CHAPTER 8

The Strangler

The lord must fully realize the attributes of all those in his service. From the gardeners on his grounds to the harvesters in his fields to the warriors in his court, a lord must strive to know every individual’s strength and weakness. As with an assorted garden, each plant must be tended in a precise and unique manner to bear fruit.

Passage Five, The Lost Precepts

Murray and Dozer waited in the west-end industrial reaches of Karstock, made up of flat buildings that smelled of motor oil and fumes. Only a short sprint away, downtown’s forest of skyscrapers sprang up from the cement streets and reached to the clouds.

It was rare for Daimyo citizens to traverse the lower levels of Karstock, where Murray and Dozer currently squatted in front of a shuttered repair station. Most bluebloods traveled in the aerial pods above, the nighttime traffic an unending stream of spectral light, luminous wisps following in the wake of the mechs that flowed in and out of the city.

“So boring,” Dozer yawned, staring up at the traffic.

“Not boring for them,” Murray said.

“How come we don’t get to be a part of the infiltration team down below?” Dozer asked.

“That’s the plan,” Murray said, eyeing the entrance to Karstock Labs two blocks down. “They need us for a distraction.”

Other than the tall, barbed fence surrounding it, the building was nondescript. Murray peered up toward the roof of the lab, where an iron smokestack pumped out black fumes. Cego and Sol were likely already scaling the lift shaft toward the roof.

A small guardhouse sat along the fence, where Murray and Dozer had been watching a pot-bellied merc recline in front of a feed.

“How much longer?” Dozer asked, as he reached into his pocket and produced a strip of jerky.

“Where’d you get that?” Murray whispered.

“Took it out of the stash at headquarters,” Dozer said. “You want one?”

Murray shrugged, marveling at the kid’s ingenuity in finding food wherever he went. “Sure.”

From their vantage, Murray could make out the fuzzy picture coming into the guard’s screen. Murray knew the fight the man was watching: Artemis Halberd vs. Yongl Floree. He was likely playing a top-ten Halberd feed.

“You think Cego’s so different now?” Dozer whispered as the two squinted their eyes to watch the fight. “I mean… didn’t seem like he even cared that we’d come to get him.”

“Well, he thinks we’re here to join up, so he doesn’t know we came for him,” Murray said.

“’Course he does,” Dozer said. “But I mean, if I’d been put on trial, fought the Goliath and beat him, then sent to prison before getting jacked out by my famous brother, guess I’d not care that my friends showed up either.”

Murray looked at the big kid. Though he sometimes acted like he wasn’t the smartest, Murray knew he understood more than he let on.

“Cego’s gone through a lot.” Murray ripped at the jerky. “At Arklight, they did things to him. Things no kid, no person, should have done to them. Stuff like that messes with your brain, can make you change—”

Murray held his hand to his ear and Dozer’s head perked up.

Wraith’s steady voice came over the com.

“Squad Two, move in for interference.”

“We’re on.” Murray downed the jerky and stood, putting his hand on Dozer’s shoulder. “You ready?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Dozer said. “Let’s do this.”

The two walked around the corner and across the street. Murray rapped on the glass of the guard enclosure.

The man frowned, threw his feet off the table, and switched the feed off. “What do you want?”

“Got an audience with the folks who run this place,” Murray said.

The guard quickly straightened himself up and peered closer at Murray before breaking into a wide grin. “Well, if it isn’t… Mighty Murray himself!”

Murray nodded, wanting to be on with it.

“I remember watching you fight when I was a little kik,” the guard said. “Can see it as clear as yesterday when you put Maverick down with that cross. Thing of beauty it was, even though he was empire team. Think I watched every one of your matches on SystemView after that. Even the last one… But hey, we’ve all got bad days, right?”

“Right,” Murray said. “We’re in a rush, if you don’t mind.”

“Got it.” The guard touched his hand to a receiver on the desk in front of him. “We got Murray Pearson at front gate.”

The guard stopped and eyed Dozer. “Who’s he?”

“My squire,” Murray said. “Even though I’m retired, still can use a bit of help getting around these days.”

“I know how it is,” the guard said. “Busted my hip training five years ago. Haven’t been the same since.”

