The glass shard pressed cold against my thumb, the razor-sharp edge a promise of swift, final severance. Cualli's smile, so gentle, so inviting, felt like a dare. He wanted me to choose freedom. He wanted me to choose *my* freedom. But I saw the deep purple bruising beneath his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks, the tremor in his hand where it rested on the core’s housing. I saw the man who had torn down a continent for me, who had been draining his lifeblood to keep me safe.
I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t.
`GRID ACTIVATION: 99.7%…`
The air shrieked, a metallic groan tearing through the wreckage above. A section of overhead vaulting, weakened by Matlal’s train, buckled inward. A cascade of brass pipes, broken ferro-shingles, and twisted wiring plummeted towards us. The timing was impossible. It had to be him.
My gaze snapped to the gaping maw above, then to the instrument desk. The glass shard, instead of striking Cualli’s conduit, became a lever. I jammed it into the emergency override port on the housing, twisting it with all the force my adrenaline-fueled body could muster. The panel shrieked a protest, a shower of sparks erupting. I didn't wait.
One hand still gripping the glass-shard-turned-lever, I flung my other arm out, snagging a dangling power cable. My stuntwoman’s instinct took over. No time for thought, only motion. I tightened my grip, the cable burning against my palm, and launched myself towards the fractured rafters. Gravity tried to pull me down, but I used the cable’s tensile strength, a human pendulum swinging high. I ricocheted off a still-spinning turbine, sparks flying as my boots scraped its metal casing, propelling me faster, higher.
Just as a figure dropped through the breach above, a smug grin plastered on his face, I collided. Matlal.
“Well, well, Itzel. Thought you could—” His words died in his throat as I hit him mid-air, a furious blur of limbs and momentum. My shoulder slammed into his chest, knocking the wind out of him, sending us both careening down towards the sub-basement floor. He went for his grapple-launcher, but I was faster. A kick to his wrist sent the device skittering across the grimy floor. He cursed, sprawling.
“My freedom doesn’t require me to be a murderer, Matlal,” I snarled, straddling his chest. He thrashed, but the years of physical discipline, the countless times I’d had to overpower a flailing, panicked stunt partner, gave me an advantage. I grabbed the tangle of grapple-wires still coiled on his belt—his own tools of deceit. They were thick, reinforced with a fine mesh of steel. Perfect.
He struggled, pupils dilating as I began to bind his wrists together, taut and unforgiving. “What do you think you’re doing? I’m saving you! Cualli will destroy everything!”
“He’s destroying everything to *save me*,” I shot back, yanking another length of wire to loop around his ankles, then his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. “And unlike you, I won’t let him. But I also won’t become you.” The wire bit into his skin, drawing a thin line of blood. His face, usually so composed, contorted with rage and humiliation. He was a writhing knot of ropes and fury.
“You foolish girl! He’s playing you! The core… it’s rigged! That train wasn’t just a crash, it detonated the boiler, it’s going to—!”
Before he could finish, a deafening shriek ripped through the air. The ruptured pipes of Matlal’s hijacked train boiler, still nestled amidst the Sun-Spire’s foundations, finally gave way. A guttural roar, like the earth itself tearing open, ripped through the sub-basement. Superheated steam, followed by chunks of molten brass and jagged iron shrapnel, blasted upward through the new hole Matlal had created.
It was a metallic hail-storm, deadly and fast. I had only a split second to register the sound, the heat, the impending impact. My vision narrowed to the approaching, lethal debris.
Then Cualli slammed over me.
He threw himself over me, a human shield, pressing me down into the cold concrete. His body was a hot, desperate barrier against the fiery onslaught. I felt the sharp, sickening impacts against his back, heard his strangled gasp, a sound of agony he tried to swallow. The air filled with the stench of scorched metal and something else… something coppery and hot. Blood.
When the cacophony subsided, leaving only the hiss of escaping steam and the groan of shifting wreckage, Cualli lay heavy on top of me, his breathing ragged. I could feel the wet stickiness spreading beneath him, soaking through my clothes. My hands instinctively went to his back, pressing against the gushing warmth.
“Cualli! Oh gods, Cualli!” I tried to roll him off, but he was dead weight, his head lolling to the side. He coughed, a wet, rattling sound. I managed to ease him onto his back, cradling his head in my lap. His eyes, usually so intense, were glazed with pain, but they fixed on me, a desperate tenderness. His back was a ruin, shrapnel embedded deep, dark blood blossoming across his simple tunic.
He lifted a shaky hand, reaching for my face, leaving a smear of red on my cheek. “Itzel…” His voice was a bare whisper, strained. His gaze drifted past me, past the ruined machinery, past the gaping rent overhead that now showed a sliver of the bruised, twilight sky.
“The sky…” he murmured, a faint, almost beatific smile touching his lips. He looked at the vast, uncaring expanse above, the place I so desperately craved. He knew. He always knew. His fingers, still trembling, fumbled towards the console, towards the heart of the core’s housing.
“Fly, Itzel,” he whispered, his voice barely audible above the hiss of steam, and with a final, deliberate movement, he manually initiated the core's self-destruct.