The station shuddered violently. Kieran stumbled, catching himself against a steel railing as another deep tremor rippled through the structure. The Vanguard had arrived.
Outside the viewport, their ship loomed—a monstrous, shifting construct of metal and pulsing energy. It wasn't just attacking. It was rewriting reality around it, warping space like a living paradox.
Kieran's cybernetics flared in protest, data streams corrupting and reforming in real time. His body wasn't meant to process this.
"Brace yourself," Prime said, his voice unnervingly calm. "They're breaching."
Kieran turned sharply. "Breaching what?"
Prime gestured toward the station walls. "The Firewall."
Kieran's pulse spiked.
The Firewall.
The thing that had separated the simulation from whatever lay beyond. The thing that had kept him contained.
If the Vanguard was trying to break through—
It wasn't just to erase Kieran.
It was to undo everything.
A sharp, mechanical hiss cut through the room. The station's automated defenses powered up—sentry drones deploying, energy shields flickering to life. Holo-displays scrambled, processing incoming hostiles.
BREACH IMMINENT.
EXTERNAL ANOMALY DETECTED.
REALITY STABILITY—67% AND DROPPING.
Kieran's breathing quickened. If stability hit zero…
The Firewall wouldn't just break.
Reality itself would collapse.
Prime, however, wasn't panicking. He strode toward the central control panel, his fingers moving fluidly over the interface. "We need to get to the core."
Kieran followed, his mind racing. "The station's core?"
Prime nodded. "It's the last failsafe. The Firewall wasn't built to hold forever—it was built to reset the system if it ever reached this point." He met Kieran's gaze. "We have one shot at controlling how that reset happens."
Kieran clenched his jaw. He didn't like it. Resetting the system? That's what the simulation had done to him.
"Define 'reset,'" he said, voice sharp.
Prime hesitated.
Kieran's stomach dropped.
"You don't mean resetting just the station," he realized. "You mean everything."
Prime exhaled. "That's what the Firewall was for. It wasn't just containing you—it was holding together the last fragments of a dying world." His gaze darkened. "The world we lost."
Kieran felt like the floor had been yanked out from under him.
A dying world.
A world that wasn't supposed to exist anymore.
A world the simulation had **preserved,