The Twist

Running the Varrick Gauntlet: Treason in Temporal Flux

The Quick Escape from Aethelgard

Kaelen didn't waste a millisecond once they had the coordinates from Jax. The urgency was a cold, sharp knife in their gut; Director Varrick was undoubtedly already tracing Kaelen’s unauthorized movements. The scout vessel's navigation system hummed, locking onto the coordinates for the defunct Jump Gate. It was a route meant to be invisible to Ministry scanners, lying deep within the treacherous, unmapped regions of space.

Sliding into the pilot seat, Kaelen stripped the Regulator from their arm for a moment and focused. They performed a quick internal Aether Scan, seeking out the chronometric marker Varrick’s drone had injected. Kaelen knew they had to remove the marker soon, but first, they needed distance. The lie Kaelen told Jax about the marker removal was a necessary gamble to gain trust, but Varrick wouldn't rely on one method.

Kaelen lifted the small ship, the engine roaring in protest at the sudden demand for maximum thrust. They sliced through the Aethelgard dome and pushed the vessel into a dangerous, high-speed approach to the jump point. The ship shook violently as it broke through the colony’s orbital plane.

“Three hours to the jump coordinates,” Kaelen muttered, engaging the hyper-drive systems. The stars dissolved into the familiar, dizzying stretch of light.

Kaelen spent the first hour not on evasion, but on decontamination. They accessed the ship’s maintenance console and began a complex, manual override of all Ministry-coded software. Every line of code was suspicious; every data packet a potential trap. Kaelen was meticulously tearing out every digital finger Varrick might have left behind. It was agonizingly slow work, made worse by the knowledge that Riva would have done this cleaning in minutes.

The silence of the lonely void amplified Kaelen’s thoughts. Every click of the console, every flicker of light, was measured against the image of Riva’s face—alive, defiant, and now a criminal. The grief Kaelen had cultivated for eighteen months had been a sterile, comfortable lie. Now, they felt the raw, chaotic energy of betrayal and resurrected love.

The Ambush and the Trap

Two hours into the flight, the automated defensive system screamed a warning:

ALERT: Two Chronos Authority Interceptors closing fast. Optimized trajectory for disabling and boarding. Ministry protocols engaged.

Kaelen slammed the console in frustration. "Damn you, Varrick."

The Director hadn't just tracked them; he had predicted the jump trajectory. The Ministry was using specialized predictive algorithms designed by Kaelen and Riva themselves during their early days. Varrick wasn't waiting for the fake marker to activate; he was simply eliminating the problem before Kaelen could join Riva.

Kaelen threw the ship into an immediate evasive maneuver, banking hard to avoid being boxed in. The interceptors—sleek, matte-black arrows of war—appeared on the main viewport, flanking Kaelen’s scout. They were armed not with heavy kinetic weaponry, but with specialized Temporal Netting Cannons, designed to lock down a Weaver and their ship in a localized, non-lethal stasis field.

The synthesized voice from the lead interceptor was cold and final: "Cipher Thorne. Halt your vessel immediately. You are charged with sedition and unauthorized temporal activity. Prepare for retrieval."

"Retrieval means execution, Varrick!" Kaelen yelled, though they knew Varrick wasn't listening. They activated the ship's energy shielding and primed the kinetic cannons. Kaelen fired a short burst, knowing it was useless against the Ministry's layered armor, but hoping to buy time.

The interceptors responded with coordinated fire from the Temporal Netting Cannons. Two blinding blue beams lanced out, narrowly missing Kaelen's ship. If they hit, the ship would be instantly wrapped in a crippling temporal field.

Kaelen needed to do more than evade; they needed a devastating surprise. They needed The Shadow Weave.

Treason in Temporal Flux

Kaelen took a deep breath, the Regulator suddenly feeling like a living extension of their nervous system. This maneuver was reckless. The Shadow Weave required immense mental focus and a willingness to accept acute temporal disorientation. To perform it in the middle of a high-speed chase while piloting a compromised ship was borderline insane.

This is what Riva does. She makes the impossible the only option.

Kaelen pushed the Regulator's output to its limit. The crystalline components within the gauntlet glowed a dangerous, pulsing white. Kaelen felt the world wobble—the first stage of temporal distortion.

