The Heart's lower lab felt too bright for morning. Lights steady. Air clean. Machines waiting.

Hikari tightened her gloves. Esen rolled his shoulders once and shook out his hands. He didn't joke this time. Alteea stood behind a console with her hair tied high and her face set like stone that learned to listen.

Feris was awake.

She floated inside the containment ring, a soft halo of invisible field holding her from touching the ground. Bandages crossed her ribs and arms. Her hair drifted as if there was water here. There wasn't. Just Eon, thick in the room like a breath the world forgot to let go.

Feris looked at them and tried a smile.

"This isn't where I die, right?" she asked.

"If it is, I'm taking your bunk" Esen said.

Hikari didn't smile. Alteea didn't either.

"Begin" Alteea said.

Esen took the position Hikari had marked last night - feet planted, palms open to the ring, wrists loose. Hikari stood at the console. She watched the green line on the large panel. It sat flat, rude and certain.

"Ready?" Hikari asked.

"Ready" Esen affirmed.

The first wave went out like a soft tap. The air thickened and then thinned. Feris flinched and hissed through her teeth, but her eyes stayed steady.

"Again" Alteea said.

Pulse. Pulse.

Hikari watched the numbers. A wobble. The tiniest dip. She felt hope touch the edge of her chest and stay there.

"It's loosening a tiny bit" she said.

Esen kept rhythm. His palms pushed nothing, but it felt like they were pushing everything. The ring answered with a shy shimmer. The green line moved the smallest hair and then flattened like it had changed its mind.

"Amplitude plus ten" Alteea said.

Esen nodded and gave the next pulse more weight. Feris winced. The glow under her skin crawled along the veins of her forearms like thin wires of heat.

"Still with us?" Hikari asked.

"Still with you" Feris said. "Also, ow."

"Increase amplitude" Alteea said.

The next wave was not shy. Tools shivered on a tray. A pen rolled until Hikari caught it with two fingers without looking away from the screen. Feris's breath shortened. She swallowed hard.

"Response minimal" Hikari said. "We need more."

Alteea didn't flinch.

"Give me more, Esen" she said.

He set his jaw and pushed. The air trembled now. Feris's back arched and her hands curled as if the heat had grabbed each tendon and told it to pull. The glow along her neck brightened. She sucked in a breath and the sound turned into a broken laugh that wasn't a laugh.

"Th- This is... Terrible" she said.

"Keep breathing" Hikari said. "Slow. In on the count. Out on the count."

"Counting is hard" Feris said.

"We'll count for you" Esen said. "One. Two. Again."

He pulsed. Hikari matched his rhythm with the interference field, opening and closing the door in the air by the smallest measures. The green line trembled. It wanted to fall. It did not.

"Plus twenty" Alteea said.

Esen hesitated for a heartbeat. He hated this. Hikari saw it in the tight line of his mouth and the way his shoulders shifted like he was trying to carry a weight he couldn't see.

"Do it" she said.

He did it.

The wave struck the ring with a low, hard thud. The lab lights flickered. Static crawled across the glass like thin frost melting. Feris shouted and bit down on the sound too late. Her body jerked in a full convulsion and hung there, muscles shaking, then eased a fraction and shook again.

Hikari's fingers flew over the console. The interference shapes shifted a degree left, a degree right. She anchored to Feris's breathing like she had promised herself she would. Alarms blinked yellow at the bottom of one screen. She ignored them.

"The field is opening" Hikari said. "Not enough. Again."

Esen pulsed. His breath matched the count, then ran past it. Sweat slid down his temple and fell onto the floor in neat dots, each one a small admission that this was hard.

Alteea's voice stayed calm, but the edges cut sharper now. "Hold... Do not chase the echoes."

"I'm not chasing" Esen said. His tone was low and thin. "I'm trying not to drown."

"Breathe" Hikari said.

"Tell her that" he said, and he pulsed again.

Feris dragged air in and out. On each wave, the veins in her hands lit in a pale color like lines drawn under skin with a needle of light. Her eyes were open. Tears didn't fall - the field held them in place at the corners like glass. She shook and shook and refused to look away.

"Still with us...?" Hikari asked again.

"Don't - ask - dumb - questions" Feris said, and the humor in it cracked and showed the pain underneath.

The floor began to hum. Not sound - pressure. Cabinets ticked as if heat had found new paths through their frames. The ring buzzed like a quiet hive. The green line started to drop, a smooth slide by a few points, then paused as if it had met a hill.

"Now" Hikari said. "Hold it there. Esen, try doubling. No more."

He obeyed. The line moved down another hair and stuck again.

"It's working" Hikari said. "It's working!"

"Don't say that out loud" Esen muttered.

Another pulse. Feris arched so hard the bandages along her ribs pulled and wrinkled. The sound she made this time had no words near it. Hikari's chest hurt. She set her jaw and kept her hands steady.

A red light flashed at the top of the panel. The containment ring's heat tolerance crept toward the mark Hikari had written a line next to. The line said no further.

"Alteea" Hikari said.

"I see it" Alteea said. "We're fine. For now."

But the next pulse hit wrong.

It wasn't stronger. It wasn't weaker. It just caught a piece of resonance that had been hiding and threw it back into the room. The air kicked. Metal creaked. The green line bounced up and down chaotically, then higher than before.

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