, securing gear. Sofia gently packed the Oméga fragment, its decrypted data partially loaded into her laptop. Dr. Ishida hovered uncertainly, as though questioning whether he’d survive to see the sunrise.

Lucy tried to stand, bracing on her father’s arm. She managed a few unsteady steps, her eyes burning with a fragile determination.

“Dad,” she whispered. “I’ll do my best to help.”

He smoothed a hand over her hair, his heart aching for her.

“You’re the bravest person I know,” he said softly.

For a moment, a flicker of childlike pride warmed her gaze. Then a fresh wave of pain seemed to crash over her, and she stumbled, letting Elias catch her. She pressed her face into his shoulder, as if trying to hide the tears that slipped free.

They had only a few hours left before morning. The safehouse grew quiet again, the hush stretching so taut it felt ready to snap at any second. In that tense stillness, every breath sounded loud, every heartbeat an echo of the clock ticking down on Ivanov’s plan.

At last, Anna finished her briefing with the messenger and returned to the group, gun slung across her back.

“It’s confirmed,” she said flatly. “Ivanov will launch the mega-bubble in the early morning. That’s our deadline. If we don’t move now, it’s over.”

A tremor ran through Lucy. Elias squeezed her shoulder, then stood to face Anna and Sofia.

“We’ll stop him,” he said, voice low and resolute. “No matter what it takes.”

Sofia lifted her gaze from the fragment, eyes clouded with exhaustion and fear. Yet a spark of defiance burned there.

“I’ve decrypted most of the instructions,” she said, “so we can at least stabilize Lucy if we manage to power this device. But the bigger threat…”

“The meltdown,” Anna finished, nodding. “Let’s hope we don’t need it.”

No one missed the gravity of those words. But no one spoke of who might be forced to do it, or how dire things might become if the bubble went active. Instead, the rebels busied themselves with last-minute gear checks, and Sofia double-checked her data. Lucy pressed closer to Elias, tears shining in her eyes, though her trembling fingers clutched his sleeve with surprising strength.

“We move at first light,” Anna said, glancing around at the ragtag band—Elias, Lucy, Sofia, Ishida, and the two remaining rebels. “This is our last stand. We hit Ivanov’s station hard, or thousands of people die.” She paused, shoulders rigid. “If any of you want to walk away, do it now.”

No one moved. Even Ishida set his jaw, resolution flickering behind his eyes. Lucy’s grip on her father’s sleeve tightened, knuckles whitening. Elias swallowed the lump in his throat, feeling an odd calm settle over him.

“We’re in this together,” he said, voice steady.

In the final hours of darkness, the safehouse walls shuddered in the breeze, and the generator’s hum sputtered. Silence settled once more. All they could do was wait—and in that silence, they clung to the faintest hope of thwarting Ivanov’s ruthless ambition.