The rain returned the next morning.
Port Lucent always smelled different in the rain—less like metal and exhaust, more like the secrets buried in the cracks of the pavement. Astra stood on the safehouse balcony, hoodie drawn tight, watching the water stream down rusted gutters.
Killgrave was gone.
But not forgotten.
His last words echoed louder than the explosion.
"Tell them… we remember."
Behind her, Marlow stirred. He hadn't said much since Astra returned, bruised and bleeding, with a fistful of scorched glyph fragments and a silence that screamed louder than grief.
"You think it gets easier?" he asked finally.
"No," Astra replied. "But you learn how to carry it."
Runa arrived at noon, her eyes already scanning Astra's arms as she stepped through the door.
"You activated recursion-lock," she said. "And lived."
"Barely," Astra replied. "But I figured out why they made it so dangerous."
She tapped her infinity glyph—the one that replaced the black chain.
"It wasn't just a failsafe. It was a firewall. Keeping me from remembering one specific subject."
Runa's eyes narrowed. "Who?"
"Subject Delta."
Marlow looked up from the maps. "The ghost?"
"Not a ghost," Astra said. "A survivor."
In the earliest days of Project Glassmind, before they refined the glyph tech, there were failures. Not in the sense of death—but deviation. Test subjects who simply… slipped away.
Delta had been one of them. The only known subject to escape before integration was complete. No explosive failsafe. No memory wipe.
Just gone.
And according to a decrypted data burst Astra found in Killgrave's neural lattice, Delta was still alive.
But there was a catch.
"Her glyphs were never bound," Astra explained. "Which means they're dormant—or worse, leaking. If she's out there and doesn't know what she is…"
"She's a time bomb," Runa said softly.
They traced Delta's last ping to a town outside the city—a quiet coastal enclave called Narrowbridge. One road in. One dock out. The kind of place you'd go if you were trying not to be found.
Astra traveled alone.
Marlow stayed back to monitor comms. Runa encrypted the tracking beacon she'd hidden in Astra's boot—just in case Vos's drones were still sweeping for her signal.
The drive took three hours.
Narrowbridge was exactly what Astra expected: quiet, faded, soaked in sea salt. The kind of town where nothing ever happened—and people liked it that way.
Which made the girl in the bookstore stand out instantly.
She looked about twenty, maybe younger. Slender build. Pale skin freckled like stars. Long dark hair tied in a messy braid. She moved with an odd rhythm—like she wasn't entirely synced with her own body.
But the glyphs were there.
Faint, like scars mistaken for birthmarks.
One glowed when she touched a book spine. Another flickered when she turned to look out the window.
And then she saw Astra.
And froze.
They sat across from each other in the back of the bookstore, tea cooling between them. The girl had introduced herself as Mira.
Mira. Not Delta.
Astra kept her voice gentle. "Do you remember anything before Narrowbridge?"
Mira shook her head. "Not much. Bits and pieces. I know I came from somewhere else. I know someone was chasing me once. But I stopped running."
"You never stopped glowing," Astra murmured, eyes flicking to the faint symbol under Mira's ear.
Mira's fingers instinctively brushed the spot. "You're like me," she said. "Aren't you?"
Astra nodded. "We came from the same place."
Mira's expression didn't shift—but her eyes darkened.
"They told me I was sick," she said. "That the symbols were hallucinations. That I wasn't real."
"You're real," Astra said firmly. "And those symbols are memory locks. Buried data. Parts of you they didn't want you to access."
Mira looked down. "Then why do I keep dreaming of fire?"
Outside, thunder rolled in from the sea.
Inside, Astra reached into her jacket and pulled out a small black mirror—etched with a recursion glyph. She laid it on the table.
"This can unlock one tattoo," she said. "Just one. Safely."
Mira stared at it like it was a weapon.
"Why help me?"
"Because you helped yourself first," Astra said. "You escaped when no one else could. That means something. It means you weren't broken."
"I don't feel strong," Mira whispered.
"Neither did I."
Mira reached out and touched the mirror to the glyph beneath her wrist.
There was a soft click—barely audible.
Then light.
Her body stiffened. Eyes rolled back.
Astra stood ready, one hand glowing with a glyph shield—just in case.
But Mira didn't convulse.
She awakened.
When her eyes refocused, they glowed pale blue.
Her voice was stronger now—measured. Sure.
"I remember a room with silver floors," she said. "People in coats. Numbers on a wall."
A pause.
"My name wasn't Mira."
Astra nodded slowly. "What was it?"
"Dahlia."
Astra's chest tightened. The name felt familiar.
Because Astra had known her once. Not as a test subject.
But as a sister in rebellion.
Mira—Dahlia—stood now, pacing slowly as memory reintegrated.
"I was supposed to shut down the internal AI controlling the glyph printer," she murmured. "You and I planned it. You faked a malfunction to get me access."
Astra's eyes widened. "And you disappeared before I could pull you out. We thought… we thought you'd been captured."
"I was," Dahlia said. "But I escaped through the delivery shaft. Ended up on the coast. A smuggler found me. I wiped my ID, changed my name, and made myself forget."
"Until now."
Dahlia turned to her, trembling.
"What's left of us, Astra?"
Astra didn't answer right away.
Then she said, "There's a war coming. Vos is waking the others. Or worse—replicating them."
Dahlia's breath caught. "She can't. We were unstable. Unscalable."
"She doesn't care. Killgrave was a prototype. There are more like him."
Dahlia stared at the storm outside.
"Then you'll need help."
Astra reached out.
Dahlia took her hand.
Not Mira. Not Delta.
Dahlia Vale.
They returned to Port Lucent at dawn.
Back to the broken skyline. The red Xs on the map. The ghosts of Project Glassmind waiting in the dark.
Marlow raised a brow when he saw Astra return with someone beside her.
Astra just smiled faintly.
"Hope you saved a room."