It’s too good to be true. So I poke around, hands trembling.
Takes me twelve minutes to find the gas lines in the walls. Sleep vapor, slow release. Probably kicks in at midnight game-time.
Dirk never gives anything away for free.
Borzen eyes me from the corner. “Can you disable it?”
“Temporarily.” I wipe my face. “I’ve redirected the gas release into the waste valve. It’ll buy us maybe eight hours before it reboots.”
Dravven lets out a low whistle. “Goddess, I’m starting to believe youreallymade this thing.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” I say flatly. “Teen genius turned live-action death architect. Somebody get me a damn trophy.”
Borzen checks the corners like a soldier sniffing for snipers. “We sleep in shifts.”
“No point,” I mutter. “Even if someone stays up, there’s nothing to stop. The gas floods no matter what.”
“But at least,” Dravven adds, “if we sleep, we dream of better deaths.”
I look at him. He’s lounging on the far cot, one arm behind his head like he’s on a beach somewhere. But there’s something tight around his mouth. Something haunted.
“You always this chill?” I ask.
Dravven lifts a brow. “Spent three years in a prison cell on Arkos Prime. Only game they let us play was a demo loop ofMonstrous Mazes.I used to pretend I was inside it.”
I blink. “Seriously?”
“Better graphics now,” he says with a wry smirk. “But worse perks.”
For a second, I don’t know whether to be flattered or throw up. “So I basically gave you the fantasy of running for your life from plasma saws.”
“I mean, it beat watching the ceiling mold grow.”
He closes his eyes. Borzen grunts in disapproval and stays standing near the door like a brick wall with daddy issues. I sit down on the edge of a cot and start to pull off my boots. The gel from earlier still clings to my legs in patches—sticky and sour-smelling, like burnt marshmallows.
My body’s aching in places I didn’t know could ache. Muscles trembling. My hands have cuts I don’t remember getting.
I stretch out on the cot. Cold. Thin. Feels like sleeping on a pizza box.
Still. I’ll take it.
I don’t think I dream, exactly.
But I float.
In the dark, there’s a pulse—steady and low. A drumbeat I don’t recognize. It’s not mine. Too heavy. Too deep. Like the echo of something older than cities.
Jalshagar.
The word brushes across my skin like breath.
I shiver and open my eyes.
And there it is.
In the corner of the room, near the maintenance panel, is a mark.
A symbol I didn’t code.
