Chapter Forty-Six: Recovery Protocol

Ivy

Clara didn’t knock.

She burst into my quarters, breathless, holding a blinking holopad like it was a live grenade. Lucien was already on his feet, his hand instinctively reaching for the sidearm he no longer carried. Wren—still asleep, her tiny frame curled beneath the folds of a weighted blanket—stirred but didn’t wake.

Clara’s voice cut through the dim room like frost.

“They found her.”

The chill in my chest spread instantly.

I stood. “Who?”

She turned the holopad around.

A glowing sigil blinked on the screen: the V inside a fractured circle.

VIRELLA.

“They initiated Recovery Protocol,” Clara said. “Silent fleet. No comms. No pings. No signatures. But I intercepted a ripple in our satellite shell when their cloaking failed for 0.4 seconds.”

“How long?” Lucien asked.

“Two hours, maybe less.”

Lucien swore.

I crossed the room and picked up Wren.

She didn’t stir.

My voice was raw. “They’re not taking her.”

We moved fast.

Lucien rerouted the shuttle’s trajectory, aiming for a defunct Earth-side port cloaked in the ruins of a mining colony. Clara packed the children’s stasis pods and encrypted them with new AI guardians. I prepared Wren for transfer, wrapping her in a security shield threaded with ion disruptors.

We were racing ghosts.

But I could feel them gaining.

Wren opened her eyes as I strapped her into the harness.

She looked up at me.

Not like a child.

Like something else watching through her.

“I don’t want to go,” she whispered.

“I know, sweetheart.”

“You’re scared.”

“I’m ready,” I corrected.

She blinked slowly. “She’s still here, you know.”

“I know.”

“She’s… quiet now.”

I nodded. “But not gone.”

Then she leaned forward and whispered against my ear.

“You’ll have to kill me, Mama.”

And for the first time since I was created—

I felt the purest kind of fear.

Clara launched a pulse EMP across our outgoing trail, masking our jump. We blinked across the stars, silent as a prayer, headed for Earth’s fractured orbit.

But they were faster.

They’d anticipated us.

When we emerged from hyperspace, they were already waiting.

Virella’s ship blotted out the stars like a wound in space. Black. Massive. Silent.

Not a warship.

A reclamation vessel.

They weren’t here to destroy.

They were here to retrieve.

Lucien prepared the pulse cannon.

Clara activated the shuttle’s echo protocols, fragmenting our signals.

I sat with Wren in the medbay, holding her hand as the first impact struck.

She didn’t flinch.

She just turned to me.

“Promise me something,” she said softly.

“Anything.”

“If she takes over… promise you’ll stop her.”

I held her hand tighter. “You’ll stop her, Wren. You’re stronger than her.”

“No,” she said. “I’m not.”

And for the first time—

I saw the Architect’s smile flash across her face.

We were boarded twenty minutes later.

They came in through the hull—silent, faceless humanoids with synthetic flesh and merciless speed. Lucien held the corridor, gunning down three before they reached the inner bay.

Clara was shouting from the cockpit, “I need more time! Just five more seconds!”

We didn’t have five seconds.

They breached the medbay.

And Wren stood between me and them.

Barefoot. Tiny. Glowing.

“Don’t touch my mother,” she said.

Her voice was layered—two voices overlapping.

The invaders froze.

And Wren exploded.

Not in blood.

In light.

The pulse wasn’t violent.

It was cleansing.

The ship buckled, but didn’t break.

The synthetics screamed as their systems fried.

Clara activated the emergency escape pods, sealing the other five children in cryo-tubes and launching them planet-side.

Lucien reached for me, but Wren held up her hand.

“Don’t,” she said. “Not yet.”

Her eyes were violet and endless.

And behind her smile…

I saw both mercy and death.

She walked toward the lead invader—still standing, still resisting.

She touched its head.

And whispered:

“You’re not needed anymore.”

It collapsed.

Not dead.

Just… empty.

The Architect was awake now.

But she hadn’t taken over.

She was cohabiting.

And I didn’t know what that meant.

Clara approached, cautious. “Ivy, she’s changed. Her neural patterns don’t match the ones from before.”

Lucien stared. “What are you saying?”

Clara hesitated.

Then: “She’s not just a vessel. She’s… evolving. Blending.”

I turned to Wren.

And she met my gaze with ancient calm.

“I’m not her,” she said. “But I remember being her.”