Chapter 32: Shattered Screens
The silence after the sent messages was thicker than the server hum. It was a held breath. Falco leaned back from the console, the green light washing out his face. Gabi chewed on a thumbnail, her eyes darting across security feeds on the main wall—a parking lot, an empty street, the quiet garage above.
“We should start running simulations for the dock approach,” Mikasa said, her voice breaking the stillness. She was already leaning over the holographic display, rotating the blueprints of the Chronos facility with precise flicks of her wrist.
“Right.” Falco shook himself, pulling a second keyboard toward him. “I’ll map the patrol patterns against the nine-minute window, calculate optimal routes.”
“I’ll start fabricating the shaped charges,” Gabi added, hopping off her stool. “We have the compositor in the workshop. Need to calibrate the yield to fracture, not vaporize.”
Aria watched them, this strange new generation of soldiers preparing for a battle with no titans, only steel and silicon. Leo was a warm, heavy blanket against her chest. She felt detached, floating. The idea of her brother, of Jean and Connie and all of them, converging on a tiny upstate New York restaurant was too vast to hold. It felt like a dream, or a prayer.
Levi hadn’t moved from his spot near the wall. He was staring at the floor, but his gaze was turned inward, dissecting the plan piece by piece, probing for weaknesses. It was a look she knew well—the tactical silence that could last for hours.
“Falco,” Levi said, his voice a low rasp that cut through the clatter of keys. “Pull up everything on the bridge mechanics. The oscillator is the key, but I want to understand the lock.”
“On it.” Falco’s fingers flew, pulling up dense files of quantum physics and speculative metaphysics. Schematics of the original displacement event, annotated with red ‘FAILURE’ stamps, appeared beside the clean, theoretical diagrams of the Chronos generator. He opened a sub-folder labeled ‘Anchoring Protocols & Bio-Tethering.’
Gabi, heading for the workshop door, paused to peer over his shoulder. “Ugh, it’s all jargon. ‘Psycho-temporal resonance,’ ‘baseline signature imperative’…”
Falco scrolled, skimming. “It says the anchor subject provides a… a unique harmonic signature that stabilizes the return waveform. Like a tuning fork for reality.” He clicked a video file. It was a lab recording, grainy and silent. A rat in a plexiglass cage. One moment it was there, nibbling on a pellet. The next, a flash of violet light, and the cage was empty. The time-stamp read 00:00:01. The rat was gone. No portal, no bridge.Just… deletion.
“What was the anchor?” Mikasa asked, her voice tight.
Falco checked the notes. “A tissue sample from a Paradis-displaced field mouse. Class-C biological matter. Insufficient coherence.”
Levi’s eyes were fixed on the screen where the rat had been. “What constitutes ‘sufficient coherence’?”
Falco scrolled further. Gabi’s casual posture vanished. She leaned in, her face inches from the monitor. “Falco. Scroll up. What’s that?” Her finger stabbed at a line of text.
Falco went pale.He clicked.
The document expanded. It was a viability assessment table. Columns listed subjects: Levi A., Mikasa A., Eren Y., Sasha B., Aria R. Each had a percentage score next to ‘Resonance Strength’ and ‘Tether Viability.’ Most were in the 30-50% range.
Aria Reyes’s name was at the top. Her score: 94%.
A footnote, in cold, clinical text, explained the outlier. Subject R. exhibits unprecedented bio-temporal cohesion, likely a result of post-displacement procreation within the displaced cohort. The act of creating new life post-event appears to have anchored her signature to both the point of origin and the new timeline simultaneously. Fetal development may have acted as a living tether, weaving her into the fabric of both worlds. This makes her the optimal, and likely only, viable anchor for a stable return bridge.
Then, the final line, bolded: Successful activation of a return bridge utilizing Subject R. as the anchor will necessitate the complete expenditure of her cohesive signature. Outcome: Total psycho-temporal dissolution. Non-survivable.
The hum of the servers didn’t change, but to Aria, it suddenly became a high-pitched whine, a scream trapped in metal. She felt the blood drain from her face, a cold numbness spreading from her core to her fingertips. Non-survivable.
Levi moved.
It wasn’t a controlled step. It was a violent, kinetic eruption. A guttural sound tore from his throat, raw and unrecognizable. He swept his arm across the nearest bank of monitors. Three screens shattered in a cacophony of glass and plastic, sparks fizzing into the ozone-tinged air. He grabbed the edge of the heavy metal server rack and wrenched it sideways. It groaned, buckling, cables snapping with bright blue flashes.
“Levi!” Mikasa shouted, stepping forward, but he was a blur of contained fury.
