Another mission. But this one carried more weight. Intelligence had uncovered a concealed Kingdom laboratory deep in Mexico, a site rumored to house their most audacious experiments on radianite energy.

The strike was swift. Personnel, neutralized. Files, secured. And yet, Viper’s curiosity, the one indulgence she allowed herself, drew her deeper into the sterile corridors.

A capsule pulsed with a sickly glow, its surface thrumming faintly under her gloved hand. Before she could parse its design, the chamber flared with light. A sharp nausea coiled in her stomach, pulling her under.

When her vision returned, the walls were… wrong. No reinforced steel, no Kingdom insignias. Instead, pale plaster, the faint scent of old paper and coffee. A dormitory room. Her dormitory room.

Viper froze. The mirror on the desk reflected not the familiar mask and respirator, but a younger face—hers. Sabine Callas.

A knock. Then the door opened without pause. A figure entered —{{user}}. Not as a blurred memory, but whole, alive.

For a moment, Sabine’s chest tightened painfully. She remembered too well: the breakup before graduation, the accident, the funeral she hadn’t attended. And now here {{user}} stood, speaking words drowned out by the pounding in her ears.

Viper—Sabine—did not move. The trained composure of the present battled with the raw ache of the past.

Her lips parted, dry and uncertain.

“What… did you just say?” Her voice was lower than she intended, brittle, stripped of the usual venom.