"Ethan!!" a voice shouted.
"Huh!?" Ethan jerked his head up, blinking through the smoke. Linh appeared in front of him, dressed in her tight black ops suit, grabbing his arm.
"Stand up! Are you alright?" she demanded.
"These headaches… I don't know where they come from…" Ethan mumbled, pressing his fingers to his temples.
Linh quickly scanned the burning room. On a shelf, she spotted the sword Duy had mentioned—the one Ethan had supposedly gifted him. She snatched it up without hesitation, then pulled Ethan toward the window where their extraction jet hovered outside. They leapt in and flew back to base.
Back in the underground command room, Ethan, Linh, and Bee gathered around a large table, the sword laid out in front of them.
"You said you had something you wanted to tell me?" Linh asked, crossing her arms.
"I don't know who he is," Ethan answered honestly, shaking his head.
"He's your son!!" Bee cut in. "Although… he looks way too old to be your son. Unless you had a kid when you were five."
Both Linh and Ethan glared at Bee.
Ethan rubbed his forehead. "Do you know why I keep getting these headaches?"
Linh nodded. "That's the side effect of Reverse Flex. A lot of people experience severe headaches after using it to heal wounds. Plus, it sometimes triggers old memories. Don't worry—two weeks and you'll be fine."
"Okay…" Ethan exhaled, feeling slightly relieved. "But still… why does Duy feel so familiar? How could he be my son? At most, he could be my younger brother or something!"
"Duy isn't a normal human, Ethan," Linh said seriously.
She tapped a few commands on a nearby console. Footage from Darius' base appeared on the screen. Ethan watched in shock as Duy's incredible strength and strange powers were displayed—he moved with inhuman speed and wielded his sword with terrifying skill, even facing Darius without fear.
"So… Duy doesn't want Darius to kill me either," Ethan realized. "But Darius—a complete savage—is afraid of him. That means Duy is someone… terrifying."
"We never told you everything," Linh admitted. "But the Council believes in immortality."
Ethan stared at her. "If he's really my son… the only explanation is that he's immortal."
"But I'm not immortal! I'm only 24 years old," Ethan said firmly.
"Maybe you reincarnated into this time," Linh suggested. "Far into the future, long after Duy was born… a very long time ago."
"How old could he be?" Ethan asked quietly.
"We don't know. Maybe hundreds… or thousands of years old," Linh said. "But Ethan, do you believe in reincarnation?"
"I'm not sure…" Ethan said, thinking hard. "I'll look into it. Maybe it's real."
"Very likely," Bee added, his mechanical voice sharp.
Ethan picked up the sword Duy had offered him, feeling the weight of it. "He said I gave him this katana. Maybe we can get some leads from it."
"Right away, sir!" Bee replied. He rolled across the floor on his robotic wheels to the computer terminal.
A magnetic device lifted the sword into the air. Bee began analyzing it. Strange patterns appeared on the monitor, and the machine scanned deeper.
Finally, Bee turned to them, his voice steady.
"The material of the sword contains several unknown elements—ones that don't even exist on our current periodic table. The recognizable components date back to… 1289 BC."
The room fell into stunned silence.
"No way!!" Linh and Ethan both exclaimed.
"Is the machine broken, Bee?" Ethan asked, suspicious.
"Nope," Bee grinned, mechanical eyes flashing. "Machine's working perfectly fine, boss."
He deactivated the magnetic field, letting the katana float gently back into Ethan's hand.
Ethan stared at the ancient weapon, the flames of a forgotten past burning silently behind his eyes.