A frantic thrumming vibrated against Rhys’s boot soles. Not the familiar pulse of her volatile reagents reacting, but the jarring rhythm of a panic-stricken message carried by the wind-chimes on her clinic's exterior. Her heart hammered, a frantic drum against her ribs. She was too far, too exposed. Scoured dust devils danced across the Ashfall Wastes, blurring the jagged horizon, as she urged her scavenged skimmer forward, its rickety frame groaning under the strain. Every rattling protest from the engine echoed her own rising dread.
Elder Roric. The name curdled in her gut. He had no business poking around her veiled clinic, especially not its subterranean levels. After the Aqua Magna debacle, Roric, a petty man whose authority chafed under Rhys's recent, undeniable success, would be looking for any excuse to claw back control, to expose her.
Ash coated the Enclave’s outer walls, clinging to every crevice, as Rhys brought the skimmer to a shuddering halt. Her clinic, a salvaged structure patched with scavenged metal and reclaimed timber, squatted low, a deceptive facade of crumbling ordinariness. But the glint of a lantern by the clinic’s rear, near the hidden service entrance, spoke volumes. It was not ordinary.
She vaulted from the skimmer, leather duster flapping, and moved with a predator’s silent grace. Her chirurgeon’s bag, heavy with scalpels and strange tinctures, slapped against her hip. A cold certainty settled in her chest: Roric was there.
Voices drifted on the wind—gruff, accusatory. Rhys rounded the corner. Indeed, a lantern cast harsh shadows, illuminating Elder Roric’s gaunt, severe face. Beside him, a young Enclave tech, wide-eyed and nervous, fumbled with a set of thermal cutters against the reinforced steel door that led to the sub-level.
“Roric,” Rhys’s voice cut through the air, cool and sharp as a shard of ice. Her hands instinctively went to the utility belt at her waist, a subtle threat in the gesture.
Elder Roric straightened, his eyes, dark as polished obsidian, narrowed. “Kaelen. Took your time. We have a situation.” He gestured vaguely at the fortified door.
“A situation?” Rhys stepped closer, her gaze sweeping from the cutting tool to the tech’s pale face. “My private stores are not for public inspection, Elder.”
“Private stores?” Roric scoffed, a dry, rustling sound like dead leaves. “I heard a tremor. A… hum. And your clinic has a habit of producing unusual anomalies, Kaelen. After the Aqua Magna’s ‘clog,’ I’m not taking chances.”
“A tremor was likely the geothermal vents beneath Sector Three,” Rhys countered, her voice unwavering. “As for a ‘hum,’ perhaps your ears are ringing from the effort of micromanaging the Enclave’s dwindling patience.” A low, dangerous hum, indeed, emanating from her own tightly coiled fury.
Young tech fidgeted, eyes darting between them. He lowered the cutters.
“Don’t stop, young man,” Roric barked, snatching the tool. He hefted the thermal cutters, the air around its tip already shimmering with heat. “I have reason to believe you’re harboring something dangerous. Unsanctioned research, perhaps. A plague strain you’re… experimenting with.” He fixed Rhys with a gaze meant to pierce.
Rhys’s jaw tightened, a barely perceptible clench. “My current work involves stabilizing highly volatile alchemical compounds for the Enclave’s new solar condensers. They require absolute, undisturbed isolation. Any vibration, any shift in air pressure, could result in an explosive decontamination of this entire quadrant.” She lied smoothly, her voice betraying not a hint of the fabrication. “The Enclave’s Council would be most displeased if a senior Elder were responsible for such a… catastrophic setback.”
Roric’s hand, holding the cutters, wavered. He knew the volatile nature of her alchemical expertise, knew the devastation even a small miscalculation could wreak. Yet, suspicion hardened his eyes. “Your reputation for ‘catastrophic setbacks’ often benefits your own… agenda.” He remembered her extortion of the Prefect, the way she had turned his negligence into her gain. Rhys Kaelen was a viper, he thought, cloaked in competence.
“My agenda, Elder, is the Enclave’s survival,” Rhys replied, a dangerous edge in her tone. “A survival I am uniquely positioned to ensure, as recent events have demonstrated. Or perhaps you’d prefer the Aqua Magna still spewed rust into our precious stores?” Her gaze dared him to answer.
