CHAPTER 269: THE STABILIZER

I stepped back into the apartment just past midnight.

It was quiet—not the strained quiet of tension, but the natural kind that came after a long, full day. The kind of quiet that wrapped around the bones instead of rattling against them. Camille’s jacket was folded over the arm of the couch. Sienna’s boots were lined up neatly by the door. A cup of half-finished tea sat on the windowsill, still faintly warm. Home, at least for now.

I moved slowly through the hall, careful not to wake anyone. My joints still ached—not from pain, but from the weight of inertia. The feeling of having slowed down just enough to remember how fast I’d been moving before.

Everyone else had gone to bed. Evelyn’s was fast asleep in the master bedroom. Sienna was curled on one end of the couch, blanket wrapped around her like a shield. Camille was... somewhere between artfully passed out and fashionably unconscious. But Alexis—Alexis was still up.

Light poured from beneath the office door.

I knocked gently and pushed it open.

She didn’t turn around. Just kept her eyes locked on a set of five monitors, hands flitting from one datapad to another. Her hair was tied up in a loose bun, strands sticking out in every direction. Notes surrounded her—color-coded, cross-referenced, cross-examined. A half-eaten protein bar sat abandoned beside a cold cup of coffee.

"You’re still working," I said quietly.

"Obviously." Her voice was sharp, focused. She didn’t look away. "Scan results are aligning. Cell resonance stabilized in the left oblique sample. I’m close."

"I didn’t ask for a miracle."

"You didn’t need to. Your cells are vibrating like a tuning fork. Sit still long enough and you hum."

I smiled faintly and leaned against the doorframe. "You’re brilliant, you know that?"

"Brilliance isn’t the goal. Stability is."

She finally glanced at me. Her eyes were rimmed with fatigue, but still burned with that unmistakable flicker—curiosity, obsession, maybe both.

"I’ll leave you to it," I said.

She turned back toward her screen, muttering something about "real-time metabolic suppression ratios."

I stepped forward.

"Alexis."

She glanced up again.

I leaned in and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

She blinked.

Then immediately turned pink.

"You—don’t—w—what was that for?"

"For staying up. For caring. For being you."

She blinked again. "You’re—don’t do that without warning. I haven’t had caffeine in three hours."

I smiled and backed away. "Get some rest when you can."

"Mmhmm," she said, waving me off, already back in her files.

I fell asleep hard.

For once, there were no dreams. No nightmares. No phantom pains. Just silence and a body that didn’t feel like it was trying to outrun itself.

That lasted until—

BANG.

The door burst open like a declaration of war. I sat bolt upright.

Alexis stood in the doorway, hair even messier than last night, lab coat wrinkled, and dark circles under both eyes like she’d lost a fight with a paintbrush.

"Reynard! Come with me!"

Sienna groaned from the living room.

Evelyn’s face dropped as she peeked out of her blindfold with one eye.

Camille made an unintelligible noise and flipped the pillow over her face.

It didn’t take long before she forcefully grabbed me from the bed and pulled me into her office. It was even more messy than before, with thousands of loose papers all over the floors. Though I couldn’t even focus on that as she had something in her hand.

She was holding a vial.

"Drink this."

"...Good morning?"

I looked at the vial.

It was small. Glass. Filled with a black, syrupy substance that looked like motor oil mixed with bad decisions.

"You want me to drink this?"

"Yes," Alexis said, stepping forward and grabbing my wrist like I was about to bolt. "Immediately. No questions."

"What is it?" I asked, staring at the viscous mess swirling inside.

"You don’t listen when I say no questions huh? It’s a focus suppressant with adaptive cellular buffering, layered with metabolic slow agents and tracer compounds to anchor resonance. It’ll stabilize the way your cells respond to the System."

"...Right."

She narrowed her eyes. "It slows down the rate at which your cells absorb job and skill data. You’ll stop overloading. No more internal shaking, no more accelerated fatigue, no more hallucinations. I engineered it to your specific signature."

I raised an eyebrow. "Did you sleep last night?"

"No," she said in one breath. "And I will. After you drink it. Right after. I promise. Now drink it, please, thank you, go."

I held the vial up.

The light caught in it, throwing a faint shimmer across the surface—like it wanted to pretend it was medicinal instead of demonic.

"Cheers," I muttered, and downed it in one go.

It hit my tongue like tar. Bitter. Sharp. Coated the inside of my mouth with the texture of regret.

I coughed. "Gods, that tastes like melted tires."

"Good," she said, already wobbling slightly. "That means I didn’t mess up the chemical compound."

At first, I didn’t feel much. Just the taste lingering in the back of my throat.

But then...

The hum stopped.

The near-constant buzz under my skin—the one I’d grown so used to I’d stopped noticing it—faded. My muscles didn’t twitch. My fingers didn’t curl. My thoughts didn’t race like sparks trying to light a fire in every direction at once.

It was like someone had turned the volume down on my entire body.

I sat back slowly.

And smiled.

Alexis, still standing, blinked twice. Her knees wobbled.

I caught her just before she tipped forward.

"Hey—"

"Nope," she mumbled. "You drank it. I sleep now. Night-night, Jobmaster."

She slumped forward, head landing squarely on my shoulder, snoring within ten seconds. I looked down. Her glasses were still perched on her nose. One of her sleeves was rolled up past the elbow, a pen tucked behind her ear.

I adjusted her weight, letting her rest against me. The others were stirring faintly in the other rooms—Sienna moving to grab a blanket, Evelyn muttering something about "early warning systems."

Camille didn’t move.

Just grunted.

"I hate mornings," came the muffled voice beneath the pillow.

I stayed still, not wanting to wake Alexis.

My hands... weren’t shaking.

My breath was even.

The System felt... manageable.

And for the first time in what felt like weeks, I realized what that meant.

I could learn again. Train again. Acquire again. I could hunt new jobs. Stack new skills. Push past the limits without burning up from the inside.

It wasn’t just relief.

It was a return.

The stabilizer had worked.

And Alexis—brilliant, stubborn, sleep-deprived Alexis—had given me something better than control.

She’d given me hope.