The man stepped out of the guard booth. “Hate to do this to you, Murray, but I’ve got to make sure you two aren’t carrying.”

“I understand,” Murray said, as the man ran a steel rod with a blue spectral buzzing around it across Murray’s body and then Dozer’s.

The guard returned to his booth and pressed the receiver again.

“Pearson and his squire, cleared and coming up.”

A red light flashed on the gate in front of them before it slid open. Two more armed men in uniform emerged to escort them.

“Was an honor to meet you,” the guard said. “My brother won’t believe it. Best of luck in there.”

Murray and Dozer started to walk toward the facility entrance.

“Wait!”

Murray’s heart jumped as he slowly turned back toward the guard.

“We fight so the rest shall not have to,” the man said.

Murray breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t spoken the Codes for some time now.

“We fight so the rest shall not have to,” Murray replied.

Sol watched Cego scale the thick chain above her. Sweat trickled off her brow, and her shoulders started to tighten, trying to keep up with him.

“I hope the lift really is disabled, as Wraith told us,” Sol said, fruitlessly trying to get something out of Cego.

Her friend was quiet, as he’d been for the entire week preceding the mission.

At first, Sol had been upset that Cego hadn’t wanted her by his side. But she remembered what he’d been through. All Sol needed to do was think about Cego’s time at Arklight, and any grudge she had was replaced by the gnawing worry that her friend was gone, replaced by this stranger mechanically climbing above her.

They slowly made their way up the shaft in the darkness. Cego moved methodically, his hands and feet in sync as they gripped the chain.

Sol looked down the way they’d come. A fall from this height onto the hard steel ceiling of the disabled lift compartment would mean certain death, even with a rolling breakfall. She wondered if Cego would even care if she fell. He hadn’t turned back even once so far.

Wraith’s voice abruptly broke the silence, coming in through Sol’s com. “Status update, Squad Three.”

Cego responded as he reached for his next handhold. “We’re halfway up the shaft.”

“Good,” Wraith said. “Update again when you’ve reached the roof.”

Wraith and his team of Knights, along with N’auri, Brynn, and Knees, were now waiting in the sewage tunnels beneath the building. Cego and Sol had started alongside them but had parted ways to gain access to the bottom of the lift shaft.

“It’s strange how we’ve been connected, you and I, even though we’ve been apart,” Sol said, settling for talking to herself to keep her mind off the strain of the climb.

“I first met N’auri and Wraith during my travels on the Isles,” Sol continued. “And you’ve been working alongside them out here for the past year. Don’t you find that strange?”

Sol paused for Cego to respond but only heard the faint chatter of the bats nesting in the shaft.

“I haven’t been back to the Lyceum either,” Sol said. “After I returned from the Isles and buried my father, I stayed on my family’s plot to look after things. I was planning on returning for the next semester, but when I got word about you… I knew I had to head north.”

She kept talking as they climbed, hoping something might break through to Cego.

“I tried to find work in Karstock; looked to make a name for myself in the local Circles, gain some trust to see if anyone would mention you or your brother. Of course, no one would trust some Ezonian girl. I’m not sure what I expected, but I only found hostility and tight lips.”

Sol could feel her arms straining as she continued to climb. “Eventually I left Karstock, took to the road again on Firenze, and I found the Tanri. The bird people I’d heard so many stories of from my father. Cego, they took me in right away. Though we could barely communicate, somehow, they knew who I was: the daughter of Artemis Halberd. They let me live with them, fight and earn my place in their tribe. They let me wear their mask. They let me become the Firebird.”

Sol could make out a glimmer of moonlight creeping through the seams of the shaft’s ceiling. They were nearing the top.

“Cego,” Sol said. “All I knew is that if I kept fighting, if I didn’t give up, I’d find you again. And I did. That’s why we’re all out here. We’re here to help you.”

Sol wanted to tell Cego they were here to bring him home, that they were here to get him away from his maniacal brother. But she wasn’t sure how this stranger climbing above her would react; at this point, it wouldn’t surprise her if he accused her of being a traitor to the Flux.

As Sol reached to brush the matted hair from her face, a sudden blur of movement rushed by her shoulder. A large bat shot up the shaft with a screech. Sol’s hand missed its mark on the chain and she dropped backward, the darkness rushing up from below.

