Caio moved past me, a shadow detaching from the gloom. He moved with a quiet urgency, his feet making no sound on the slick floor. He found it almost immediately—a large, grated vent set into the wall, a dark mouth breathing the compound’s air. He unslung the pack, his movements swift and sure. He placed the nozzle of the bellows against the grate. I watched his arm move, a pale arc in the darkness. Once. Twice. Three times. The leather lung gave a soft, sighing whump, releasing its fine, white dust into the vent. A few motes, too heavy to be drawn in, danced in a sliver of moonlight from a high crack in the wall before vanishing. The weapon was delivered. Odorless. Unseen.
I melted back into the shadows to wait, Caio a silent presence beside me. The silence pressed in. My breathing was a roar in my ears. Every sound of the swamp outside, the chirp of a cricket, the distant splash of a fish, was magnified, impossibly loud. Time stretched, thinned, and became a torment. I counted the drips from the pipe. I counted my heartbeats.
Then I heard it.
It tore through the night, a jagged, unnatural sound. A nightjar, crying out of season, its voice sharp with a panic that did not belong to any bird. It was a broken note in the world’s song—Miguel’s signal.
My muscles tensed. A moment later, a muffled shout echoed from the direction of the docks. Then came a heavy, grinding thud as the main generator died. The sliver of moonlight in the crack was now the only light.
And then, the silence came. It was not an absence of noise. It was a presence. A heavy blanket that smothered the world, pressing down, erasing the chirps of the crickets, the rustle of the leaves, everything.
I moved out into it. The air was thick and still. I was walking not through a sleeping camp, but a gallery of the dead. A guard sat at a small table, his head slumped forward, a line of drool connecting his open mouth to the wood. A fan of playing cards lay scattered by his limp hand. In the mess hall’s kitchen, a man was face down in a bowl of stew, his cheek submerged. A stray dog lay on its side in the middle of the path, not curled in sleep, but dropped, its legs still half tensed as if from a sudden fall.
My senses, which had been screaming in the water and the pipe, were now muted, baffled by the profound wrongness of the scene. The world felt muffled as if I were walking through cotton wool.
Ahead, a building glowed. The greenhouse. It pulsed with a soft, internal light, a jewel box in the dead quiet. A sudden wave of warmth and humidity washed over me as I approached, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and a thousand blooming flowers, a smell so alive it was obscene in this place.
I reached the glass door, my hand hovering over the cool metal handle. Through the panes, a soft light bloomed, illuminating rows of impossible flowers and casting the humidair in a hazy glow. In the center of that light, beside theSussuronon a stone pedestal, a man stood.
His back was a rigid, unyielding line. His hands were clasped behind him, his entire form radiating a coiled stillness, the absolute tension of a hunting cat that has already scented its prey. His dark eyes were fixed on the door, his focus unwavering and patient. He knew.
The moment my boots crossed the threshold, a thin, knowing smile touched his lips. His gaze locked with mine, cold and sharp enough to feel like a physical touch. His voice cut through the thick, floral air, clear as broken glass.
“I was beginning to wonder if you’d lost your way.”
CHAPTER 25
Caio
The humid air of the greenhouse was a physical weight, thick with the cloying sweetness of night-blooming orchids. It clung to my skin and clothes, a stark contrast to the cold dread solidifying in my gut. Silva’s voice was calm, conversational, the sound of a lecturer explaining a simple principle to a slow student. My mind, which had been a whirlwind of relief and adrenaline, slammed to a halt.
“A clever plan,” Silva said, his thin smile never wavering. He gestured with his chin toward a small, discreet grille set high in the wall near the ceiling, almost invisible amongst the hanging vines. “Crude, but clever. You assumed a single, centralized air system. A rookie mistake.”
My eyes followed his gesture. The grille. It was cleaner than the vents outside, its design different. Separate. My blood went cold. A closed loop. All my calculations and careful measurements of airflow and dispersal, the risk, it all collapsed into a single, catastrophic point of failure. The soporific had saturated the barracks, the kitchens, the guard posts. But here,in the compound’s heart, the air remained pure. He hadn’t been immune. He had simply been breathing different air.
“My personal quarters and this gallery run on a completely separate, filtered system,” Silva continued, savoring each word. “A simple precaution. When the pressure dropped in the main circulation, I knew you were here. I simply had to wait.”
He let us walk into this. He watched us move through his sleeping fortress, a god observing ants in a jar. The entire infiltration had not been our victory but his amusement. My mind raced, frantically reshuffling variables, searching for an exit, a flaw in his logic, a way out. There was none. The door was the only way in or out. He stood between us and it. We were trapped.
Luzia shifted beside me, her weight moving to the balls of her feet. Her hand rested on the hilt of her knife—a brave, foolish gesture. Silva’s eyes flickered toward her, a spark of amusement in them. He would kill her before she took two steps.
As he savored his victory, my gaze broke from his, darting around the room. I wasn’t looking for an exit anymore. I was looking for a tool. My eyes scanned past the exotic, glowing flowers, the racks of clay pots, the bags of soil. My mind registered the scientific instruments of this place—climate controls, humidity gauges—and then I saw it.
A network of thin, copper pipes ran along the ceiling and down the walls, dotted with tiny brass nozzles aimed at the most delicate plants—a misting system to maintain the humidity. My eyes followed the copper lines, tracing them not to the wall leading outside, but back to a metal box in the far corner of the room. A pump. And next to the pump, low to the ground, was its own small, circular air intake. A self-contained system. A closed loop.
A new delivery method.
The solution was a spark in the cold darkness of my mind—a desperate, impossible chance. But Silva was watching us, his attention a physical weight. I needed a moment—just one. I flicked my eyes to Luzia. It wasn’t a plan I could explain, not a look with any specific meaning. It was a raw, frantic plea.Help me.
She understood.
With a guttural cry, she launched herself not at Silva, but sideways, shoving a heavy wooden cart laden with terracotta pots. It careened across the stone floor, metal wheels screaming, and crashed into a workbench with a deafening shatter of clay and spilling soil.
In the split second that Silva’s head whipped toward the sound, I moved. I didn’t think—I just acted. I lunged across the room, covering the distance in three desperate strides. I ripped the leather bellows from the pack, my fingers fumbling with the strap. I jammed the nozzle against the misting unit’s small intake filter. With all the strength in my arms and shoulders, I cranked the handle, pumping the last of the fine, white powder directly into the machine’s lungs.
Silva spun back, his face a mask of pure fury as he realized what I’d done. “No!”
It was too late. With a loud hiss, the nozzles on the copper pipes sprang to life. A fine, shimmering fog erupted from them, filling the greenhouse, catching the light, and turning the air into a swirling, opalescent cloud.
