Chapter 27: Half the Truth
[Player is not allowed to reveal Regression ability. Violation means death.]
Lucas stared at the message for a moment and gritted his teeth. ’Yeah, I know that...’ he looked at Eleanor. ’Why do you have to make this harder than is already?’
"So?" She asked with a raised eyebrow. "What’s your ability?"
"Ignition," Lucas said finally. "Fire-based... that’s the ability."
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed slightly as if waiting for more but Lucas kept his expression as level as he could manage while he navigated the careful, well-worn path he’d walked with everyone who’d ever asked this exact question.
"It’s not exactly clean, though," he continued. "My system’s broken, Has been since the very first day... glitched, corrupted, whatever you wanna call it. Sometimes [Ignition] fires late. Sometimes it doesn’t fire at all when I actually need it to. And sometimes..." he paused, choosing the words with care, "—it fires completely on its own. No input from me at all."
"On its own," Eleanor repeated slowly. "Like it has a mind of its own?"
"More like a glitch that doesn’t wait for permission." He kept his tone light, almost dismissive, though every word felt like walking along the edge of something that could collapse under him if he wasn’t careful. "My system’s broken. But not in th good way... Notifications lag too. Sometimes I get warnings after the danger’s already hit me. Sometimes I get nothing at all until it’s too late..."
He watched her process what he said, he could almost see the gears turning behind her eyes, and felt the familiar tightness in his chest that came with skidding close enough to the truth to sound honest without actually giving her the one piece that mattered.
[Player is not allowed to reveal Regression ability. Violation means death.]
The warning sat in front of him like it always did, patient and absolute, and Lucas kept talking around it the way he’d learned to, filling the space with everything true that wasn’t the actual truth.
Half the truth, if you will...
"That’s..." Eleanor said after a pause, "That’s useful to know, actually. If your output is inconsistent, we shouldn’t rely on you for anything requiring precise timing. Could be a liability in formation if the group’s counting on a coordinated strike."
’Ouch.’ Lucas grimaced...
"Could be," he agreed, relieved she’d taken the bait toward instead of pressing further.
"Does it correlate with anything? Stress, exhaustion or possibly proximity to danger?"
"Haven’t figured out a pattern." That much, at least, was true enough not to feel like a lie.
"Most times it glitches out the second things get bad...."
"That’s not just inconvenient. That’s dangerous." Eleanor tapped a finger on her chin, thinking. "Has it ever misfired in a way that helped you? Or has it only ever worked against you?"
Lucas hesitated at that because the honest answer that the misfire had once functioned as bait to draw an entire horde’s attention away from fleeing survivors and toward himself sat far too close to details he couldn’t afford to explain without unraveling the rest of it.
"Just once," he said carefully. "Turned a bad situation into something survivable. Wasn’t planned though, Just happened to work out."
"Interesting." She made another note, and Lucas exhaled slowly, relieved she hadn’t asked him to elaborate...
She studied him a moment longer before asking again, something sharper creeping into her gaze now. "How have you survived this long, then? If your own skill can’t be trusted to work when you need it, how did a broken ability keep you alive through all of that?"
Lucas felt the question land harder than the others had because it was, in its own way, the most dangerous one yet.
"Luck," he said.
The word came out too fast, too practiced, too artificial and he watched something shift behind Eleanor’s expression the instant it left his mouth.
A flicker of doubt that hadn’t been there a moment ago, subtle but unmistakable, the first real crack of suspicion he’d seen from her since he’d arrived.
’Shit!’
"Luck," she repeated, flat.
"Luck," he said again, holding her gaze, willing the word to sound real enough.
She didn’t push it immediately, though he could see her filing the answer away in the same careful, methodical part of her mind that built a fortress out of nothing... the part of her that noticed inconsistencies and didn’t let them go easily, even when she chose not to chase them right away.
"Have you actually tried using it in combat drills?" she asked instead, tone shifting back toward the practical. "Testing the range, the heat output, how long you can sustain it?"
"Not really," Lucas admitted. "Most of my fights haven’t exactly left room for structured testing. It’s been more like improvise, survive, figure out the rest later."
"That’s not a strategy, Lucas. That’s just surviving by accident."
"A lot more practical than what I would have been through..."
Eleanor exhaled. "I keep running the numbers," she said quietly. "Fifty people.... You’re one of them. I’ve tried every formation I can think of, every route, every way of thinning out who actually reaches the front lines and I keep landing on the same problem. A pause... "Jed’s vision shows what happens. Which means either I find something he hasn’t accounted for, or I accept that I’m walking you toward something I can’t stop."
"Eleanor." Lucas reached out, steadying a hand on her arm. "It’s going to be okay."
"You don’t know that."
"No," he admitted. "I really don’t. But panicking about it now doesn’t change anything either. We’ve got three days. Let’s use them instead of spending them scared."
It wasn’t entirely honesty, not the way she deserved. He knew, better than she ever could, exactly how likely his own death was. Knew it the way you know it would rain, because dying had become as familiar to him as breathing over these past weeks.
Of course, he is still very much terrified at dying... What he didn’t know, was whether this particular death would be one [Regression] could actually undo, or whether Jed’s flawless, unbroken record of true visions meant this was the one time the loop simply wouldn’t reset.
He didn’t tell her any of that. He just held her gaze, steady, and let her believe the comfort in his voice came from confidence rather than acceptance.
Eleanor studied him for a long moment, something in her expression softening slightly, though the worry never fully left it.
"Three days," she said finally, quieter now. "Okay. Three days."
She fell silent after that, staring down at the map spread across the table, tracing the same routes she’d already traced a dozen times, and Lucas watched something shift behind her eyes
"Wait," she said suddenly, sitting up straighter, gaze sharpening.
"What?"
"Three days..."
"Yeah... three days. What about it?"
"Jed said when we move, people would die..." She paused, turning the thought over once more before committing to it out loud, eyes flicking back up to meet his. "And we move in three days..."
"Uhmm.. I’m kinda confused. What about it?" He asked again, the confusion forming on his face was clearer now.
Then she looked at him — her eyes practically igniting with resolve.
The silence stretched for a moment before she replied...
"Who said it had to be three days?"
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