Chapter 251: This close to the end
Director Ashwood considered the question with the same careful, calculating focus she’d applied to everything since their first confrontation. "Meridian will maintain a presence here, continuing our study under considerably more cautious protocols than our initial approach permitted. What you’ve demonstrated today — direct, survived contact with a guardian intelligence — is precisely the kind of documented result that justifies continued investment, regardless of whether we ever secure exclusive commercial rights to the phenomenon itself."
"And if I come back? To finish what I started?"
"Then I would expect us to renegotiate terms considerably more favourable to Meridian than my current offer," Director Ashwood said, with the frank, unapologetic honesty of someone who saw no reason to disguise her employer’s interests now that the more pressing crisis had passed. "But I won’t pretend I intend to obstruct you, Mr. Roy. Whatever else Meridian is, we are not in the business of preventing a genuinely unprecedented event from occurring, provided we’re positioned to properly document and benefit from it when it does."
"That’s about as much honesty as I expected from a corporate director," Corven muttered.
"I find honesty considerably more efficient than the alternative, Mr. — " Director Ashwood paused, studying Corven with renewed interest. "I don’t believe I caught your full name, given how abruptly our first conversation concluded."
"You didn’t," Corven said flatly, offering nothing further.
Director Ashwood’s mouth curved into something that might have been amusement. "Fair enough. I imagine we’ll have ample opportunity to become better acquainted, should Mr. Roy’s search bring him back through this system again."
The Rustwake departed the numbered system some hours later, Director Ashwood’s team remaining behind to continue their own study of the fracture under considerably more cautious protocols than their initial approach had suggested, an uneasy truce settling over the arrangement that none of them fully trusted to hold indefinitely.
Dr. Farr insisted on a full examination the moment they cleared the outpost’s immediate vicinity, settling Rohan into the Rustwake’s cramped medical alcove with the same careful, methodical thoroughness she applied to everything else.
"Your vitals are stable," she reported, after a lengthy series of scans that left Rohan increasingly restless under her scrutiny. "But there are irregularities I can’t fully account for. Your Origin Energy signature — if I’m reading your own system’s terminology correctly from what you’ve described — has shifted somehow. Not depleted, the way I’d expect from ordinary exertion. Altered. As though something about the crossing attempt left a permanent mark on however that energy actually functions within you."
"Is that dangerous?"
"I genuinely don’t know," Dr. Farr admitted, setting her scanning equipment aside with visible frustration at her own uncertainty. "I have no prior data to compare it against. No one else has ever survived direct contact with a guardian entity long enough to be examined afterward, so far as any record I possess indicates. You may simply need time to determine whether this shift affects your abilities meaningfully, one way or another."
Rohan checked his own status panel once she’d finished, and found, to his quiet unease, a notification he hadn’t seen before.
[Great System Note: Resonance signature altered.]
[Analysis: Direct exposure to guardian entity has produced measurable change to Origin Energy baseline. Long-term effects unknown.]
[Recommendation: Monitor for changes to skill performance or resource regeneration over coming weeks.]
Wonderful. One more unknown to add to an already impossibly long list.
Rohan spent much of the return transit in exhausted, contemplative silence, turning over everything the Guardian had told him, weighing the enormity of a choice that would, whenever he finally made it, cost him everything and everyone this universe had given him in exchange for everything and everyone waiting on the other side of a door that would never open again once he walked through it.
Liora. Veyrhold. Renna. Ashcombe. Corven. Dr. Farr. All of it, gone the moment I finally go home.
But home. Everyone and everything I left behind seven months ago, waiting on the other side.
He didn’t know, yet, how to weigh one impossible loss against another. He only knew, with the same stubborn, hard-won certainty that had carried him this far, that whatever choice he eventually made, he intended to make it properly — with time enough to say goodbye, to keep every promise he’d made along the way, rather than simply vanishing into a door that offered no path back to explain himself to anyone he’d leave behind.
Dr. Farr found him at the Rustwake’s small viewport that evening, settling quietly beside him without immediately speaking, the two of them watching the stars stretch and blur as the ship carried them back toward the Halcyon Span.
"For what it’s worth," she said finally, "I don’t think delaying makes you any less determined than you were before you crossed. I think it makes you considerably more thoughtful than most people would manage, faced with exactly the choice you were just offered."
"It doesn’t feel thoughtful," Rohan admitted. "It feels like I’m just delaying something that’s going to hurt no matter when I finally do it."
"Perhaps," Dr. Farr said. "But you’ll do it on your own terms, with your own goodbyes properly said, rather than simply vanishing mid-transit the way that survey team’s colleagues apparently did. That matters. Whatever else this costs you, that much will always be true."
Rohan thought of Liora’s promise, of Corven’s daughter, of Renna’s standing account, of every stubborn, hard-won kindness that had carried him this far across an entire universe he’d never chosen to fall into.
I’ll say goodbye properly. However long it takes. And then, when I’m ready — truly ready — I’ll go home.
He was quiet a long moment, the shape of an idea forming with the same slow, deliberate clarity that had once turned a hopeful feeling in his chest into a genuine, trackable bearing across an entire universe.
"I want to go back to Veyrhold," he said finally. "Before anything else. Before I even think seriously about attempting that crossing again."
Dr. Farr studied him, surprised. "That’s a considerable detour. Weeks of transit, at minimum, back toward Cael Athis, and weeks more returning to the Halcyon Span afterward, assuming the fracture’s stability even holds that long without further attention."
"I know," Rohan said. "But I promised Liora I’d come back to tell her if I found a way. I sent a message through Renna’s contacts, but a message isn’t the same thing as actually standing in front of her and telling her myself. If I’m going to lose the chance to say goodbye to everyone in this universe the moment I finally cross, I want at least one of those goodbyes to happen properly — face to face, not through a relay message that might never even arrive."
Corven, listening from the cockpit’s other seat, nodded slowly, something understanding settling into his weathered features. "Makes sense to me. If I had the chance to go back and say a proper goodbye to someone I’d left in a hurry, I’d take it, whatever the detour cost."
"You’d be delaying something that already carries real risk," Dr. Farr said, though her tone carried caution rather than outright objection. "The fracture’s instability isn’t guaranteed to remain manageable indefinitely. Every week you delay is a week Meridian has to solidify their own position there, and a week the boundary itself has to degrade further, for better or worse."
"I’ve already delayed seven months," Rohan said. "A few more weeks, to do this properly, feels like the right kind of delay rather than the wrong kind. I need Liora to hear it from me. Not a message. Me."
Dr. Farr held his gaze a long moment, something that looked almost like approval settling into her tired, careful features.
"Then we’ll need to plan the return route carefully," she said. "And I’d recommend keeping Meridian informed of nothing beyond what’s strictly necessary. A delay of several weeks gives them considerably more time to entrench themselves at that outpost than any of us would prefer."
"Agreed," Corven said. "Cael Athis first, then. Long way round, but the right way round, if you ask me."
They stopped at the Halcyon Span only long enough to resupply and settle what remained of their outstanding affairs, Renna greeting the news of their planned detour with a raised eyebrow and considerably less surprise than Rohan had expected.
"Makes sense to me," she said, restocking their credit against the modest sum Corven had managed to scrape together from Meridian’s grudging payment for the crossing data Rohan had agreed to share. "You’ve spent this entire search keeping every promise you’ve made along the way, more or less. Be strange if you started breaking them now, this close to the end."