He turned on Falco, who stumbled back, chair screeching. Levi closed the distance in an instant. He didn’t punch. He seized the front of Falco’s shirt and slammed him hard against the shuddering server rack, pinning him there. The metal dented with the impact.
“There is another way,” Levi snarled, his voice a razor held against Falco’s throat. His eyes were wide, pupils contracted to pinpricks. “Find it. You pull another solution out of this machine right now, or I take this whole place apart.”
“Captain—Levi—I don’t—” Falco choked out, his feet barely touching the floor.
Gabi was frozen, her hand over her mouth. Mikasa had shifted into a defensive stance, ready to intervene but knowing the storm she was facing.
“The data is consistent!” Falco gasped. “Across twelve different simulations! It’s the only model that—”
Levi slammed him against the rack again. “I don’t care about your models! Find another variable! A different power source! A different subject! Anything!”
Aria stood rooted, Leo clutched so tightly he began to squall in protest. The words ‘non-survivable’ bounced around her skull. She looked at Levi—his back muscles corded with tension, the utter wreckage of his control—and a bizarre, hollow feeling opened up inside her. It wasn’t fear. It was something quieter, and far worse.
Eren and Armin were there then, drawn by the crash. They must have been in the garage above. Eren took in the scene—the smashed monitors, Levi with Falco pinned, Gabi’s horror, Aria’s ghostly face—and his own expression darkened with immediate, reflexive fury. He moved toward Levi.
Armin was quicker. He put a hand on Eren’s chest, stopping him. His eyes, sharp and analytical, swept the room, landing on the open document on the central monitor.He read fast. His breath hitched. He looked at Aria, then at Levi, understanding dawning with terrible clarity.
“Eren,” Armin said, his voice low but commanding. “Help me with Aria.”
“What? He’s going to crush that kid—”
“Now, Eren.”
The tone brooked no argument. It was the voice Armin used in strategy meetings, the one that had planned the retaking of Wall Maria. Eren hesitated, glaring at Levi’s back, then relented. He crossed to Aria, his anger melting into confused concern as he saw her expression.
“Hey.Aria. Come on,” Eren said, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. He pried Leo from her stiff arms, the baby wailing now. “Let’s get some air.”
Armin took her elbow, his grip firm. “The workshop. Now.”
They steered her away from the neon-lit chaos, through a reinforced door and into the adjacent space. The workshop was a clash of eras: sleek 3D printers and compositors sat next to greasy motorcycle engines and racks of manual tools. The air smelled of hot metal, oil, and ozone.
The door hissed shut behind them, muting the sounds of conflict. Eren jiggled Leo, shushing him awkwardly. “It’s okay, tiny guy. It’s just… your dad having a moment. We all have them.”
Aria didn’t hear him. She walked on numb legs to a cluttered workbench, her hands gripping the edge. The cold metal bit into her palms. She stared at a half-assembled carburetor, its parts laid out with meticulous care.
Optimal, and likely only, viable anchor.
Non-survivable.
A sound bubbled up from her chest. It started as a hiccup, then a choked gasp. Then it broke loose—a wild, jagged peal of laughter. She doubled over, her forehead touching the cool bench, her shoulders shaking.
Eren and Armin exchanged a alarmed look. “Aria?” Armin ventured.
She couldn’t stop. The laughter poured out of her, raw and hysterical, tears streaming from her squeezed-shut eyes. It hurt her ribs, her throat. “Oh my god,” she wheezed between gusts. “Oh, that’s perfect. That’s just… perfect.”
“What is?” Eren asked, completely lost.
She pushed herself up, wiping at her eyes, her face a mess of tears and mirthless grinning. “Don’t you see? It’s the punchline. The whole fucking joke.” She gestured vaguely back toward the server room. “I spend years… barely holding on. The anxiety, the blackouts, the feeling that I’m just… wrong. For this time, for any time. And then… then I get this.” She gestured at Eren holding Leo. “A life.A family. Something… good. Something that doesn’t feel like a mistake.”
Her laughter subsided into painful, hitching breaths. “And the one thing that could fix it all, that could give everyone everything they’ve lost… the key is me. But only if I stop being me. Permanently.” She let out another short, barking laugh. “It’s not enough to just use me. I have to be used up. Expended. Like a battery. A single-use bridge.”
The truth of it settled in the workshop, cold and absolute. Armin’s face was a mask of pained comprehension. Eren’s hold on Leo tightened, his jaw working.
“Then we don’t do it,” Eren said, his voice thick. “We burn their facility to the ground and we live here.We fight. We hide.Whatever. We don’t trade you.”
“It’s not that simple, Eren,” Armin said softly, his mind already racing ahead. “If Chronos has this data, others will. She’s a target as long as that possibility exists. And the others… Jean, Connie, Sasha… they might want a chance to go back. It’s not just our choice.”