Roric hesitated, his face a mask of frustration. He had to be careful. Challenging her directly now, after her heroics, would paint him as petty and obstructive. The Council, eager for stability, would not appreciate further disruption. He glared at the reinforced steel, then back at Rhys.
“I will return with a full Council mandate, Kaelen. Do not think this matter is closed.” He lowered the cutters, his grip white-knuckled. With a curt nod to the tech, he stalked off, his footsteps echoing his irritation.
Tech visibly sagged with relief. “Chirurgeon Kaelen,” he murmured, a tremor in his voice, “I’m sorry, he… he insisted.”
“I understand, Varen,” Rhys said, her voice softening slightly. She offered a small, reassuring nod. “See to it these cutters are returned to the armory. And perhaps,” a wry twist of her lips, “suggest a thorough recalibration.” The tech scurried away, undoubtedly grateful to escape.
Rhys leaned against the cold steel of the door. Her breath hitched, a ragged sound. A bead of sweat traced a path down her temple, dissolving into the grime on her cheek. Roric would be back. Not with a full Council mandate, perhaps, but with an inquisitor’s zeal. Her time was running out.
She ran a hand over the door’s surface, its seamless design camouflaging the intricate locking mechanism. Reaching into a hidden pouch on her belt, she produced a slender, magnetized key. A soft click echoed in the stillness as the ancient tumblers yielded. Pressure on a hidden panel and the heavy door hissed open, revealing a short, dark tunnel.
Cool, stagnant air greeted her, thick with the metallic tang of old blood and the faint, antiseptic smell of her own volatile concoctions. She flicked on her arm-mounted lumen-lamp, its beam cutting through the gloom. The tunnel descended, steps worn smooth by her repeated passage.
Her feet moved silently across the packed earth floor of the sub-level chamber. A low hum, a real one this time, emanated from the collection of scavenged machinery that surrounded the central cot. Tubes snaked from fluid reservoirs, connecting to the pale figure lying there. Wires crisscrossed a makeshift monitoring station, salvaged readouts flickering with the silent rhythm of a struggling life.
Kael. His name, a whispered prayer and a damning secret, tasted like ash on her tongue. Two years. Two years since she’d found him, half-buried in a collapsed tunnel leading to the Outer Wastes, a relic of a world long gone. He was emaciated now, his once-powerful frame reduced to bone and taut skin, yet the angular lines of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, hinted at the man he had been. A ghost of the old empire, clinging to life through her forbidden knowledge.
She moved to the cot, her eyes scanning the readouts. Stable. Just. She adjusted a drip, her alchemist’s hands precise, practiced. The air in the chamber was heavy with the weight of her choices, her moral compromises.
Finding him had been an accident. Her initial impulse, to leave him to the wastes, had been quickly overridden by the glint of an ancient symbol on his wrist, a sigil of the forgotten imperial guards. Knowledge, forbidden and dangerous, flowed through his veins, secrets she needed to uncover. Or perhaps it was just the chirurgeon’s instinct, a perverse refusal to let life simply ebb away, even a life that threatened to unravel her own careful existence.
Kael had been a blur of rage and confusion in the dying light, a feral thing, when her crude rescue had gone awry. She’d swung her heavy, scavenged pipe, not to kill, but to disable. His eyes, even then, held a flicker of something ancient, something that had died with the empire. And then he’d fallen, a deep gash on his temple, struck down by the very scavenger she’d been trying to save from him. The other scavenger, terrified and injured, had barely managed to whisper a warning before collapsing: “He… he was hunting something. Something they hide in the ash.” Then, silence.
Rhys felt the familiar chill that always accompanied the memory. How easily she could have perished that night. How much she had sacrificed since. An ordinary life. A quiet life. That was the privilege she yearned for, the one this breathing secret denied her.
She sat on a small stool beside the cot, the dim light casting long shadows across her face. Her fingers absently traced a scar on her arm, a reminder of a close call in the wastes. She closed her eyes, exhaustion a heavy cloak.
“Kael,” she whispered, her voice rough with fatigue. The name still felt foreign, a burden rather than an identity. “Please, don’t wake up.”
Her head sank into her hands. Just then, a tremor ran through the cot. A single, gaunt finger, connected to the network of tubes and wires, twitched. Once. Then again.