The Decay System: I Alone Can Reinforce Reality

The Wave

The first scream came from the far end of the corridor.

It was a short, wet sound, and it ended in a hiss. A man at the back of the crowd turned to gray powder where he stood, and the people around him recoiled, shrieking, stumbling over one another. Then the second one went. Then the third.

The wave began to move.

Corvin was not detonating them all at once. Silas understood it in the half-second before his body began to act. The man could not afford to. He was sweeping them, rolling the marks off one by one from the back of the crowd toward the door, three per second, like a fuse burning toward a barrel of powder.

The door was the barrel.

[Marks remaining: 148.] [Wave velocity: 3 per second.] [Time to contact with Sanctuary boundary: 49 seconds.] [Stability: 156 of 600.]

Forty-nine seconds. A hundred and fifty-six Stability. Four per mark meant thirty-nine saves.

It was not enough. It was never going to be enough.

But Silas had learned something in the last hour, something he did not want to know, and it stood in front of him now like a locked door he had already decided to open.

Every person who died on that wave filled the Core with enough fuel to save a hundred more.

"Dr. Reyes," he said, and his voice came out strange. "Take them in. As fast as you can. Do not stop."

"Silas, what are you..."

"Go!"

He plunged into the crowd.

It was like wading into a river of ghosts. Hands reached for him. Faces blurred past, a boy, a grandmother, a man with a bandaged eye. He did not look at any of them for longer than a second. He touched the nape of a neck, felt for the thread, and drove gold light into the anchor. Crack. Next. Crack. Next.

Behind him, the wave roared closer. The screaming grew louder. Silas could feel the dust rolling over the crowd like fog, drawn into the open doorway, drawn into the Core, and every time it hit his chest he felt another life pouring into him.

[Aether Dust absorbed: 61,000 grams.] [Stability: 391.]

He did not stop. He could not stop.

"Twelve," he gasped. "Thirteen. Fourteen."

A woman grabbed his sleeve. "My husband," she sobbed. "He is three rows back. Please. He is right there."

Silas looked. The wave was already in the third row. A man in a green jacket was staring at him over the heads of the crowd, and the black light under his skin had started to swell.

"I cannot reach," Silas said.

"Please."

"I cannot reach him."

The man in the green jacket mouthed something at his wife. Silas never learned what. A flash of black. A puff of gray. The dust drifted across the corridor, glittering, and it was drawn into Silas's open palm like a prayer.

He screamed. The woman screamed with him.

Then he turned and snapped the mark of the person beside her, because there were still people to save.

[Stability: 774 of 600. Capacity increased: 900.]

The numbers climbed. The crowd thinned. By the time the wave reached the front rank, Silas was no longer running. He was walking, moving through the corridor with his hand out, touching each neck like a priest blessing the dying. Gold light flashed. Cracks rang out like breaking ice. Behind him, Dr. Reyes and Mira and three nurses were hauling survivors through the door, one after another, in a ragged, sobbing line.

When the last mark on the last carrier shattered, the corridor fell silent.

Silas stood in a ring of drifting ash. His knees buckled. He caught himself on the wall. He was shaking, and the shaking would not stop.

[Marks remaining: 0.] [Marked carriers saved: 107.] [Marked carriers lost: 41.] [Stability: 806 of 900.]

Forty-one people. He had counted every one.

A slow clap echoed down the corridor.

Corvin Hale stood at the far end, hand against the wall. He looked terrible. Sweat plastered his scalp. His scarf hung loose. A thin line of blood ran from his nose, and the black light in his palm guttered like a dying candle.

"Magnificent," he rasped. "You saved a hundred and seven. Forty-one died. A butcher's bargain, and you still came out ahead." He smiled, red-lipped and exhausted. "Do you feel it, Silas? Eight hundred Stability. More than any man in this ruin has ever held. And all of it paid for in blood."

"You made me do it."

"I gave you a choice. That is all anyone ever gives anyone." He took one stumbling step forward. "I am out of marks, and nearly out of strength. You could kill me now. You have the power. Do it, and the city will call you a hero."

Silas lifted his hand. Gold light gathered in his palm, enough to freeze Corvin where he stood, enough to end the dawn, the marks, the war before it began.

His arm trembled. Corvin did not move.

"Why are you smiling?" Silas whispered.

"Because you have not looked at your Core."

A cold weight dropped through Silas's chest.

He turned. Through the open door, deep in the shelter, he could see the Keystone, the thick pillar glowing at the heart of the room. It was still gold. But the gold was wrong. Thin black veins were spreading through it, fine as hairs, creeping up from the base.

[Warning: Core contamination detected.] [Source: Decay-marked Aether Dust. 41 sapient carriers absorbed.] [Contamination: 11 percent. Spreading.] [Host contamination: 3 percent.]

Silas looked down at his own hands.

The gold light wrapped around his fingers had a thread of black running through it, small as a pencil line, pulsing in time with his heart.

"Every mark I made carried a piece of me," Corvin said softly. "You ate forty-one of them. Eight hundred Stability, Silas. And every drop of it is mine."

The corridor lights flickered.

"Welcome to the partnership," said Corvin Hale. "Partner."

The black line in Silas's palm began to grow.