Page 110 of Burning Ice
“Green light,” the commander said. “Go in.”
“On me.” He pushed the door open. The hinges gave a low groan.
Kylix froze. The air pressed against him, heavy and wrong. His breath caught while the sight sank in. This was supposed to be the one. Every lead, every cross reference, every hour of chase had pointed here, and they were still too late.
The chamber stretched wide before them, glowing in dim red emergency light. Rows of empty cages lined the walls, some half open, metal bars catching the flicker of the lamps. Chains swung from the ceiling, creaking in rhythm with the storm. Pools of cooling blood shone across the floor. The air was thick with metal and the ghost of heat, as though the building itself remembered the violence it had once held.
“Keep formation,” he whispered. “They were here.”
Helianth shifted left to cover the blind corner. The back line widened the angle without a word. They had done this enough to move like one body. Even fear followed orders when the spacing was right.
Kylix stepped forward. A single handprint streaked the wall, the fingers dragged downward and ending in nothing.
Helianth studied the monitors. “This place was live less than an hour ago. Look, the feeds are still cached.”
Kylix scanned the room. In the flicker of red light he thought he saw something shift, a reflection in the metal, a trace of movement. He turned, but it was gone. Smears and faint impressions marked the floor, traces of struggle that had stopped too suddenly.
Somewhere deep in the hall, a low hum began. The vibration ran beneath their feet, faint but steady, like a heartbeat caught in the walls. The cages seemed to tremble.
“Something’s here,” Yure’s voice said softly through the comm. “A residue. Reading’s faint but stable. He left something behind.”
“Mark it,” Kylix said. “We’ll analyze later.”
Then silence settled. The hum of dying machinery faded. A single light flickered. Kylix could hear his own pulse, steady and loud.
A monitor came alive, filling the room with pale light. Bekn’s face appeared, grin stretched, image breaking in and out of focus. His voice came through the static in uneven bursts, laughter bleeding through the distortion.
He wasn’t here. He was watching.
“Oh, so you finally found one of my playrooms,” Bekn said, voice lazy and cold. “Too bad you’re late again.”
“Where are they?” Kylix snapped. “Where did you take them?”
Bekn’s grin widened. The distortion shuddered, making his mouth move a fraction slower than his words. “You don’t get to ask questions anymore, cousin. You get to watch.”
The image jumped. Screams broke through the feed, muffled and sharp, then cut off mid breath. A different room flashed, shadows hanging, blood pooled, movement just out of frame. Then Bekn leaned closer, grin still there, teeth catching the red light.
“You keep chasing ghosts, cousin,” he whispered. “But you never learned to look above you.”
Kylix’s gaze lifted in spite of himself. For a second he caught the reflection of a lens, or maybe an emblem burned into the ceiling. Then the screen went black.
Heat erupted from him like a wave. The cages glowed, wires snapped, glass burst.
Helianth grabbed his arm. “Kylix, stop.”
“They were here,” Kylix said through his teeth. “I can smell it.”
“I know. But if you burn the evidence, we lose everything.”
He forced the heat back down. The temperature dropped until only rain whispered above and metal groaned as it cooled. Sweat ran under his collar. Control always cost.
He walked through the wreckage again, boots crushing broken glass. On the far wall a dark mark shaped like a handprint shimmered faintly.
Too late again.
The smell hit first, blood cooled to iron, smoke gone sweet from burnt plastic. He wanted to look away but forced himself to catalogue every inch, the drag marks, the dented latch, the single bootprint facing the wrong direction. The men behind him waited for orders that would not come. He felt the weight of them the way heat feels a fuse, ready, inevitable. He lowered his head. The light from the broken screens flickered across his gloves, making it look like his hands were still burning.
“Clear it,” he said finally, voice raw enough to scrape. The words fell flat in the emptiness, swallowed before they could echo. No one moved until he did. When he turned toward the corridor, the reflection of the cages followed him down the glass, rows of ribs repeating into dark.
