Page 117 of Burning Ice
Daven managed a grin, half defiance and half nerves. “You’ll need someone fast when things go wrong.”
Mirel almost smiled at the bravado. Glory before the fall.
As they crossed the loading bay, Helianth’s tone softened. “Milanov asked if you’d tell Renara.”
Kylix paused only a fraction. “No. Mama already knows.” He said nothing else, but the air changed—respect and unease moving through the team. Everyone in Helion lowered their voice when they spoke of Renara Zephyranth.
Kylix turned back toward the corridor. “Let’s move.”
The convoy took the service ramp. The city stretched pale and silent beyond the glass.
Yure’s voice crackled through comms, disbelief thinly masked. “That location you sent doesn’t exist on any grid. I’ve been through the archives twice. Are you sure?”
Helianth looked toward Kylix. “Could be another loop. We’ve seen Attica fake signals before.”
Kylix didn’t answer at once. He looked at Mirel instead, frost of certainty in his eyes.
“It’s there,” Mirel said, calm and sure. “Check old Zephyr substation records. They buried those blueprints decades ago.”
Silence on the line.
“Cross-referencing now,” Yure said. “Hold. Holy hell, you’re right. There’s something under the twelfth sector. It’s old.”
“Follow my lead,” Kylix said. “Keep guiding me, Yure.”
By the under-city, fog thickened to black mist. Corridors narrowed as they descended. Warning lights strobed slow, a dying heartbeat. Vandor rode point, eyes forward. Helianth scanned the feeds. Daven bounced a knee and tried to still it.
The descent went on longer than it should have. Every turn looked the same—a rib of metal, a valve leaking cold vapor. The air grew warmer but thinner, as if the city above them had stopped breathing. The hum of the engines faded until even their pulse sounded mechanical. A drop of condensation slid down the wall and burst against Mirel’s wrist, leaving a trace of chill that didn’t fade. He thought of the frost still waiting in the Waltr, recording everything they’d already seen. Down here, it would find nothing but echoes.
Every footstep sounded like it didn’t belong. The air grew thicker. They turned sideways to slip between machines that looked grown, not built. Cables looped the walls like veins. Light shifted at each turn as if the building could not decide what to remember. Vandor’s silhouette cut clean through the fog. Mirel watched the rhythm of his shoulders and let it ground him against the metallic pulse in his ears.
“Someone bought these floors off the map,” Helianth muttered.
“Attica,” Kylix said. “Or whoever owns them.”
Mirel met his eyes. He didn’t speak, but the bond sparked. Heat met cold.
They breached at level minus forty-two. Doors parted on a twilight of emergency strips and chemical fog. The place opened like the belly of a dead machine. Condensation ran down the walls and caught the red of warning lights. Pools of residue slicked the floor, reflecting thin Luminary figures as they entered. Old consoles hung by torn wire. Screens pulsed with ghost data. Antiseptic and ozone sat over rot, a laboratory half abandoned and half eaten by corrosion. Pipes hissed somewhere beneath the plates. The line spread and held. Boots splashed. Weapons rose to eye level.
A chair scraped.
They spun. In the corner, a man in a shredded white coat writhed against cable binding his wrists. Tear tracks cut his cheeks. His mouth was blistered from a gag.
Kylix crossed and tore the gag free. “Doctor Serrin.”
“I didn’t… they said…” His breath hitched. “They took the units and ran. They left me for you. They left him. Said he was more trouble than he was worth.”
Vandor’s voice came from the side hall. “Sir. Power signatures ahead.”
“Show me,” Kylix said evenly, lowering his head until his shadow covered the man. “Helianth, hold the bay. Vandor, arrest the doctor.”
Serrin tried to pull back, stammering about a mistake, but Vandor caught his arm at once. The movement was fluid. His grip was iron, a calm authority against panic.
The doctor trembled. “I can show you the way. He’s in the inner lab. It wasn’t my fault.”
“We’ll see about that. Take him.” Kylix nodded. Vandor guided the man forward with a steady hand that promised both safety and consequence.
The inner lab opened like a chamber carved from steel and glass. Cables hung in heavy loops around damaged consoles. The air had an acid bite and an electrical tang. At the center lay a narrow bed threaded with coils. A young man lay there at the edge of manhood. Bones too sharp from hunger. Silver-blue veins lit beneath thin skin as if lightning had chosen arteries. White-blond hair stuck to his forehead. Red abrasions scored his collarbones where straps had failed. The monitors hiccuped toward flatline and jittered back as if refusing to pick a side.