She crossed her ankles around the chain at the last moment, squeezing tight as her upper body was flung upside down. She hung there, suspended in the darkness, breathing hard, before she used her core to pull herself back to the chain and find her handhold again.

Cego had finally stopped. He was looking down at her.

Perhaps if she’d fallen to her death, he would have made some sound, some utterance to acknowledge Sol had accompanied him on a mission to kidnap the empire’s famed master maker.

But he stayed silent.

“Good thing I’ve got a good closed guard.” Sol laughed nervously.

Cego nodded and reached again for his next grip.

“You used to tell me about climbing on the island,” Sol said as she wiped her brow and worked to catch up. “You told me how your teacher would have you scale the cliffs with your brothers. Wonder if that’s why you’re so comfortable on this chain.”

Cego didn’t respond; he kept moving upward, closing in on the shaft’s ceiling.

“Murray told us,” Sol said. “He let us know about the Cradle. How the island you grew up on was a simulation.”

Cego stopped again.

“All you’ve gone through,” Sol said. “During the Trials and at the Lyceum, the nightmares. It makes sense now. I wish you’d told me. Maybe I could have helped.”

Cego stared down into the darkness, as if he were occupying another world. Finally, his golden eyes locked on to Sol’s. She realized it was the first time Cego had actually seen her since they’d arrived at the dockyards.

“It was my home,” he said.

“I know,” Sol replied.

Cego turned and rapidly ascended the last few meters of the climb.

He pressed his hand against the metal grate on top and punched it hard, popping it out. Moonlight streamed down into the shaft, bathing Sol’s face.

Cego turned back to look at Sol once more and lifted himself to the roof.

Knees stood ankle-deep in shit.

He’d gotten used to the smell after waiting over an hour in the sewage tunnel beneath Karstock Labs. But Knees had not gotten used to the three-foot-long rats that would occasionally scamper along the ledge of the tunnel walls, their red eyes peering at him through the darkness.

“Darkin’ swear they’re bigger than my hunting hounds,” Ulrich muttered as he paced back and forth in the muck. Of the dozen Knights on Flux Squad One, Knees didn’t dislike Ulrich quite as much as the others. The giant man at least had a sense of humor.

“It’s because of what they’re cooking up above,” a balding Knight said. “Stims seeping down into the sewage. Rats are eating it and getting bigger, stronger.”

“Until they waste away,” another Knight with a cloth tied over his face said in a muffled voice. He pointed to a rodent body floating belly-up atop the brown water, its mouth hanging open.

“Least the live ones are good for kicking,” Ulrich said as he sprang forward through the muck to launch a kick at a rat baring its teeth at him. He missed widely and showered another merc with brown water.

“Darkin’ idiot.” The Knight wiped a streaked arm across his face and stepped toward Ulrich threateningly.

“Stop,” Wraith said from the shadows, and the Knight froze. “I’ll not have this entire mission compromised because my team can’t sit still for a moment.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” the Knight said. “Just that we’re ready for action. Been near an entire shift we’ve been waiting down here.”

“I’ve told you, we’re waiting on word from Pearson,” Wraith said. “If we move ahead beneath the main facility and security has not yet been diverted, we’ll be up against odds we can’t handle.”

“Bet we can take anything these soap-eaters throw at us,” Ulrich boasted.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling the Slayer himself why you botched the mission because of your arrogance,” Wraith responded.

“Uh… no,” Ulrich said. “I’ll be fine waiting.”

“Take note of the new recruits, who’ve stood patiently without a word of complaint, unlike my elite team of trained rebels.” Wraith nodded to Knees and Brynn.

“Give the men a break, Wraith,” N’auri said from her perch on the thin ledge with her back to the tunnel wall. “These two have the pleasure of listening to my stories. We could wait all day.”

The islander was comfortable with the rats. Knees saw one of the things brush behind her, rub right against her leg, and she didn’t even flinch.

“We’ve got bugs as big as those in the bush back home!” The Emeraldi laughed as she caught Knees’s eyes. “Same on the Jade, right, Brynn?”

Brynn shook her head. “My family wasn’t near the jungles, so not sure.”

