Chapter 20 Breaking Point
My lungs burned like I’d been holding my breath underwater for hours and had just broken the surface. The taste of metal coated my tongue, and my head pounded with a fever that made the room blur.
I couldn’t remember the dream. Only impressions of dark water and voices saying my name in warning. The harder I tried to grasp it, the faster it slipped away, leaving behind the aftermath to burn through my body.
I stumbled to the bathroom, one hand pressed against my stomach. It wasn’t pain exactly, but more like something was trying to settle there—something that didn’t belong in a mortal body.
I barely made it to the toilet before I was retching, gasping, my body trying to expel whatever the dream had left behind. Nothing came up but bile at first. Then I froze, staring down.
Six pomegranate seeds, whole and glistening like they were freshly plucked.
I blinked hard, squeezing my eyes shut and opening them again. The seeds were gone.
Fever, I told myself, hands shaking as I gripped the porcelain. Just the fever. You’re burning up and hallucinating. That’s all.
I stood up, washing my mouth out in the sink. I stood straighter and took in my reflection. My eyes stared back too bright, too green, rimmed with red like I’d been crying for hours. At their edges, just for a moment, I saw silver threading through my irises.
I jerked back, heart hammering, and the silver vanished, leaving just my exhausted, fevered, human eyes.
“Mel?” Luz knocked softly on the bathroom door. “You okay?”
I cracked it open. “Yeah. Barely.”
She took one look at me, and her eyes went wide.
“Your eyes,” she whispered, stepping closer. “They’re—” She stopped herself, pressing her lips together. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’m being torn apart from the inside,” I said, my voice hoarse.
Luz’s expression shifted, not in surprise, but like she’d been expecting this.
“It’s starting,” she murmured, more to herself than me.
“What’s starting?”
But she just pressed her hand to my forehead. Her palm felt cool against my burning skin. “You’re burning up. Come on, you need tea and rest.”
“I slept,” I protested. “I just—”
“That wasn’t rest,” Luz huffed. “That was your subconscious trying to process something it shouldn’t be able to see. There’s a difference.”
The certainty in her voice made my stomach twist.
I pushed past her and found my phone wedged between my bed and the wall, screen cracked so badly from Xavier’s attack that spiderweb fractures spread across the display.
No missed calls. No texts. My mother still hadn’t responded. My thumb hovered over her contact, pressing the call button.
Straight to voicemail.
“Hey, Mom.” My voice cracked. “I… I need you. Amy’s getting worse. I was kidnapped yesterday, and I keep having these dreams where I see things I shouldn’t be able to see and—”
I took a shuddering breath.
“I’m scared,” I whispered. “I’m so scared, and I don’t know who to trust anymore, and you’re not answering, and I just… I need you. Please call me back. Please.”
I hung up before I could start crying.
My hand dropped to my lap, phone clutched like a lifeline. I didn’t realize tears were already falling until they hit my wrist, trailing across my birthmark.
Luz sat beside me and pulled me into a hug. I let myself collapse against her shoulder briefly, before forcing myself to sit up.
“I’ll make tea,” Luz said, standing. “And then you’re going to rest whether you like it or not.”
Luz brewed ginger tea with cinnamon and honey. The scent filled the room, warm and grounding, but it didn’t quite reach the pit of my stomach where something still felt wrong.
She handed me the mug, her brows pinched with concern as she sat beside me.
“You’ve been pushing yourself too hard,” she sighed.
I let out a weak laugh. “It doesn’t help when I keep having cryptic dreams no one will explain to me.”
She winced like she wanted to argue, but couldn’t. I took a tentative sip of my tea. It was soothing in theory, but my hands still trembled around the ceramic.
“I’m worried,” I admitted, voice barely above a whisper. “About Amy and my mom. About what’s happening to me. It’s like I’m drowning and everyone’s just… watching.”
Luz shifted, angling toward me. “What happened with your mom?”
“She’s not answering her phone. It’s been almost two days.” The admission made it more real. “She never does this, even when we fight.”
“Did she say anything weird last time you talked?”
I thought back to our confrontation outside my dorm. The rain, the file she’d shoved at my chest.
“We fought,” I said. “About me not listening to her warnings about Reenie. She gave me everything she’d found on Ekklesia and then just… left. And now she won’t answer.”
Luz paused, then squeezed my hand. “She’s smart. She’ll be okay.”
But I heard the doubt beneath her reassurance.
“I think something’s coming,” I whispered. “Something bad. And I don’t know how to stop it.”
