Chapter 48
Seph
If I had eaten, I would have vomited. My body hadn’t caught up with what my mind already knew.
Marr had jabbed a wire into my side. Two syringes were attached to it—one pumping something into my veins, the other draining me dry. I watched my blood spiral away through clear tubing and tugged uselessly at my restraints.
“Stop,” I growled. “Please.”
Marr only hummed, soft and content, like this was the happiest day of his life.
Across from me floated Echo.
Her chest rose, but not with breath—only with the churn of the fluid around her.
Something in her gaze felt delayed. Wrong.
The warped, childlike version of me was suspended in a tank of cloudy fluid, her small body limp. Her eyes were open—forced open with tape. She watched me. She didn’t blink. She didn’t move.
She was wired to a machine identical to mine, the same tubes threading into her body. Between us stood a device that drew our blood together, swirling it in a slow, obscene spiral.
The room tilted. I swallowed hard, fighting the darkness creeping at the edges of my vision.
Marr opened the door and called out into the corridor. A tech appeared, pushing a gurney.
A boy lay on it. Fourteen, maybe younger. Unconscious. An oxygen mask covered his face.
Beside him stood Alan Starling—member of the Council of Light. A friend of my father.
“Are you sure about this?” Alan asked, his voice tight. “David is so young.”
“The younger the better,” Marr replied mildly. “Your grandson will be fine. Better, I imagine.”
Marr pulled out a file. “David Starling. Aged fourteen. Preliminary APA places him at 10L, correct? Mediocre power stores.”
Alan shifted uncomfortably. “It’s not his fault. There was a genetic defect on his mother’s side—”
Marr shook his head. “No. He is perfect.”
Marr pulled out a handheld APA and held it against the boy’s skin.
The machine whirred, then beeped.
“10L.” Marr confirmed. He showed Alan, who looked away in embarrassment.
He smiled faintly. “I promise you, Alan—if I am right—little David here will be looking exceptional by the end of the day.”
“So what now?” Alan swallowed. “How do you…?”
“That is not your concern,” Marr cut in smoothly. “However, I will require a signature. Confirmation of payment.”
He shoved a folder into Alan’s hands.
“If he dies,” Alan said hoarsely, “you won’t get a penny.”
Marr inclined his head. “Understandable.”
I swallowed hard. “Mr Starling. Mr Starling—you know me, right?” I rasped.
Alan turned toward me as though he were being forced to acknowledge my existence—and it irritated him.
He met my eyes. For a moment, it felt like I was staring straight into his soul.
“Please help us,” I whispered. “Help me.”
Marr rolled his eyes and pressed another button. More poison flooded my veins. The room blurred.
But my skin—
It was crackling.
Like something was waking.
“Is she really like you said?” Alan asked softly. “Can she take power? Is she some kind of monster?”
Marr stepped closer, lifting a hand toward me—then stopped, just in time. “A monster? No. Not Persephone here.”
“Then what is she?”
“She’s a miracle.” Marr said, his voice reverent. “Both my girls are.”
Alan shifted on his feet. “And the other girl?”
“A troubled soul. But don’t worry. This will be good for her.” Marr smiled. He called out the door again.
“Bring her in.”
A sick, hollow dread tore through my gut.
Lyra Vale was wheeled inside on another gurney, unconscious. She was pale as ash, her gold hair limp and damp against the pillow. They placed her beside David, like pieces on a board.
“Stop this,” I said hoarsely. “Stop it.”
Both men glanced at me as though I were nothing more than background noise.
“Lyra Vale. A talented empath. APA 55L, but her power has been unstable of late. Too much dark mixed in with the light.”
Alan swallowed, but his eyes gleamed. “So?”
“Unstable empathic matrices bleed energy,” Marr continued mildly. “They absorb pain. Fear. Excess.”
He glanced toward Lyra.
“That makes them effective buffers. It allows my subjects to strip impurities without damaging the recipient.”
“How does it work?”
Marr was already attaching the wires.
“Watch.”
Close your eyes. Pain is near.
Echo’s voice reverberated through my mind, distant—like she was calling to me through water.
“See the blood moving from each girl?” Marr said calmly. “It is pure. Perfect.”
“The colour—” Alan murmured.
“100L,” Marr said, gesturing to Echo. “And 100D.” He flicked his gaze to me. “Perfectly balanced.”
The four of us were connected now.
A distorted machine from hell.
My blood and Echo’s were siphoned out, drawn into the device between us. It spun and folded and churned until it began to take on a strange, unnatural glow.
Marr’s face grew hungrier.
The vial spun faster and faster—until the blood was divided, split cleanly into two streams.
My darker blood poured into Lyra.
The lighter flowed into David.
Both bodies convulsed.
I fought against my bindings. I kicked. I screamed. It felt like my soul was being ripped out through my veins, dragged from my body piece by piece.
Across from me, Echo writhed. She screamed without sound.
Then it happened.
Lyra’s skin began to pale—draining, emptying—
But David—
David was glowing.
The machine screamed.
Not an alarm — something deeper. A pitch that made my teeth ache and my vision fracture.
