The cold room light never changed. It was a perpetual, shadowless midday that sucked color and depth out of the world, making time a vague, intangible concept. Sophia's internal clock, once so reliable, now was a nothing, useless, shattered thing. She had no idea if she'd been in the room for hours or days. Thirst was a rasping, nagging sensation in her throat, and hunger an aching, empty one in her stomach. They had not fed or hydrated her.The only interruption to the tedium was the hiss of the sliding wall. It was a sound she was coming to dread more than anything else. This time it was a single technician, the one who carried the datapad. He had a different tray. This tray held not scanners, but a line of glass vials, empty and waiting. Beside them was a syringe, long and cruel, with a shining needle under the sterile light.The technician remained silent. He set down the tray with a soft clack and walked towards her. His movements remained the same as before: efficient, impersonal

Specialist Aris's report glowed on the polished obsidian surface of Inspector Valerius De Vries's desk. He had not summoned it. That it had been sent to him directly, bypassing the usual chain of command and marked with the cryptic, rarely used "Omega" priority, was a turn of events in itself. A deviation. De Vries detested deviations.His office was a sanctuary of control. Carved from the same black, volcanic rock as the tunnels, it was a perfect blend of nature and order. The air was perfectly temperature-controlled, scentless. A single recessed light illuminated the vast, empty surface of his desk. There were no personal touches. No mementos. The only decoration was the regular, geometric pattern of the rock itself. It was a room designed to impose order, to strip the chaotic variables of emotion and impulse.De Vries was still, his hands on the cold stone. A man carved from the same stone as his desk: cutting edges, implacable surfaces, a core of awesome, glacial pressure. His rep

Time had lost all meaning. It was no longer measured in hours or days, but in the slow, cadent dripping of water from some pipe deep in the walls, and in the intervals between the muffled arrivals of the masked men. The light was unchanging. The cold did not diminish. The antiseptic air still had the ghostly scent of antiseptic, a scent that was now the very odor of captivity.Sophia sat on the floor, her back against the unyielding composite wall. The restraints on her wrists were a familiar weight now, the skin beneath them red and hardened into a painful callus. She had learned to adjust to minimize the friction, to hold her arms in a way that relieved the pressure on her shoulders. It was a small victory, a minor calculation in the economics of survival.Her world had shrunk to this perfect, grey cube. Yet within it, her mind had expanded, pushing against the walls of her skull with the pressure of a growing well.She shifted, trying to get comfortable, and the chains rattled with

The great council chamber, a symbol now of mixed purpose, was like an enclosed tomb. The air was thick and stifling, weighed down by the filth of unclean bodies and the new, biting smell: mistrust. The usually tidy rows of benches were a jumbled throng of bodies. Men lined the aisles, occupied the archways, their faces illuminated not by the steady glow of the central luminescent fungi, but by the flickering, wild flash of torches they had brought with them. The faint light cut their faces to thin masks of fear and suspicion. Shadows they cast upon the rough-hewn walls were giants, stretched and capering.Ken stood upon the elevated dais, the same spot from which he had once delivered a verdict of mercy that now appeared a fatal error. The press of the bodies of the crowd and the leaping flames permeated him, but there was an icy chill inside. He looked out over the sea of faces, and for the first time, he did not see his people. He looked at a jury who had already heard the evidence

The air in the great chamber was no longer merely thick; it was combustible. The heat of hundreds, pressed together under the low, stone roof, created a suffocating blanket. The light was not cast by the gentle fungi, but by torches stuck in sconces and held aloft by angry hands. Their fires snarled and spat, throwing crazy, leaping shadows that turned the familiar faces of neighbors into a gallery of gargoyles. This was no gathering. It was a lynch mob in the making, and everyone there knew it.A commotion started at the doorway in the center, a ripple of whispers and turning heads. The people parted, not willingly, but pushed aside by the firm determination of the people making their way through. And then he was there.Markus.He did not sneak in. He did not step out of the shadows. He walked into the center of the room with a slow, insolent drama, as onto a stage that he owned. He was followed by a dozen of the defectors, their faces etched in hard defiance. They were his new praet