Ashes of Our Flame
by RapwizzyDebaron
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Episode 107: "Beneath the Ashes"
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The morning after the escape felt like borrowed time.
Kara's eyes were rimmed with exhaustion, her fists still clenched from dreams where Ronan's voice chased her through corridors of fire. Every word he'd said haunted her — not just because he'd been turned into something else, but because deep down, she still heard him. The real him.
Adrian stood nearby, cleaning his blade with slow, methodical movements. The cut on his shoulder had stiffened overnight, but he made no sound of pain. Pain was normal now. Expected.
"Any news from Tessa?" Kara asked.
Adrian looked up. "She and Aria are decrypting what we pulled from the core servers. It's slow—heavily firewalled. Vane knew we were coming."
Kara walked to the edge of the broken lookout tower they had claimed as temporary shelter. The horizon was painted with early golden light, casting a false warmth across the wasteland.
"Do you think Ronan can be saved?" she asked quietly.
Adrian joined her. "If anyone can pull him out, Kara, it's you. But if Vane's pushing him deeper into the Protocol—"
"I'll go deeper," she cut in. "I'll burn through whatever they buried him in."
Adrian didn't answer right away. Then finally: "Just don't burn yourself down in the process."
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Below the hideout, in the tech chamber Tessa had claimed as her sanctuary, sparks danced from the cables lining the walls. Aria hunched beside her, scrolling through rows of corrupted data. Glitches distorted the image of Dr. Elias Vane, frozen mid-sentence.
"I found something," Tessa said. "It's not a location, not a code… it's a memory fragment."
"A what?"
Tessa rewound the file and patched it into the holoscreen.
The image stabilized. It showed Ronan — the real Ronan — in a lab cell, strapped down and screaming.
Kara's voice echoed in the background: "Don't leave me!"
Then silence. Vane's voice followed:
"Memory splicing complete. Prepare Phase Omega transfer."
The feed cut out.
Aria's face paled. "They stole his memories… and gave them to Kara."
Tessa blinked. "No. Kara was the vessel all along. They needed her to stabilize him. Her presence was the key."
"You're saying she was designed… to save him?"
"No," Tessa said gravely. "To control him."
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Kara stood frozen when she heard the news.
"No," she whispered. "That's not possible."
But Tessa didn't flinch. "It explains the sync. The hesitation. Why he looked at you like you were something familiar."
"I'm not his enemy," Kara said. "I'm his lifeline."
"And Vane knows it," Aria added. "Which means he'll do everything to break that bond before you reach him again."
Adrian paced near the wall. "Then we get to Ronan first—before Phase Omega completes."
"But how?" Kara asked.
Tessa's eyes lit up with a spark of reckless genius. "We don't go to Ronan. We pull him out."
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They didn't have time for sleep.
Working through the night, the team used the decrypted data to hijack Vane's satellite network, tracing Ronan's bio-signature. It pulsed like a dim star, buried deep beneath an arctic facility coded "Zone Zero."
Kara suited up in silent fury.
The cold would bite. The security would be relentless. But the cost of not going?
Unthinkable.
Adrian joined her at the edge of the loading bay.
"I'll cover you every step," he promised.
She turned to him, voice like ice and fire all at once. "I'm not just going to save him. I'm going to remind him who he is."
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Deep beneath Zone Zero, Ronan stood in a white chamber lit by pulses of blue light. His hands trembled at his sides.
Echoes moved through his mind. Flashes of Kara. Her laugh. Her scream. Her defiance.
Then Vane's voice: "Forget her."
But Ronan's pulse spiked.
"No," he growled. "I won't."
And for the first time in days, he resisted the command.
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To be continued…
🔥 Built to control, bound to save — can Kara burn through the ice around Ronan's soul before it's too late?
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of Ashes of Our Flame by RapwizzyDebaron — like, comment, and stay with the fire. The truth beneath the ash is rising.