Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
Selene
The maintenance shaft was a vertical tunnel of oppressive heat and the smell of burning dust. It trembled with the vibration of the massive cables running alongside the ladder—the arteries of Quinn Tower carrying power to the beast above.
“Fifty,” Torvin whispered from below. “That’s floor fifty. Ten to go.”
His voice was tight, stripped of its usual humour. We had been climbing for what felt like hours, though it had likely been less than fifteen minutes.
I paused on a narrow service landing, hooking my arm through a ladder rung to shake out my cramping hand. My chest heaved, the dry heat burning my lungs. Sweat slicked my back, plastering my combat shirt to my spine.
Suddenly, a violent shock hit me from the inside. It was a sympathetic detonation—a flare of heat in the centre of my chest that mirrored a colossal discharge of energy fifty floors beneath my boots.
I gasped, pressing my hand over my heart.
The sensation was unmistakable. My Light was surging, wild and blinding, but the command came from the lobby. Riven. He was igniting the charge we had built between us. The residual golden fire I had poured into his shadows last night had just found a target, and he was discharging it all at once.
“Selene?” Karys climbed up beside me, her eyes scanning the darkness. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I breathed, the vibration rattling my teeth. “It’s Riven. He’s unleashed the Light.”
Terror spiked in my chest. I didn’t need to see the lobby; I could feel the sudden, violent draw on my magic pulling from the floors below. He was burning his last resort.
I wanted to drop. I wanted to slide back down into the dark and fight beside him, but his order pinned me to the ladder. You are the payload.
I choked down the panic and turned the fear into fuel.
“We have to move,” I said, grabbing the next rung with desperate strength. “Now.”
We climbed past floor fifty-two. Fifty-three.
The air grew hotter the higher we went, rising from the machinery below. My vision blurred at the edges. I focused on the rhythm.
At floor fifty-eight, the shaft widened into a small junction platform where the main power conduits split. There was just enough room for the three of us to stand.
“Two floors,” Torvin breathed, hauling himself onto the grating. “We’re almost—“
The door to Level 58 exploded inward with a kinetic blast. It sheared off its hinges and impacted the opposite wall of the shaft, missing Torvin’s head by inches.
Debris rained down, clattering against the metal grid.
“Contact!” Karys shouted.
Three figures burst through the opening. They wore the slick, black tactical armour of Varessia’s elite guard. Their eyes glowed with that milky, augmented haze.
One of the guards lunged for me without hesitation, a shock-baton crackling in his hand.
I forced the Light back down, saving the charge. I scrambled away, reaching for the iron dagger, but Karys was faster.
“Shields!” Torvin roared.
Barriers snapped into place instantly. Torvin threw up a wall of violet shadow, Karys summoned a silver arc, and my Light flared to seal my flank.
Karys dropped her guard to strike. She intercepted the nearest guard, ducking under his swing and driving a knife into the gap of his armour at the armpit. He roared, but she used his momentum to slam him against the railing.
“Go!” Karys screamed at me.
“Get up the ladder!” Torvin yelled.
He stepped in front of me, his shadow-shield absorbing a stray kinetic blast. He snatched a handful of silver spheres from his belt and threw them at the doorway.
Flash.
A blinding white light detonated in the confined space, followed by a cloud of choking grey smoke. The guards shouted in confusion, firing blindly into the shaft. Bullets sparked against the metal grating near my feet.
“We can’t fight them here!” I coughed, waving the smoke away. “There’s no room!”
“Exactly,” Torvin grinned, though his eyes were hard. “We’re taking them out.”
He grabbed the second guard—a massive Umbrakynn—and tackled him through the door and back into the corridor of the fifty-eighth floor.
“Karys!” Torvin shouted.
She looked at the open door, then at her brother fighting two men in the hallway before she turned to me.
“Climb,” she ordered. “We hold them here. If they get into the shaft, they’ll shoot you off the ladder.”
“I can’t leave you—“
“You have a job,” Karys snapped. She drew a second knife. “Do it.”
She vaulted through the smoking doorway, joining her brother in the corridor. The sounds of violence—shouts, the crack of bone, the hiss of magic—erupted instantly.
I stood alone on the platform for a heartbeat, torn.
I looked up. The ladder stretched into the gloom, terminating at an iron hatch twenty feet above.
I gripped the rungs and hauled myself upward. I moved at a breakneck pace, the burn in my muscles forgotten as the echoes of the struggle below faded into the distance.