“So what?” Eren fired back, his temper flaring. “We put it to a vote? Her life for a maybe?”
Aria’s laughter was gone, leaving behind a vast, echoing calm. “He’s going to lose his mind in there,” she said quietly, meaning Levi.
“Yeah, no shit,” Eren muttered.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean he’s really going to lose it. He’ll tear that place apart looking for another answer. And when he doesn’t find one…” She looked at Armin. “What’s the tactical assessment, Commander?”
Armin flinched at the old title. He met her gaze, his blue eyes full of an ancient sorrow. “The mission parameters have changed. The primary objective is no longer just sabotage. It is the complete, irrevocable destruction of all research, all data, and all hardware pertaining to the bridge. We must erase the very possibility. It’s the only way to protect you.”
Aria nodded. It made sense. Clean, tactical sense. “He won’t accept that. Not if there’s a one percent chance it could work without me. He’ll chase that one percent into hell.”
From the server room, a final, shuddering crash echoed, followed by abrupt silence.
Aria pushed off from the workbench. The hollow feeling was gone, replaced by a steely resolve that felt eerily familiar. It was the feeling she got before maneuvering gear practice, before a mission beyond the walls. A grim finality.
“Then we don’t tell him about this part,” she said.
Eren stared at her. “Aria—”
“We proceed with the plan to destroy the oscillator. We gather everyone at Sasha’s. We pretend Falco’s intel only confirmed the need for sabotage, not… the cost.” She looked at her son, now quiet in Eren’s arms, his big eyes staring at the strange lights. “We buy time. For him.”
“Levi will find out,” Armin said. “He’ll go over the data himself. He’ll see it.”
“Then we make sure the data doesn’t survive the mission,” Aria replied, her voice as cold as the workbench. “We make sure nothing survives.”
The door to the server room opened. Mikasa stood there, a streak of grease or soot on her cheek. Her expression was unreadable. Behind her, the neon light flickered over a scene of destruction. Falco was sitting on the floor, rubbing his neck. Gabi was already sweeping glass. Levi stood amidst the wreckage, his back to them, his head bowed, his hands clenched at his sides. The rage had burned out, leaving only ashes.
“We’re leaving in six hours,” Mikasa said, her voice flat. “Get some rest if you can. Falco has the final route.”
Aria walked back into the humming, broken room. She went straight to Levi, stepping over twisted metal and shattered plastic. She didn’t speak. She simply leaned into him, pressing her face against the tense muscles of his back. For a long moment, he didn’t move. Then, slowly, one of his hands came up and covered hers where it rested against his stomach. His fingers were trembling.
She closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of him—clean cotton, engine grease, and now, the sharp tang of ozone from broken screens. She memorized it. The lie was already taking root inside her, a cold, quiet seed. She would water it with her silence and let it grow into the action that would save them all, even from themselves.
In the workshop doorway, Armin watched them, a deep, unsettling calculation already taking shape behind his eyes. Eren stood beside him, rocking Leo, his face a storm of conflict. The mission was no longer just an attack.
It had become a secret, and a sacrifice. The countdown to the facility continued, each second ticking towards a far more personal explosion.
Levi’s hand on hers was cold, his trembling minute but constant. The broken glass crunched under Aria’s boots as she shifted, pressing closer into the solid wall of his back. She could feel the frantic hammer of his heart through his shirt. The silence between them was a third entity, choked and heavy.
“We’ll fix this,” he said, the words gritted out like gravel. They weren’t a promise. They were a command to the universe.
“I know,” she lied, her voice muffled against him.
Across the room, Mikasa began methodically clearing the largest shards. Her movements were efficient, silent. Falco rubbed his throat, staring at the distorted faces in the mangled monitor frames. Gabi had stopped sweeping. She was just looking at the two of them, Levi and Aria, her expression unreadable.
Armin guided a still-fuming Eren back into the main room, Leo now drowsy on his shoulder. “We need to stabilize,” Armin said, his tone deliberately neutral, a balm over the raw emotion. “We have a plan for the facility. We stick to it. Destroying their capability is the priority. That hasn’t changed.”
“What changed is the why,” Eren muttered, but he let the subject drop, his dark eyes flashing to Aria.
Levi finally turned. He didn’t look at Aria. He looked at Falco.“You. Are you hurt?”
Falco shook his head, lowering his hand from his neck. “I’m fine. It’s… it’s okay.”
“It’s not.” Levi’s admission was blunt, stark. He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it disheveled. “The data. Is it isolated to this system?”