Kaelen’s focus was on the geometry of the space between their ship and the lead interceptor. They were not aiming to move the ship; they were aiming to move the time around the ship. They initiated a sudden, severe warp in the local causality field—a momentary loop.

"Shadow Weave: High Stress Protocol Engaged!" the Regulator warned internally.

Kaelen’s vision blurred. For a split second, they saw the cockpit as it would look a second from now, filled with the blinding blue light of the Temporal Netting. Then, they saw the cockpit as it looked a second ago. The confusion was overwhelming, a chaotic rush of past, present, and potential future.

Kaelen held the Weave for less than half a second. To the interceptors’ advanced, but linear, targeting systems, Kaelen’s ship simply jumped back to its previous position, a millisecond before the net was fired.

The maneuver worked perfectly, but brutally. The lead interceptor, locked onto the trajectory, fired its netting beams—not at Kaelen’s ship, but at the empty space where the Ministry’s systems believed Kaelen's ship would be.

The beams crossed paths, and instead of locking Kaelen, the energy impacted the second interceptor’s temporal shielding.

There was no explosion, only a horrible, shimmering silence. The second interceptor was instantaneously caught in its own temporal net, freezing it in a localized bubble of stasis. Its lights went dark, and its momentum stalled, a perfect, immobile target left drifting in the void.

Kaelen felt a sickening lurch in their stomach as the Weave dissolved. The treason was complete. Kaelen had just attacked and disabled a Ministry vessel. There was no going back.

The Retreat and the Relic

The remaining interceptor was thrown into chaos. Its pilot immediately aborted the mission, dedicating all power to securing the immobile, trapped vessel.

Kaelen punched the hyper-drive system again, pushing the scout ship past its safe operating speed. They needed to make the jump before Varrick could send in heavy artillery.

Three minutes later, Kaelen reached the coordinates. The sight was startling: a massive, derelict structure of ancient, corroded metal—an original, first-generation Jump Gate. It was cold, dark, and utterly useless for modern travel.

Kaelen threaded the ship into a shadowed maintenance berth within the structure. They killed the engines, letting the silence settle around them. Kaelen quickly checked their temporal signature—it was spiking high from the Shadow Weave, but the temporal marker in their neck was thankfully still inactive. Varrick hadn't anticipated such a brutal escape.

Kaelen disembarked, the Regulator now cooling against their skin. The air inside the forgotten gate structure smelled of ozone, deep-space dust, and the faint, sweet scent of ancient Aether residue. Kaelen focused the Regulator's scanner onto the area where a ship would have logically jumped.

The trace was there: not Riva's complex, camouflaged Shadow Spiral, but a fresh, clean energy signature belonging to an advanced Frequency Disruptor. Riva had passed through here recently, using a piece of high-tech gear to force the dead gate to execute a jump without full power.

Kaelen tracked the disruptor's trace to a small, hidden access hatch. It was sealed with a magnetic lock. Kaelen performed a simple, clean Phase Shift, and the lock yielded instantly.

Inside the cramped, dusty service tunnel, Kaelen found the final clue. A small, industrial data pad rested on a shelf, glowing faintly. It was designed to transmit a signal only to the specific encryption frequency found in Kaelen's Regulator.

The message was brief, cold, and challenging:

Destination: Port 9, The Crucible. You’re slow, Cipher. I took the supplies to the next step. If you found this, Varrick’s watching. Don’t use the lanes. Use the old paths. They’re faster. Wait for my next signal.

The Crucible. A massive, lawless mining station orbiting a chaotic gas giant. A place where temporal rules meant nothing.

Kaelen stared at the coordinates. Riva was two steps ahead, using Kaelen’s predictable tracking methods to move her pieces. The "slow" jab was a painful, personal needle, a dark joke referencing their old training days.

Kaelen realized the full scope of the game. Riva wasn't hiding; she was leading Kaelen, testing their commitment. She was forcing Kaelen to burn their bridges with the Authority, one act of treason at a time. The Shadow Weave—the attack on the Ministry—was Kaelen’s official application to join Riva's side.

Kaelen smashed the data pad into pieces, destroying the digital evidence, and locked the new coordinates into the scout vessel. There was no longer any hunt. There was only the forced alliance.

The Crucible. Kaelen knew the only way to get answers was to submit to Riva’s timeline.