09-24-2025, 08:35 PM
He didn’t move when Nox reached into the power. But he felt it: the subtle distortion in the air, the hum like heat before a lightning strike. Not raw force, no grandstanding. Just a careful, deliberate touch on the invisible currents only a select few could manipulate. And Nox had just done it right in front of him.
It was instinct that made Nikolai’s hand shift toward the panel beneath the desk where he could trigger a silent alarm, if needed. But he stopped short. Not out of fear. Out of calculation. Nox wasn’t attacking. He was demonstrating. So it was true. The man who had once been severed from the Source... now drew on it again.
Nikolai stared at the small, unassuming drive on the table. So much power reduced to a few grams of plastic and data. He reached out and took it, sliding it slowly across the dark glass to himself. Turned it once in his fingers, weighing it. Not just physically, but politically. Strategically. Existentially. Then he looked back up at Nox, the edge of something dry and dangerous curling into his voice.
“Just that easy, huh?”
The implications were enormous. Healing the severing? A reversal of the ultimate sentence? Every channeled operative who had ever been punished, every burned-out asset, every casualty of power misuse. What did this mean for them? What did it mean for him, for the system?
Nikolai folded his hands together, resting them on the drive now between his knuckles.
“How many others know?” he asked, tone clipped and precise. “And what do you mean… a slow death?”
It was instinct that made Nikolai’s hand shift toward the panel beneath the desk where he could trigger a silent alarm, if needed. But he stopped short. Not out of fear. Out of calculation. Nox wasn’t attacking. He was demonstrating. So it was true. The man who had once been severed from the Source... now drew on it again.
Nikolai stared at the small, unassuming drive on the table. So much power reduced to a few grams of plastic and data. He reached out and took it, sliding it slowly across the dark glass to himself. Turned it once in his fingers, weighing it. Not just physically, but politically. Strategically. Existentially. Then he looked back up at Nox, the edge of something dry and dangerous curling into his voice.
“Just that easy, huh?”
The implications were enormous. Healing the severing? A reversal of the ultimate sentence? Every channeled operative who had ever been punished, every burned-out asset, every casualty of power misuse. What did this mean for them? What did it mean for him, for the system?
Nikolai folded his hands together, resting them on the drive now between his knuckles.
“How many others know?” he asked, tone clipped and precise. “And what do you mean… a slow death?”