Lyra convulsed harder, her back arching off the gurney. Her eyes flew open, glassy and unfocused, her mouth opening in a silent cry. The wires glowed where they pierced her skin, dark light crawling up her veins like rot.
“No—” I sobbed. “Stop it. Please—stop—”
It is too much, Echo whispered, her voice no longer distant. It was tight. Strained. She cannot hold it.
Lyra’s heart rate spiked on the monitor. Faster. Faster. Then stuttered.
David gasped.
The glow inside him flared brighter, cleaner, stabilising. The light settled beneath his skin like it belonged there.
Lyra screamed.
Sound tore out of her at last — raw, animal, agonised. I felt it rip through me, through Echo, through the machine itself. It was like being flayed from the inside.
I thrashed against my restraints, choking on my own breath.
Marr didn’t even look at me.
Lyra’s scream cut off.
Her body went slack.
The monitor gave one long, flat tone.
Silence crashed into the room.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then David inhaled — deep and steady. Colour returned to his cheeks. The glow beneath his skin dimmed to a faint, contained shimmer.
Alive.
Stable.
I stared at Lyra.
Her eyes were still open. Empty. Her chest didn’t rise.
Something inside me cracked open. I let out a gasping sob.
No!
Echo made a sound then — small, broken. Not a scream. A fracture.
The machine wound down, the lights fading as the system sealed itself with a soft, satisfied hum.
Marr exhaled slowly. He placed the APA against David’s skin once more.
We watched as the numbers hit ten—then began to climb.
15. 21. 25.
56L
He smiled.
“Well,” he murmured, stepping closer to David’s gurney, checking the readouts. “That answers that.”
Alan stared at Lyra’s body, his face ashen. “She—she wasn’t supposed to—”
“It was always a risk,” Marr said calmly. “Tragic, of course. But necessary, in the end.”
I couldn’t breathe.
My skin was burning now — not pain, not heat. Power. Awareness. Understanding. I felt it settle into me, into Echo.
Knowledge.
David turned his head slightly, eyes fluttering open. Light flickered behind them — not his own.
Not really.
Because when I looked at him, he looked different. Empty.
This is unnatural.
“Grandad?” His voice came out flat and cold. He sat up before us, pulling off his restraints easily.
“David?” Alan ran to his side.
David looked down at his hands like he didn’t recognise them.
“I am different.”
“You are better,” Alan wept, reaching to hug him, “he fixed you.”
David flinched and shoved him away.
“Fixed me?” David growled. His hands clenched. His breathing grew tight.
“My boy?” Alan said, his voice trembling.
David struck his own head. “Everything feels different. Wrong.”
“David, stop.”
“You’re… proud,” David said faintly. “She’s scared. Outside—people are hurt. Sick…”
His arms began to twitch, jerking like they had a will of their own.
He looked up, eyes blazing. He focussed on Lyra’s dead body beside him. His face went white with horror.
“What have you done to me?”
“Please, David—”
David threw his arms out. The air around him began to vibrate.
The lights flickered—once, twice—like the room itself was bracing.
Golden light exploded from his palms, slamming into Alan and hurling him into the wall.
He hit hard. Blood splattered behind him as his body slid slowly to the floor, eyes already unseeing.
I couldn’t move.
He killed him.
Oh my god.
David stared down at his hands like they had betrayed him. His face crumpled, confusion breaking through the glow.
“Grandad?”
Marr reacted instantly, driving a sedative into the boy’s arm. David’s eyes rolled back in his head as his body went slack.
“There, there. Rest,” Marr murmured. “You did well.”
He straightened and looked down at Alan’s body without a flicker of expression. Then he sighed.
“Let’s hope the cheque still clears.”
“Monster,” I rasped, fighting the fog pressing in on my mind. Years of medicinal abuse had given me a small resistance to sedation. I clung to it now, desperate. “You goddamn monster!”
Marr ignored me and turned toward the doorway.
“Eugene. Edmund,” he called calmly into the hall.
Beyond the glass, people were already running. Shouts echoed down the corridors.
Marr frowned and stepped outside.
Something scratched lightly at my wrist.
Then again.
I looked down, taking advantage of his distraction.
A small scalpel hovered beside me in midair.
I glanced across at Echo.
I thought you could only do this in my room?
You are closer to me now, she replied. I can see you.
And before?
Before, I only felt you.
Sister.
Sister. The word hit me like a ton of bricks.
My fingers closed around the blade. I bit back a cry as it sliced into my skin.
Across the room, a tech was gripping Marr’s arm, speaking rapidly, relief etched across his face like Marr had saved him.
I wanted to vomit.
We need to get out of here, Echo.
I cannot leave.
We have to, I whispered. I refuse to do that again.
The building shuddered, like it had been struck by a missile. An alarm wailed somewhere above us.
It shook again.
And then I heard it.
Screams.
Marr was already on his radio.
“What is going on?” he barked. “Tell me!”
“We’re under—” Static crackled. I could hear Warden Wild’s panicked voice on the other line. “Attack. Evacuate—”
“Fuck!” Marr snarled. He looked down at his folders. “This was only a proof of concept! I need a viable scale.”
“Get out—now! Get out now! Equinox—”
The signal cut.