Next to it, a service staircase descended into the trench—the throat of the building.
I took the stairs three at a time, my boots ringing against the metal grating. The air grew colder the deeper I went, smelling of wet earth and old grease. Down and down.
At the bottom, a heavy steel door stood slightly ajar. I slipped inside.
The corridor beyond was a tunnel of peeling paint and stuttering sodium lights. This was the old pneumatic exchange, the guts of the industrial city before the high-rises took over. Thick brass tubes ran along the ceiling like arteries, silent now, coated in decades of dust.
I moved fast, keeping close to the wall. The pain in my shoulder was stronger here, a magnetic agony that dragged me forward.
Closer. He’s closer.
I rounded a corner and stopped dead.
A guard stood at the end of the hall, stationed in front of a iron door. He wore the standard gear of a private contractor and looked bored as he tapped away on his phone. He didn’t hear me over the hum of the building’s ventilation.
I stopped. I needed to rely on the discipline Riven had drilled into me.
Control. Reach. Push.
I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, finding the heat hidden beneath my ribs. Unlike the wild fire of the alley, this heat settled like a block of lead.
I stepped out from the corner.
The guard looked up. His eyes went wide. He opened his mouth to shout.
I thrust my hand forward. I crushed the rising flare, compressing it into a single, solid wave of force. The air warped. A silent, invisible hammer slammed into the guard’s chest. The blow lifted him off his feet, sending him flying backward. He struck the steel blast door with a resounding clang, the breath driven out of him instantly. His head snapped against the metal, and he slumped forward, unconscious. I lunged, catching him by the vest before he could hit the concrete. I lowered him silently to the floor, dragging him clear of the door.
He didn't make a sound.
I stood up, my hand tingling with the remaining heat. I lunged for the blast door and yanked the handle, but it was deadlocked. A frantic pat-down of his pockets yielded nothing. I slapped my palm flat against the mechanism and drove a spike of concentrated heat into the metal. The tumblers groaned, clicked, and melted internally. I shoved the door open.
The smell of rust vanished, replaced by the scent of ozone and antiseptic. I stepped onto a narrow metal gantry that hung twenty feet above the floor of a massive, converted storage facility. The metal grated under my boots, vibrating with the hum of the machinery below. From this height, the darkness of the old factory had been scrubbed away, replaced by a white, sterile box—a lab built inside the ruin. I crouched low behind the safety railing, peering down at the activity in the brightly lit space.
The room below was vast—white tiles, harsh strip lighting, like an operating theatre built inside a submarine. Men and women in white coats moved with efficient, terrifying purpose.
And in the centre of the room, separated by glass walls, was a containment cube.
And trapped inside was my father.
Eamon lay strappedto a metal table inside the glass cube.
His shirt had been cut away. His chest heaved, his face a mask of grey agony.
Three clear, thin tubes connected to his right forearm, running up to a complex array of glass and chrome machinery hanging above him. Silver flowed through them.
A gleaming, viscous liquid that glowed with its own internal light. It pulsed through the lines, drawn out of him beat by beat, flowing into a small metal canister on a trolley.
The sight punched the air from my lungs.
My shoulder screamed. The scar seared, an iron twisting deep in the muscle, reacting violently to the raw, concentrated magic bleeding out of him.
Bile rose in my throat, hot and acidic. The room tilted dangerously.
They were draining him. Siphoning his magic—his life—right out of his veins.
He looked so small. So old.
If I didn’t stop this, he would be a husk in minutes.