“Ah, the sorts up in the hills, then?” N’auri raised an eyebrow. “Sittin’ back and getting fresh deliveries from the fishmongers, I bet.”

“Doesn’t mean we didn’t work hard,” Brynn said defensively. “We trained from sunup all the way until we couldn’t sweat anymore in the high heat.”

“Didn’t mean no disrespect, Jadean.” N’auri held her hands up and flashed her sharp smile. “Just saying it’s probably why you’re standing in the shit over there to keep away from the little mice. You know, you could come and stay nice and dry over here with me.”

Knees could almost swear he saw Brynn blush as she waved dismissively at N’auri.

Wraith held his fist in the air and the group froze in the darkness.

“I’ve gotten word from Pearson,” Wraith said. “They’ve successfully captured the target. Security forces are being diverted as we speak.”

“Can’t believe the old man did it,” Ulrich said. “Didn’t think he’d be able to pull it off.”

“Let’s hope he can hold position until we’ve infiltrated the production facility,” Wraith said as he blinked rapidly. “You’ve got your wish, Flux Squad One. It’s time to move.”

Knees breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that Murray and Dozer had completed the first part of their mission without a problem. He wondered if Cego and Sol had made it atop the roof yet.

Wraith marched down the tunnel and waved the rebels on behind him.

Brynn offered a hand to N’auri and bowed her head slightly. “Shall I escort you from your perch, my lady, into the shit?”

N’auri smiled as she took Brynn’s hand and leapt from her perch into the sewage. “Maybe I’d get used to living up in the hills too if that’s how they talk to me.”

The companions followed Wraith down the tunnel until they stopped beside a ladder that led above. Knees heard the grating of machinery shaking the pipes running along the sewer ceiling.

“We’re here,” Wraith said. “Ulrich, you lead the way up with two men, ensure the room’s clear, we’ll—”

The lieutenant froze, staring straight ahead into the darkness.

A crimson glow had flared to life several meters down, illuminating a tiny man, a Daimyo. Knees couldn’t tell if his eyes were playing tricks on him in the darkness, but the little blueblood appeared to be floating in midair, his black eyes peering back at the group.

The man floated toward them, and the massive black mech he sat within came into view.

“Sentinel!” Wraith screamed.

Sol heard the muffled shouts in her earpiece. She listened to Wraith’s scream right before her com filled with static.

Cego had frozen in place atop the roof, listening as well, his black cloak catching the steady wind.

“We’ve got to help them!” Sol yelled. “This wasn’t supposed to happen; they were ambushed!”

“We can’t do anything for them now,” Cego said as he lifted a black mask over his face and swiftly walked toward the other side of the roof. The lights of the surrounding skyscrapers sparkled across the cityscape.

Sol ran to Cego, put a hand on his shoulder to turn him around, and suddenly she was flat on her back. Cego stood above Sol with her arm torqued, his golden eyes staring down at her through the slit in his mask.

Sol rolled over her shoulder to relieve the pressure and sprang back to her feet. Her hands were up, fists curled tight.

“Who are you?” Sol snarled. “It’s Knees down there in the sewers; it’s Brynn and N’auri! Your friends!”

Cego stared blankly back at her before whispering, “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Sol let her hands fall back to her sides, her heart jumping in her chest.

“We need to help them, Cego.” She turned back the way they’d come, ready to scale the long chain down the lift.

“We can’t,” Cego said. “If they’ve been ambushed, we won’t be able to get to them in time. We need to trust them and stay on task. Wraith and N’auri are down there with the Knights. Knees and Brynn can handle themselves. If we don’t do this, it will all be for nothing.”

Sol kept walking. Who was this stranger to tell her to not help her friends? Who was this assassin they called the Strangler? Certainly not the boy she had once known who would do anything for his friends. This was not her old training partner with the kind, curious eyes.

She turned back as she reached the open entry of the lift. Cego was walking in the opposite direction, toward the smokestack pumping black fumes to the sky. She knew he would continue on the mission without her. He’d enter the research lab and take on anything that got in his way to get to the master maker. Even if it meant his death.

She’d told Cego she’d have his back. She hadn’t been there for him before when he needed her most, when he’d gone to trial and been sentenced to execution. When Cego had been sent to Arklight, Sol had been absent on her own journey, for her own reasons.

