The air within the geothermal access chamber was so dense it could be tasted, a foul combination of damp mold, ozone from fraying wires, and the bitter, animal scent of collective terror. No one had volunteered to gather here; it was a conclave of desperation. A bubble of neglected space where the GHD's ears—and Markus's—could not reach. Water dripped from a leaking pipe in a slow, sorrowful rhythm, each plink echoing through the tense silence.They had gathered in the weak, convulsive glow of some scavenged glow-rods, their faces pale, anxious moons in the dark. The entire ragged remnant of what remained of the Aetheria Institute—thirty-seven persons, including the few remaining senior staff and the several terrified juniors who hadn't fled or been seduced by Markus's promises. They were a jury of the damned, convening in judgment in a sewer.Ken stood before them, not the posture of a director, but that of a man who had a body on his back. In one hand, he gripped the thin, black com

The judgment had been rendered. The grim, cold judgment of live burial hung in the foggy air, a suffocating pall that seemed to satisfy no one. The bloodlust had been satisfied, not satiated, supplanted by a colder, emptier acceptance. Aris and Imani had already begun to move, their hands closing tighter on Markus's arms to lead him away to his black crypt. The assembly's breath was held collectively, a moment prior to the final, awful consummation of the judgment.Then, a sound. Not a shout, not a cry. A voice."Wait."It was young. It was innocent. It cut through the thick, toxic air of the room like a knife blade. Every head turned.Sophia was at the edge of the circle of light, her form small, almost lost in the too-big institute jacket that hung over her. She must have followed them down, a silent ghost watching the macabre tableau. Her complexion was pale, but her eyes were not wide with horror. They were slitted, focused, burning with an intensity that belied her age.Ken's hea

The heavy oak door of the cell groaned shut, severing the last sliver of torchlight from the corridor and plunging the room into a close approximation of darkness. The ring of the iron bolt home was not an end to a sentence, but a comma. A held breath. A pause.Markus did not move. He perched on the rim of the cold hard stone bunk, his manacled hands on his knees. The iron was chill, a hard, unrelenting weight that sang a dull pain into his bones. He could still smell the smell of the great hall on his clothes—fear, sweat, and the sweetish, faint smell of sawdust they'd spilled to mop up the blood that was never spilled. He rewound the moment, frame by frame, in the cozy movie palace of his imagination. The axe, glinting with a cold promise. Ken's face, a troubled mask of authority, the muscles in his jaw clench and relax. The will of the crowd, a physical force pushing towards the fall.He had known the sureness of it, the finality.He had already begun the work on the inside, of rel

The climb was a fever delirium carved on stone and suffocation. Each step Elara set in front of her was a personal agony, a burning complaint in thighs and back that howled for air lungs could not provide. Sophia was no longer a person to be saved; she was a weight, a sack of bones and dying awareness that could pull them both back into the drowning dark.The air on the stairs was a cruel tease. It was a bit more wholesome than the gunk in the clogged hallways below, but "better" was relative. It was the difference between dying in deep water and dying in shallows. It still rubbed raw coming in, and left an echoing, not-at-all-satisfied ache in the chest.They shoved others on the stairs, a bleak, silent line of the desperate. No utterances were made, no cries for help. Conservation of breath was the only rule. Utterances were reduced to the language of straining hands and clenched eyes. A young woman, her face a terror mask, shoved through them, a swaddled bundle cradled against her

The dead were dead and buried, but the city was buried in a silence deeper than any tomb. The terror of the attack was already starting to thicken into an everywhere, low-grade fear, a humming undercurrent to all talk, all glance down a black alley. And upon this fertile ground of terror, Markus's tale of escape burst forth and ran wild, twisted limbs.It wasn't discussed in the open. It was discussed in whispers. In mess hall corners, above the soft hum of hydroponic tanks, parents hushed children with tales that were a whole lot more frightening than any book.They say he didn't use the door," complained a young apprentice to his friend at the forge, their faces glowing with firelight. "They say the shadows in his cell are just. They thickened. And he walked into them and was gone.".His other friend, his eyes wide with shock, shook his head. "No, my dad says that the guard heard a rustling noise such as paper. When he looked inside, there was nothing but a pile of Markus's clothes