Gabi answered, her voice small.“No. It’ll be on their central servers at the Chronos facility. And probably on a backup cluster in Zurich. That’s why the dock mission is key. The oscillator is the lynchpin, but the server farm on sub-level two… that’s the brain. If we can introduce a corrosive daemon into the network during the blackout…”
“Then we erase it all,” Levi finished. His gaze finally found Aria’s. The fury was gone, replaced by a haunted, hollowed-out focus. “Every byte.”
She nodded, holding that look, pouring every ounce of false conviction into her own. “Every byte.”
He believed her. She saw him choose to. His shoulders dropped a fraction, the terrifying rigidity easing just enough to breathe.
“Six hours,” Mikasa repeated from the doorway. “Eren, Armin. The garage upstairs has cots. Get some sleep. You’re driving the first leg. Gabi, Falco. You’re on final prep. I want those charges perfect.”
The group dispersed, the tension breaking into shards of directed purpose. Armin gently took Leo from Eren, his touch sure. “I’ll sit with him. You need to clear your head.”
Eren just grunted, shoving his hands in his pockets. He stalked toward the staircase leading up to the garage, his movements all coiled frustration. Armin followed, the baby a warm weight against his chest.
The overhead fluorescents in the garage cast a sickly yellow glow over the disassembled engines and shelved parts. It smelled of old gasoline and concrete dust. Eren paced the length of a lifted pickup truck, its undercarriage a mystery of rust and rods.
Armin settled on a low couch piled with moving blankets, making a nest for Leo. He watched Eren pace, his own mind a whirlwind of schematics and moral calculus. The silence stretched, thick with unsaid things.
“I’m glad I didn’t threaten her during the Rumbling,” Eren muttered, the words bouncing off the truck’s oil pan.
Armin didn’t look up, gently adjusting a blanket under Leo’s chin. “You would have been dead before you got on that zeppelin back in Marley after the attack on Liberio if you had.”
“Very fucking dead,” Eren whispered, stopping his pace to stare at a greasy wrench on a bench. His own reflection in a tool cabinet was distorted, grim. “He wouldn’t have hesitated. Not for a second.” He wasn’t talking about the Aria of then. He was talking about the Levi of now, a man who had just shattered hardware over a line of text. “It’s different now. It’s… worse.”
“It’s the same,” Armin corrected softly, his eyes distant. “It’s just a different wall. A different thing to protect her from.” He finally looked at Eren. “And we’re on the other side of it this time. We’re part of the garrison.”
Eren leaned against the cold side of the pickup, tilting his head back. “What do we do, Armin? Really? We can’t just… let this happen.”
“We execute the mission,” Armin said, his voice regaining its steel. “We destroy their machine, their data, their hope. We protect our own. That’s the objective. Anything else…” He trailed off, his gaze drifting to the sleeping baby. “Anything else is a distraction we can’t afford.”
Downstairs, in the humming, broken dark, Aria lay on a thin mattress in a server alcove. Levi sat on the floor beside her, his back against the rack, one hand resting on her ankle. It was a point of contact, an anchor.
“I can feel you thinking,” he said, his voice low in the dark.
“It’s a lot to think about.”
“Don’t.” The word was rough. “Not right now. Just… be here.”
She rolled onto her side, facing him. The LED lights from a surviving server node painted his profile in soft blue. He looked exhausted, centuries old. She reached out, her fingers brushing the tense line of his jaw. He caught her hand, pressed her palm flat against his cheek, and closed his eyes.
The touch was an elegy. She felt it in the way his breath hitched. He was memorizing her, too. Every second was now a finite resource, to be spent or saved, and neither of them knew the balance.
“Tell me something,” she whispered. “Something from before. Something good.”
He was silent for so long she thought he’d refused. Then, his voice barely a rumble, he spoke. “There was a day. Just before the last expedition. The sun was out. The fucking sun was out, and it was warm. You were cleaning gear by the stable, humming some song you’d heard in town. You had soap suds in your hair.”
She remembered. She remembered the smell of leather and soap, the ordinary peace of it.
“I watched you,” he continued, his eyes still closed. “For ten minutes, I just stood there and watched you. And I thought, ‘This. This is what it’s for.’ All of it. The fighting, the dying. For a fucking Tuesday with soap in your hair.”
A sob clawed its way up her throat. She choked it back, turning it into a shaky breath. She moved her thumb, stroking the arch of his cheekbone.
“I’m right here,” she said.
He opened his eyes. In the low light, they were black pools, bottomless. “You better be.”
Gabi’s voice, trying for normalcy and missing, cut through from the main room. “Charges are set. Routes are loaded. We’re green in five hours, thirty-seven minutes.”
The countdown, precise and digital, resumed its inexorable march. Levi’s grip on her hand tightened. The Tuesday was over. The mission was all that remained.