She couldn’t leave him again.

Sol pulled her mask over her face and walked back across the roof toward Cego.

Knees watched in horror as the brown sewage turned red with the blood of rebels.

The Sentinel’s armor seemed impenetrable, the entire crew attacking it all at once and not even making a dent. The beast was far stronger than any Knight and moved with a blazing speed that contradicted its sheer mass.

Two Knights floated face down in the water. Knees had watched the Sentinel shatter one with a punch to the chest and toss another like a rag doll against the tunnel wall.

Wraith was holding off more bloodshed by goading the Sentinel toward him, always standing in front of it to attract its lethal strikes. The mech launched itself at him and threw a cross, the pale man barely weaving his head from the punch. An inch of a difference and Wraith’s skull would be pulp.

The mech charged again and Wraith dove out of the way into a splashing front roll.

“Come on, you tin shit!” Ulrich screamed as he threw his hardest kick into the Sentinel’s exposed back. The mech slid forward a few inches in the muck before swiveling around and barreling toward the tall Knight.

The Sentinel threw a roundhouse that Ulrich ducked but followed with a cross that caught the Knight on the shoulder. Knees flinched as he watched Ulrich’s arm crack.

Another Knight took Ulrich’s place, throwing a kick down the middle aimed at the pilot’s compartment, only serving to shatter his own foot. The Sentinel countered with its own kick, hurling the Knight’s limp body into the darkness.

Another rebel leapt onto the beast’s shoulders, raining down elbows atop its blocky head. The Sentinel reached back and grabbed the man, plucking him by the head like a water fruit off the vine. Knees could see the pilot within the mech encasing, the Daimyo’s black eyes pulsing.

The mech wrenched the man back and forth before smashing his head against the tunnel wall. Knees watched, horrified, as the beast whirled around and tossed the limp, nearly headless body into the sewage.

Knees had sought an opening to help, but awe and fear of the Sentinel’s destructive power had left him frozen. He saw not only the Sentinel standing before him in the tunnel but the mech that had ripped a hole through Joba. Knees saw the execution on the plains, the burning stench of flesh still putrid in his mind.

Wraith danced in front of the Sentinel again, barely dodging another punch that ripped concrete off the tunnel wall. The pale Grievar was bleeding from his face and tiring as he attempted to draw the beast from the remaining rebels.

A wild scream erupted from behind the mech and N’auri landed on its shoulders, looking like a feral street cat attacking a gar bear. She pounded at the thing’s head, attempting to give Wraith a moment to breathe, though the Sentinel didn’t even appear to notice the Emeraldi riding atop it.

“Wraith!” N’auri screamed. “It’s time; we need to use it!”

“No,” Wraith breathed heavily as he barely evaded another strike.

Knees caught a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye. Brynn was running directly at the beast, her eyes on N’auri atop its shoulders. The Jadean looked even smaller than normal as she neared the metal creature.

“Brynn!” Knees screamed as his fear finally broke, like a fever run too hot. He didn’t care about these rebels. But Brynn was his friend. He wouldn’t let her go in alone. He sprinted to join her.

The Sentinel flicked out its arm with blazing speed, and Brynn barely managed to drop backward to avoid getting crushed. The Jadean fell on her back into the sewage, staring up at the metallic beast.

N’auri screeched, pounding at the mech’s head, her fists a bloody mess. The Sentinel raised its giant leg to stomp Brynn into oblivion.

The mech jerked and stopped.

Brynn scrambled out from beneath it and backed up toward Knees.

The beast turned, attempting to grasp at something, and Knees saw Wraith with his hand plunged through the Sentinel’s lower back. The rebel lieutenant ripped his hand free, releasing wires and a plume of smoke from the casing.

In the place of Wraith’s hands were two steel spikes, each crackling with blue energy. The Sentinel swung at Wraith, and he ducked the blow before plunging one of his hand spikes into the beast’s leg.

Ulrich had staggered back into the fray, despite one of his arms hanging limply at his side.

“We’re doing that now, eh?” the big Knight said.