Luz held my hand tighter. “Do you want to talk about your dream?”
I rubbed the side of my neck, staring down into my tea. Cinnamon swirled along the rim, patterns that almost looked like vines.
“I can’t remember it,” I sighed. “Not really. Just… water. It was dark, and there were these voices.” I swallowed hard. “And the feeling that I was somewhere I shouldn’t be. Something was warning me.”
“Warning you?” Luz’s grip on my hand tightened. “What did the voices say?”
“I don’t know. I can’t—” Frustration bled into my voice. “It’s like trying to hold smoke. The harder I try to remember, the less I have.”
But even as I said it, fragments surfaced: a threshold, black stone, the sense of standing before something vast.
I shuddered.
“You keep saying I should talk to Kian,” I said, frustration bleeding through. “But you know things too. Why won’t you just tell me?”
A shadow passed across her face. “Because I can’t protect you from what happens after you know.”
The words hit harder than I expected. “You think knowing the truth will hurt me more than not knowing?”
“I think knowing the truth before you’re strong enough to carry it could break you,” she said quietly. “And I can’t—I won’t be responsible for that.”
We sat in heavy silence.
Finally, Luz stood, brushing her hands on her jeans. “I should head out. I want to check on Amy before the nurses change shifts, and I need to pick up assignments from my professors.”
I stood with her. “I’ll meet you at the hospital later. There’s something I need to do first.”
Luz paused at the door, fingers lingering on the handle. “Be careful, Mel.”
“I’ll try.”
She didn’t smile. She pulled me into a fierce hug, holding on like she was afraid I’d disappear. “Don’t push yourself too hard,” she whispered against my hair. “Rest. Please.”
Then she was gone, the door clicking shut behind her. I stood alone in the room, fever making everything feel distant and muffled.
My phone buzzed with a text from Leo: Library,15 minutes, if you’re up for it. Promised you answers.
I dragged a hand through my damp hair, willing the fever and exhaustion to release their grip long enough for me to function.
The library was unusually quiet for midday, the overhead lights flickering. I found Leo slouched in a back corner, half-buried under a stack of books and a laptop plastered with stickers.
He glanced up when I approached, and his expression shifted.
“Shit, Mel. You look terrible.” He stood, eyes scanning my face with genuine concern. “Are you okay after yesterday?”
“I’m fine,” I lied, dropping into the chair beside him. A shiver wracked my body despite the hoodie. “Why did you go dark yesterday?”
Leo winced. “I got caught in the sub-basement, but I talked my way out by claiming I was lost. They confiscated my phone for having it on the job.”
I felt my stomach drop.
“They’re more paranoid than I thought. Which ties into what I found.” He paused, studying me. “You sure you’re up for this? Because what I found is… not good.”
“Nothing about this situation is good, Leo. Just tell me.”
He cracked his knuckles and pulled his laptop closer. “Okay, let’s start with the basics. The supplement study? Total front. The official name is Project Eden, which already sounds like something out of a dystopian thriller. But it’s not just one study. It’s part of something way bigger.”
“How much bigger?”
“Decades bigger. Global bigger.” He pulled up a document. “They operate under a parent organization called the Ichor Group.”
“Ichor,” I repeated, the word tasting strange on my tongue. “Like—”
“Blood of the gods, yeah.” Leo’s expression was grim. “And they’re not subtle about it either. Their internal documentation references ‘divine heritage,’ ‘spiritual extraction,’ and ‘metaphysical binding.’ This isn’t a pharmaceutical company—it’s a harvesting operation.”
Ice crawled down my spine. “Harvesting what?”
“People.” He clicked on another file. “Specifically, people with certain genetic markers, or with usual spiritual signatures. Bloodlines, and I know how this sounds, descended from ancient divine lineages.”
I reeled from the implications. “They’re targeting descendants of gods?”
“That’s what it looks like, insane as that is.
” Leo pulled up another document, a map marked with dozens of locations.
“Berkeley in 1999. Prague in 2003. Rome in 2008. Religious schools, university towns, and places with high concentrations of students. Every single trial site shows the same pattern: identify subjects with specific heritage, enroll them in ‘wellness studies,’ then extract what they’re calling ‘latent spiritual essence.’”
“How many people?” I whispered.
“Hundreds, maybe thousands over the years.” His voice was tight. “And here’s the thing. Most of the trial sites closed suddenly. Records get sealed or disappear. Participants just… vanish from public record. It’s like they’re erasing people.”
My hands clenched into fists. “What about Amy? What profile did she match?”