Chapter 68 The Skyline of Glass and Greed
The transition from the Red Wasteland to the outskirts of the Human Capital, Aethelgard, was a violent shock to the senses.
Behind us lay the silence of the salt flats and the ancient humming of the Lithic-Wolves; ahead of us lay a sprawling, vertical labyrinth of neon and chrome.
The city didn't just exist; it throbbed like an infected wound.
Huge holographic billboards projected the face of a man I didn't recognize—a man with silver-grey hair and eyes as sharp as a falcon’s.
"That’s him," Silas whispered, his voice crackling over the internal comms of the transport.
"The Iron King. To the world, he is Julian Vane, the philanthropist who rebuilt the grid after the 'Great Outage.
' To us, he is the gatekeeper."
We had traded our armored Aegis trucks for a fleet of nondescript delivery vans, moving through the automated checkpoints with forged credentials provided by Dr. Aris Thorne. Even so, the air felt thick with surveillance. Every streetlight seemed to track our heat signatures, and every drone that buzzed overhead felt like an Envoy’s eye.
"The Prime Node is directly beneath the spire of the Vane Central Bank," Aris said, her fingers flying over a holographic map of the city’s sub-levels.
"But it’s encased in a 'Dead Zone'—a field that negates both digital signals and biological magic. If we go in there, Elara, you’ll be a normal human woman. Killian will be a normal man. We’ll be fighting with nothing but our hands and whatever lead-lined gear we can carry.
"
I looked at the twins. They were staring out the window at the towering skyscrapers, their expressions unreadable.
"Leo, Liam, what do you see?"
"The city is a cage, Mama," Leo said, his voice a low drone.
"The Iron King has built a cage for the world.
He thinks if he stays inside the bars, the sky-monsters won't see him.
But the bars are made of people."
"He’s right," Killian growled, checking the action on his handgun.
He looked out at the crowds of people on the sidewalks—thousands of humans going about their lives, oblivious to the fact that their world was a farm about to be cleared.
"Vane isn't just protecting the Node; he’s using it to broadcast a 'Camouflage Frequency.' He’s hiding the city from the Hive, but at the cost of the rest of the planet’s life-force.
"
"Then we tear the bars down," I said, my hand tightening on the Key of Stone in my pocket.
"Kael, move us to the drop point. We enter through the subway tunnels at midnight. "