A drop of water fell on me from the condensation on the conduction cables that ran along the ceiling. I brushed it off my cheek and ran ahead of Ezra to the only open door down the long hallway. Skidding through the doorway, I rushed inside—then froze as if I’d run up against a pane of glass.
Julian sat on the floor, barefoot and dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing at the Continental Exposition. His waistcoat was gone, and his shirt was torn and half unbuttoned. He had his hands on what looked like a spherical conduction pad. Radiance flowed from his palms into the rounded surface, and he watched it with a dreamy expression. He looked … relaxed.
There were three strange oozing marks on his forehead. Perfect circles, evenly spaced.
“Julian?” I asked, sinking to crouch on the other side of the metal sphere. “Can you hear me?”
Julian glanced up, the radiance pouring from his hands unwavering. As if disinterested, he returned his attention to conducting. Generating.
“He doesn’t know us,” Ezra said behind me. Anguish made his voice hoarse and tired. “He doesn’t know who we are.”
“It must be temporary,” I said, desperate to be correct. “It’s the shock of whatever they’ve done. The Indicator mentioned a procedure.” And then, recklessly, I’d killed him before I could interrogate him and find out how to undo the damage.
“We need to get him out of here.” Ezra lowered himself kneel at Julian’s side. He touched Julian’s arm, and Julian elbowed him away as if shooing a horsefly. “Julian. You can’t stay here. You’re cold. Let’s go somewhere warmer,” he went on gently, as if speaking to one of the children upstairs.
“We don’t have time to convince him,” I said shakily. What I’d done was catching up to me. I’d killed the master of the House of Industry. “We have to figure out how to release all of them. Quickly.”
“It’s not that simple!” Ezra snapped, making me flinch. Julian seemed oblivious, his attention on his hands. Cringing apologetically, Ezra lowered his voice. “Forcing him could make this worse.”
“Not worse than the alternative.” I swallowed. “Soon, every Transistor in the House will be upon us. They’ll kill us, and Julian will be alone down here until he dies. Do you understand?”
With a grimace of acknowledgment, Ezra put his arms around Julian from behind and tried to pull him away from the sphere. As soon as Julian’s radiance thinned and broke contact, he flailed, reaching frantically for it and trying to shrug out of Ezra’s hold. Julian wasn’t speaking—not with words—but he whined a miserable, anxious sound that made my chest throb terribly.
“Fuck,” Ezra said, letting go of Julian and falling back heavily. He was panting and ran his hands through his hair with a gravelly frustrated cry.
Julian scrambled forward and put his hands back on the sphere. He made a wordless sound of relief and huddled closer to it, as if warming himself over flames.
I could see that Ezra was unraveling, his hand trembling as he wiped the sweat off his forehead. “What are we going to do?” he asked, staring at Julian’s back. “What did they do to him?”
“Ezra,” I said urgently, “Stay with me. Let’s think.”
Mind racing, I covered Julian’s hands with my own, not pulling him away from the conduction sphere, but instead letting him feel my touch. His breath hitched, but he didn’t otherwise move. I could feel the thrum of his radiance through his skin. He’d always done such precise work. I’d never realized how much raw power he had within. He must have narrowly avoided being made a Generator as a child.
The sphere was connected to a conduction cable bolted to the stone floor and covered in a thick protective material. I traced its path with my eyes, following it to the wall, where it crept up and out a small opening to the hallway.
“This thing is connected to those cables on the ceiling,” I said. “We have to disconnect it from the rest of the House. With nothing to channel radiance into, the metal will only heat up. It’ll hurt to do what he’s doing now.”
“The solution is hurting him?” Ezra asked, following my gaze.
“He’s not going to fight to get his hands back on the conduction surface if it burns him. I don’t like it either. But there’s no other way to get him—to get all of them—to stop generating.”
I let go of Julian and walked a few steps into the hall, studying the cables. There were at least twenty at the thickest point, each branching off into one of the cells. They were too well protected for me to use radiance to melt them. And if I tried, I might cause a disruption in the flow of radiance that could damage Julian or one of the other Generators. “We have to break the connection.” Ezra had followed me out, and Igestured, showing him the point where all the cables met and entered a narrow duct leading up to the House’s main floors. “Here.”
Another drop of water fell on me, and I brushed it away with a shudder. It felt like the Sterling River was slowly trying to reclaim this space that had been carved out so close to its bank.
Making a thoughtful sound, Ezra touched the wet spot on my cheek. Then he looked up. “There’s moisture on every wall. It’s collecting on the backside of those cables and dripping through. Stand back a little. I’m going to try something.”
With a flutter of nerves, I backed into Julian’s cell and watched Ezra from the doorway, recognizing the faraway look in his eyes as he surveyed the cables. His mouth moved silently, and I wondered what he was asking the water to do. What it was taking to convince it to listen to him.
“It’s more difficult down here,” he murmured, hunching over as if winded from running. “There’s radiance in everything. Traces of it in the water. Makes me feel muzzled.”
“What can I do?” I asked helplessly, glancing back at Julian. Oblivious, he watched his hands with a serene expression that made me want to scream until my throat bled.
“Nothing,” Ezra responded tightly. Condensation gathered into thicker beads until it abruptly poured like a drizzling rain from the cables. “Watch your head. I don’t think this is going to be especially precise.” Giving me no further warning, he took a step back, gesturing as if pulling an invisible rope with two hands. He growled, and the cables creaked, bending toward him. Water flowed down in earnest.
If Ezra did something too imprecise, would he flood the catacombs with raging water from the Sterling River?
I found myself willing to accept that possibility. It would be reasonably quick for all of us. A shock of cold, a brief panic, and then an end to this torture. Mercy delivered by nature’s unfeeling might.