Knees watched as Ulrich flicked his wrist. Blue flared around the man’s bracer and a metallic casing engulfed his hand. The tall Knight charged the Sentinel, who was wildly swinging to detach Wraith from its leg.

Ulrich aimed for the pilot’s compartment, but the mech pivoted at the last moment to protect its innards, causing the fan of energy blazing around Ulrich’s fist to rip across its arm instead.

“Eye for an eye, tin shit,” Ulrich growled as the mech’s arm dropped to the ground, leaving a mess of writhing wires open at its shoulder.

“Spirits be asked, how are they doing this?” Brynn whispered as a flare of light burst from the top of the Sentinel’s shoulders. N’auri plunged both of her now-crackling hands into the beast’s head, ripping them free and blasting them back in again.

The mech whirled frantically in a lethal spin of steel arms.

Another Knight with two spikes where his hands should be was caught by the mech’s flailing and dropped lifelessly into the sewage.

N’auri continued plunging her hands into the Sentinel’s head, while Ulrich danced in and out of range, attempting to land another shot.

Knees watched as an explosion of blue blood splattered the pilot’s compartment inside the mech. The little Daimyo pilot within slumped over, his black eyes rolling back into his head.

The giant steel Sentinel wavered as if it were drunk. N’auri leapt off the beast’s shoulders, and it toppled into the muck face-first. Wraith was atop the Sentinel, his arm fully punched through its back into the inner sanctum.

The pale man breathed heavily and ripped his bloody arm free.

Sol dropped down from the duct behind Cego into the darkness of the laboratory.

She crouched on the floor, trying to get a bearing on her surroundings. The room smelled of sterile cleaning astringents. A centrifuge droned in a corner and panels blinked against the walls, but what drew Sol’s attention was a glowing glass casing, rising from floor to ceiling.

A grey, gangly humanoid form was suspended within the translucent tube.

“Who’s there?” she heard a man yell, fear tingeing his voice. She saw a little form scamper across the room and stop in front of the glowing tube.

Cego was gone from beside her, melded into the shadows of the lab.

Another voice burst into the room along with flashes of bright light, “What the dark’s going on in here?”

A full squad of armed guards entered, casting their spotlights across the room.

“Make sure the maker doesn’t escape,” Sol heard Cego’s voice emerge from the darkness.

“Someone came from the ducts as the lights went out,” the little Daimyo maker screamed. “You must protect my work!”

One guard turned his spotlight on Sol, who was crouched down near a granite counter.

“Breach, get him!”

Two men rushed Sol. She ducked behind the counter and tried to creep away from the light, but a beam tracked her, cutting the shadows in the room.

One of the shadows broke from the darkness like a spear, piercing a guard and throwing him to the floor. Sol heard a sharp grunt, then a gurgle. The remaining guards stopped in their tracks.

“There’s more of them…” one whispered. They lifted their charged weapons and cautiously approached Sol’s position again.

“Doesn’t matter how many of ’em there are,” another said. “We’ve got our orders: Protect the maker at all costs.”

Several guards crossed the lab and planted themselves in formation in front of the master maker. The little Daimyo stood protectively in front of the strange specimen within the tube. Sol couldn’t help but glance back at the creature. Empty eyes stared out from a bone-white skull lacking a nose or mouth. Gnarled muscles hung listlessly from its torso like slabs of butcher’s meat on display.

A shadow emerged in front of the tube, standing to face the entire squad. Cego. A guard took a swing with his blazing baton, but Cego ducked low and lanced the man with a high side kick.

Sol turned her attention back to the men closing in on her. She wasn’t accustomed to fighting multiple opponents. Nearly all the drills she’d practiced were focused in the Circle, where she’d face only one attacker at a time. However, when she was younger, her father had made sure to prepare her for anything.

Fighting two, three men at once, you’re likely to lose, no matter how good you are, Sol, Artemis Halberd had said. Only chance you’ve got is to cut the angles; don’t let them come at you at the same time.

Sol backed herself between two granite slabs, each stacked with glass beakers and steel canisters. She pulled the mask from her face and stood to let the guard’s light beam catch her.

“Ah, so—what we got here?”

A guard with a knot on his forehead advanced as Sol backed up. “A girly!”

