My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy-Chapter 233: Cracking Pressure

He’d joined the military to understand the world. To learn the truth about space. About the systems. About what waited beyond the atmosphere. Instead, he’d been fed curated history. Warped missions. Performance-based morality.

I wanted to believe them, he thought, the weight of it thick in his chest.

His fist clenched again.

This time, it responded. The motion was slow—sluggish like thawing ice—but it responded. His knuckles drew inward. Muscle pressed against crystal.

He swung his arm inward, dragging it across his torso with effort.

The edge of his forearm scraped the wall.

A thin trail of blue splintered outward. Dust shimmered, floating briefly before falling in slow spirals to the sterile lab floor. It glittered like powdered glass under the glow of the overhead lights.

Again.

He pulled. Gritted his teeth. Slammed his elbow against the curve of the chamber.

Crack.

Another line snaked outward.

The lab beyond remained quiet, unaware—or pretending not to notice. Machines blinked on, steady and unalarmed. The air circulated calmly through the vents. No alarms. No figures in white coats. No Ikona-echoes reverberating off the wall.

Just him.

Him and the memory of what they’d taken from him.

He pressed his palm flat to his chest.

Felt the thrum of the shard inside him. Still alive. Still burning. A thread of will, coiled tight around his spine, demanding something more.

Beyond the plexiglass barrier, a lone guard sat at his post, the barrel of his rifle resting loosely across his abdomen. He wore standard layered plating—polyweave fiber reinforced with a ballistic ceramic shell—light enough to move in, heavy enough to stop a few shots. The armor’s surface caught faint reflections from the overhead lights, smudges of matte steel and warning-strip decals dulling to gray in the sterile air.

Torv didn’t notice.

His eyes were fixed on the digital clock mounted above the console: 05:02:17. The seconds ticked by, indifferent to the weight in his limbs. He sat slouched, boots planted, spine curving into the familiar tension of early-morning shift fatigue. His fingers tapped absently along the side of his rifle, then stilled.

The lab hummed.

A low, mechanical whine from the ventilation, layered with faint beeps from the automated diagnostics cycling through their routines. A soft pulse of white-blue light shifted across the containment room, reflected off clean tile and touchscreen interfaces. The mainframe’s fans whispered constantly beneath the floor, barely audible but ever-present, like the heartbeat of the building.

His eyes started to drift.

Then something shifted. freewёbnoνel.com

A dull churn—low, resonant. Followed by a harsh crack.

Torv snapped upright.

His hands closed around the rifle without thinking, safety flicking off. The sound hadn’t come from the walls or the vents. It had come from inside the chamber. He scanned left, then zeroed in.

The crystal.

His chest tightened.

Sweat began to form along his hairline. It ran down slowly, tracing the edge of his brow before dripping onto his armor with a soft pat.

Oh shit. Another attack?

The thought ripped through him fast. His mind didn’t pause to calculate. It went straight to memory—flashes of past breaches, training simulations that couldn’t prepare you for the real thing. Blue-face drones slicing through walls like they were paper. Sparks from ruptured cores lighting up the halls. The screams. Short. Final. Nothing like the drills.

Torv stood.

The room still looked normal. Console lights blinked steady green. Environmental readings scrolled quietly across the wall displays. Temperature: stable. Pressure: stable. Radiation: within limits. All clean.

Except for the crystal.

Its surface had clouded.

A network of thin fractures spread outward from the center, crawling slowly like frost across glass. With each second, more appeared. Hairline splits turned jagged. What had once looked perfectly smooth now looked ready to fail.

It’s him.

Torv pressed two fingers to the comm tab tucked under his jaw. A soft chirp acknowledged the link.

"Control, this is Torv—activity alert at X Shard User Project Elias. Visual anomalies in the containment structure. Something’s happening."

His voice was low but tight.

Within seconds, the door behind him hissed open.

Two more guards entered at a jog. Their boots thudded against the lab’s polished floor, the sound too loud in the stillness.

Lykos came first—older, heavier set, with the kind of scars that didn’t get there by accident. His rifle hung low, but his grip was precise. He scanned the room once, then locked eyes on the crystal.

Mira followed, younger, clean armor, long braid pinned tightly along her collar. She moved straight to the terminal. Fingers danced across the touchscreen as lines of data refreshed, bouncing between thermal mapping, structural stress levels, and internal energy output.

"Integrity dropping," she muttered. "Structure’s unstable. Fractures started thirty seconds ago. Internal pressure spiking."

Her eyes darted to Torv.

"Could be containment failure. Could be shard reaction."

"Radiation?" Lykos asked, stepping forward. He pulled a scanner from his belt, swept it once across the transparent wall. Numbers scrolled fast across its interface.

"Background levels rising slightly. Not critical yet."

He narrowed his eyes, brow furrowing. "Still within containment tolerance, but not for long."

Mira leaned closer to the screen, brows tightening. "It’s not just structural. There’s internal movement."

Torv adjusted his grip on the rifle. His palms were sweating now, damp inside his gloves. "You mean he’s alive?"

"I mean he’s active."

The room went quiet.

Only the hum remained—subtle, cold, mechanical. It carried something extra now. A tension in the wiring. A sense that the walls were listening. Waiting.

"We need to alert Geras," Lykos said finally.

He wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t panicked. But his voice had that edge—like the air before a storm. He remembered the last time the system failed to hold what it created.

Mira nodded. She tapped into the secondary line. "Signal’s weak. Too much interference from the containment chamber. I’ll route it manually."

Torv stepped closer to the crystal.

The cracks were spreading faster now. Bits of dust shimmered, shedding from the edges, caught in the filtered air like glitter under fluorescent light.

He stared into the fogged interior. For a moment, he thought he saw movement—a figure inside, barely visible, posture tight, a fist pressed to his chest.

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