I reached the summit. The hatch was massive, secured by a rusted manual wheel.
I gripped the cold iron. I shoved. It groaned, rusted and stubborn, but it turned.
I pushed the hatch open.
Fresh air hit my face, smelling of ozone and the coming storm.
I dragged myself up and scrambled out of the shaft, rolling onto the gravel surface of the roof.
I stood up, the wind whipping my hair across my face.
I was on the highest point in Ravenholt. The city sprawled below, a galaxy of lights obscured by drifting clouds.
The Extractor dominated the centre of the roof.
Korenth’s design was a monolith of reinforced chrome and glass, shuddering with a primal vibration that rattled the gravel beneath my boots. It was a fortress built to contain impossible pressures, designed to survive a supernova.
And standing between me and the construct were two guards.
Quinn Tower’s summit was a chaos of violent wind and screaming metal.
The hatch clanged shut behind me. The air was thin, tasting of copper and impending disaster. Above, the clouds tore apart, revealing a bruised violet sky.
The Eclipse had begun.
A twenty-foot spire stretched into the air, surrounded by a ring of oscillating pylons. Inside the central column churned the payload.
The silver fluid. It swirled violently, burning with a blinding light. My father’s life. My father’s magic. For a heartbeat, the grief gutted me, stealing the air from my lungs.
But watching him used as fuel—drawn from a tank at the base, churned through a dark metal core, and fired in a concentrated beam straight into the tear in the sky—the sorrow flash-froze into pure rage. I took a step forward. The two guards stationed beneath it moved to intercept me.
They were huge, their tactical armour matte black, their faces obscured by visors. But I could feel the discord of them—the discordant, sickly vibration of stolen magic forced into bodies that couldn’t hold it.
I drew the black iron dagger from my belt. The metal froze my palm, a bite of winter in the humid storm.
Don’t burn, I told myself. Save the Light.
The guard on the left lunged. He moved with a speed that shouldn’t have been possible for a man of his size, swinging a weighted shock-baton at my head.
I ducked, the baton sizzling through the air inches above my hair. I lunged forward, getting past his reach and into his personal space—police training taking over as muscle memory eclipsed the fear.
I drove the dagger into the gap in his armour, right between the neck and the shoulder.
The effect was instant.
The guard convulsed. The iron disrupted the flow of his augmentation. The magic holding him together snapped. He collapsed, unconscious before he hit the ground.
One down.
The second guard didn’t make the same mistake. He stopped, assessing me, his milky eyes narrowing behind the visor. He saw the dagger. He knew what it was.
He holstered his baton and drew a sidearm.
Shit.
I threw myself to the right, diving behind a ventilation unit as the first shot rang out. Concrete chips sprayed my face.
“Drop the blade,” the guard shouted, his voice distorted and metallic through the helmet.
He advanced, firing methodically to keep me pinned.
I huddled against the metal casing of the vent, calculating the distance. The knife required close quarters, but the guard kept his range. Releasing a full blast of Light was too risky; I was still a novice at gauging the output, and I feared draining my reserves before I even reached the machine.
I needed a distraction instead.
I reached for the thread—avoiding the volatile reservoir of Light and focusing on the thin, freezing thread of Shadow dormant in my chest. It was the piece of Riven I carried with me, a trace of his essence that felt more stable than the fire in my own blood.
I closed my eyes and tugged.
The shadows stretching from the ventilation unit lengthened. They writhed, turning from flat grey shapes into grasping tendrils.
The guard paused, glancing down as the darkness surged from the gravel and curled around his boots. The shadows lacked the strength to anchor him, but they were enough to disrupt his footing.
He fired a panicked shot into the floor.
I moved.
I vaulted over the vent, sprinting across the gravel while he was still fighting the dark. He tried to bring the gun up, but I was already in his space. I didn’t reach for my Light; I reached for his wrist.
I slammed the heel of my hand into the side of his joint, a sharp, practiced blow that sent the gun skittering across the roof.
Before he could recover, I spun, driving my elbow into his faceplate.
The visor cracked under the impact. He staggered back, flailing, blinded by the pain and the sudden proximity.
I swept his legs out from under him and followed through with a brutal kick to his chest, sending him sliding across the loose gravel towards the edge of the roof.
He scrambled for purchase, but his momentum carried him over the low parapet.