Enough to show me patterns.
Husker didn’t just make this place randomly. There are loops. Reused layouts. Behavioral triggers. AI-controlled variables, sure—but with constraints.
It means I can learn it.
I start charting the dead zones. Places to rest, to hide, to move undetected. I’m not playing the maze anymore.
I’mhuntingit.
And I’m leaving signs.
Every panel I crack open, I scratch a glyph. My name. A warning. A promise.
If she finds them, maybe she’ll understand.
She isn’t alone.
When I emerge again, there are three civilians huddled in a corridor. One’s bleeding from the thigh, eyes glassy. Another’s cradling the third—dead, neck bent wrong.
They spot me and they scream.
I don’t stop.
I’m not here for them.
I’m here for the fire-haired engineer with blood on her hands and steel in her bones.
My jalshagar.
And I will burn this entire maze to find her.
CHAPTER 9
LIORA
There’s something uniquely humiliating about realizing your own code is mocking you.
We’ve been walking for hours—at least it feels like hours—but every ninety seconds, the hallway resets. The light flickers, the air pressure hiccups, the temperature drops one degree, and suddenly we’re back where we started.
Same corridor. Same flickering panels. Same faint chemical smell—sweet like coolant, sour like rot.
If I listen carefully, I can hear the Maze humming, almost smug.
“Left,” Borzen grunts for the seventh time. His voice sounds like a collapsing avalanche.
I grit my teeth. “We’ve gone left six times already.”
“Then maybe the seventh’s lucky.”
“I designed the algorithm,” I snap. “Luck doesn’t exist here.”
“Clearly neither does progress,” Dravven mutters behind me.
I spin on him, ready to tear into his smug face, but the sight stops me. He looks exhausted. We all do. His normally sharp eyes are ringed dark, his coat torn, and his blaster looks like it’s been welded back together with chewing gum and spite.
Behind him, three civilians shuffle forward like ghosts. There used to be ten. Then five. Now three. One’s a mute boy who hasn’t spoken since the gas chamber incident. The other two—Callan and Shira—cling to each other like being separate might get them killed faster.
Which, honestly, it probably will.