The other guard grinned, looking over his friend’s shoulder at Sol. “You get lost or something, beautiful? Maybe once we put your friend’s head through the floor, we can have some fun.”

Sol began to raise her hands to the air and flashed a smile at the guard. He started to lower his weapon, and Sol kicked him in the face, hard. She threw her full weight into the strike, breaking the man’s nose and, more importantly, making him drop his weapon.

Sol shoved the screaming man backward into his friend before throwing a cross to his chin. The man dropped like a sack of vat flour, while the second attempted to scramble past him to get to Sol.

The guard’s fallen spotlight twirled on the floor and cast its beam back at the melee across the room. Three guards were swinging simultaneously at Cego, who was moving like a demon, dancing between their strikes and countering with lethal accuracy.

One guard tried to club him with his crackling rod, but Cego wrapped up his arm and broke his shoulder in a fluid movement. He held the screaming man at bay and kicked another in the chest. The third guard came from behind and ripped his long staff across Cego’s back, tearing the leather from it and searing his flesh beneath.

No matter how much Cego had changed, Sol still wanted to help him. But her own opponent was stalking her. The guard swung his steel menacingly as she backed up again.

“Know your stuff, do you, girl?”

“Why don’t you fight me like a real Grievar?” Sol growled. “Need a weapon to take on a girl?”

The man laughed. “No, but I’d like to see how you smell when I fry you.”

He charged.

Sol anticipated the movement and grabbed the man’s weapon-wielding hand with both her arms. She sank her hips and tossed him over her shoulder.

Seoi nage. Worked even better on the big ones.

He landed on the lab counter, smashing vials and glass. Sol ripped at his weapon and pried the rod away. She held it for a moment, her eyes transfixed on the pulsing electric charge. Sol considered using it, putting her opponent down in one lethal strike.

She tossed the rod aside and backed up as the man slid off the table into a crouch. “Guess I’ll be the one choosing to fight you like a Grievar,” she taunted.

A loud crack across the room drew Sol’s attention. One of the guards had swung on Cego and smashed his rod into the casing behind him. A series of fissures sprang up the side of the glass.

“My work!” the little Daimyo screeched with his hands up to the machine. “Protect my work!”

The glow from within the tube leaked its light onto Cego and the guards still surrounding him. But there was another light source now. It was coming directly from Cego. A strange radiance streaked across his arm where the leather had burned away. The guards approached him in unison.

Sol’s opponent capitalized on her distraction, shooting low for a takedown and blasting her to the ground. She defended from her back, placing her feet against the man’s hips to keep him at a distance.

“Got you where I want now.” The man pressed forward, attempting to throw a looping overhead at Sol while she was on her back. She pushed forward as hard as she could with both feet against his hips. The man stumbled and Sol used the opportunity to stand.

The guard kept the pressure on, though, diving at her. Sol sprawled her legs back and wrapped her arm deep around his neck, fishing for the guillotine. She cinched the strangle; it was tight.

The guard reacted in desperation, lifting Sol into the air and slamming her onto one of the lab tables. She winced as a shard of glass dug into her back. The man slid her across the granite surface, wildly attempting to break the choke, but Sol held on, even as more glass shards tore into her body.

Sol kept the strangle up, and finally, the body atop her went limp. She breathed heavily as she kept her arms tight to finish the job.

She stared back across the room. Cego was glowing even brighter now, with blue flames pulsing across his back, streaking his shoulders, brightest at the strange serpentine flux flowing down his arm. Doragūn. The flux was also unremoved, like the wolf on his brother Silas’s arm. Sol had seen it once before, years earlier when he’d fought in the finals match. Whatever this strange force was, it appeared stronger within Cego now.

Sol let her opponent drop lifelessly to the ground and slid off the slab of granite. She reached behind her and ripped a long shard of bloody glass from her shoulder.

She strode forward to help Cego but saw nearly all his opponents were down, unmoving on the floor. A single guard still stood between Cego and the master maker.

“Get the maker,” Cego said.

Sol saw the Daimyo cowering beside the giant tube. Wisps of curly white hair were damp across his veined forehead.

The remaining guard screamed as he charged Cego, wielding a fully charged long staff in both hands. Before the man could even start to bring his weapon in a downward strike, Cego punched his burning fist into his opponent’s chest.

The guard looked down with a bewildered expression at Cego’s arm, which had pierced his body down to the elbow. Cego ripped his bloody hand free, and the man fell to the floor.

The lab was quiet for a moment in the battle’s aftermath. Sol could hear her own heart pounding, the maker whimpering, Cego breathing hard.

“Are you… all right?” Sol asked.

Nearly half of Cego’s leather uniform had burned off, whether from the guard’s attacks or his own internal energy, Sol wasn’t sure. But she did know he was injured, a nasty gash across his back. Sol also realized it wasn’t Cego that was breathing hard. She looked up toward the tube.

It was the thing within that strained to breathe.

They turned to the broken glass casing, which was leaking a thick green ichor from the cracks. Cego stared up at the creature within, and its alien eyes met his. Its skeletal chest rose and fell like a pump.

Sol tore her gaze from the strange creature and advanced on the master maker.

“Wait,” the little man whimpered. “Please don’t hurt it.”

“It?” Sol asked. She realized the maker wasn’t concerned about his own life. He was staring up at the experiment floating in the tube beside them.

“I know what you are!” The maker scooted on his knees toward Cego. “You… you’re one of them. One of the Cradle brood.”

“You know nothing of me,” Cego said, still staring at the creature through the glass.

“Oh, but I do!” the little man said. “In fact, I was part of the team that helped develop the vats that you were born in. Of course, the Minders did the difficult work, but—”

“Shut up.” Cego moved toward the man, blue energy still pulsing up and down his arm.

“Cego!” Sol said, moving to intercept him. “We need this man for the mission. Don’t you remember?”

“Don’t you see the miracle of this all?” The maker began to smile maniacally. “That you… the first generation of truly enhanced Grievar, are here to witness the next evolution of your kind.”

The man stood and placed his hand to the vat, staring into the creature’s eyes as it continued to take labored breaths.

“You mean… this thing,” Sol whispered, “is supposed to be a Grievar?”

“Yes,” the maker responded. “I know she doesn’t look it yet, but she’s still in the first stages of her development. Give her a year… and she’ll look far different. She’s still growing and learning.”

“No!” Cego abruptly screamed, the first time Sol had heard him raise his voice. “This thing is not like us. This is an abomination.”

“An abomination?” the maker asked. “No more than you, my boy. And she will grow faster, stronger, become a better vehicle of violence than you will ever be.”

“No,” Cego said as he turned and smashed his blazing hand through the glass of the tube. The green ichor within rushed out, and the creature gasped desperately.

“What have you done?” The maker tried to get to the vat, but Sol held him back. “She can’t breathe the air yet; her lungs are not yet fully formed. We must get her into another amniotic solution!”

“No,” Cego said again. He stared into the creature’s black eyes as it crumpled to the floor of the vat, heaving for air. “It’s not made for this world.”

“Neither were you!” the maker screamed, clawing at Sol to try to free himself. “We let you live! Who are you to decide to take her life?”

“You did not let me live,” Cego whispered, turning his blazing eyes on the maker. “I survived.”

Sol trembled as she watched the creature curl up on the ground among the shards of glass and ichor. Its breathing became barely discernible before its chest was still.

The Daimyo stopped struggling. The little man went limp in Sol’s arms and began to sob.

A voice came over the com, startling Sol.

“Squad Three… status report.”

Wraith. He was breathing hard.

He’s alive.

Cego turned from staring down at the dead creature in the tube back to the Daimyo in Sol’s grasp. “We have the maker; we are on the way back to the lift.”

“Good,” Wraith said. “We’re ready to get out, then. Rendezvous by the entry point at the bottom of the lift.”

“Wait!” Sol yelled. “Are Knees and Brynn all right? What happened?”

“Yes, your friends are alive, though not all of the team was so lucky,” Wraith said grimly. “We’ll debrief when we’re clear.”

The Flux lieutenant’s voice faded, and Cego grabbed the little maker from Sol’s arms by the neck. He pulled the Daimyo onto the top of a lab table and reached toward the handhold for the ducts above.

“Do you even care?” Sol asked, staring at Cego. “That our friends are safe?”

Cego didn’t answer. He pulled himself and his new hostage above.