“Don’t touch the release lever, you idiot!” Kizra yelled, the brass spanner slipping against her sweat-slicked palm.
Varek paid no attention. He slammed his shoulder against the reinforced blast hatch of the testing bay, shoving it home until the heavy pneumatic pins hissed into their slots. Through the tempered quartz porthole, his face looked gray, splotched with fever. Blood dribbled down the corner of his sneering mouth, but his sunken eyes burned with manic fervor.
“Stand clear, mechanic!” Varek’s voice crackled through the intercom grille. “If I burn out, my calculations will outlive Khyrak’s highest towers. Better to detonate as a pioneer than choke to death on lung-rot in the gutter.”
“The intake valve is backwards!” Kizra slammed both fists onto the quartz. Her tongue felt thick, knotted with the usual stuttering hesitation that crippled her in boardrooms, but rage broke through the dam. “You inverted the compression coils! You have no propellant, only a pipe bomb!”
Inside, Varek ignored her. He lifted the metallic capsule, locking it into the harness bolted across his chest. Luminous blue striations flared into blinding white-violet along the metal skin. The rhythmic ticking reached a deafening whine, screaming like a dying turbine.
Kizra offered no pleas. Pleading was for people who believed words could alter physics.
She whipped a heavy crowbar from her tool-belt, jammed the beveled end beneath the manual override junction beside the doorframe, and threw her entire weight downward. Copper wires tore with a sharp pop. Sparks showered her grease-streaked cheeks. The pneumatic locking pins jerked loose. She shoved the door open with a brutal kick.
“Get away from that console!” Varek snarled, reaching for the ignition plunger.
Kizra offered no answer. She launched herself forward like an unguided shell.
Her shoulder slammed straight into Varek’s ribs, tackling him off the iron staging platform. They crashed onto the steel grating below just as the cylinder's failsafe ruptured.
The world vanished into a searing flare of violet light.
A concussive shockwave ripped through the test chamber. The blast tore no flesh; it compressed the atmosphere instantaneously, creating a vacuum that sucked the oxygen from their mouths before rebounding with shattering force. Kizra’s skull bounced off the plating. Iron struts snapped like dry twigs. The ceiling rafters shrieked, collapsing into a heap of twisted alloy, slag, and plaster.
When the ringing in Kizra’s ears subsided to a dull hum, she tasted copper and burnt ozone. Smoke rolled thick and black across the floor.
Beside her, Varek arched violently off the deck. He wasn't dead. He drew a massive, shuddering breath—and coughed. Black, viscous fluid tore from his throat, splattering against the soot. He gasped again, chest heaving. For the first time since she had dragged him from the Magistrate's office, the rattle in his bronchial tubes was gone. The immense heat and atmospheric surge had cauterized the fluid pooling in his lungs, forcefully expelling the congestion that had been drowning him.
He stared up at the shattered ceiling, blinking in shock. “I... I can breathe.”
“Because you’re an arrogant fool who nearly atomized us both,” Kizra rasped, rolling onto her knees. Her ribs ached, but her hands were already reaching into the debris. “Where is the core?”
“Still intact, shockingly enough,” an easy, amused voice drawled from above.
A solitary figure swung down through the smoldering breach in the ceiling, landing with cat-like grace atop a buckled steel workbench. He was wrapped in a tailored longcoat of pale slate, an unlit spark-stick dangling from his lips. He offered a slow, deliberate clap.
“Brilliant show. Truly. Seven out of ten for dramatic flair,” Rynik Tor said, adjusting a pair of copper-rimmed racing goggles over his forehead. “Though your timing is atrocious, darling.”
Kizra hauled her heavy crescent wrench into both hands, dropping into a defensive stance. “Rynik. Who hired you? Jin Syndicate or the city wardens?”
“Neither, officially. But unofficially?” Rynik crouched on the workbench, kicking away a shard of glass. His smile held no warmth. “Your sister Bexali is currently sitting in Caldor Jin’s penthouse, sipping imported cloud-wine. And she just authorized a private bounty on your charming husband’s head.”
Varek dragged himself upright, leaning heavily against a bent chassis frame. “Bexali? That scheming viper knows nothing of thermo-dynamics.”
“She understands the market,” Rynik replied, tipping his head toward the street vents outside. “She knows your core makes Caldor’s upcoming heavy-lift turbines obsolete before they even launch. If you die with the blueprints in your head, the Jin syndicate secures a perpetual monopoly over the mid-tier sky docks. A three-man cleanup crew from Jin’s private muscle is three floors down, coming up the service lift right now.”
“Why tell us?” Kizra snapped, eyes narrowing. “You’re a broker. You never hand out warnings for free.”
“Because corpses buy zero black-market ignis-regulators from me,” Rynik winked, pointing toward the back of the workshop. “And because I want front-row seats when you smash Bexali’s shiny new empire to pieces.”
Kizra wasted no time. She bolted across the ruined shop floor to where her personal prototype sat beneath a grease-stained tarp. She ripped the fabric away, revealing a low-slung, needle-nosed chassis built entirely from hammered tungsten-alloy and carbon framing. It was a stripped-down atmospheric racer, aerodynamically flawless, built for zero drag in Khyrak’s vertical down-drafts.
Only one problem: it had no propulsion block.
“Varek! The core capsule!” Kizra shouted.
Varek snatched the scorched metal canister from the test rig. The casing was hot enough to scorch the skin off his palms, but he gripped it anyway. He dragged his feet across the floor, slinging the engine block into the racer’s empty rear cradle.
“The coupling pins won't fit,” Varek spat, panic cracking his haughty facade. “Your fuel lines are quarter-gauge! My output manifold requires half-gauge feed!”
“Shut up and hold the brace,” Kizra ordered.
Rather than hunt for an adapter, she acted. She grabbed a pair of iron snips, severed the intake line cleanly, jammed the raw tubing directly into the core’s emergency bypass port, and clamped it tight with a vice-grip. She hammered the securing brackets home with three punishing blows of her wrench. It was ugly. It was brutal. It violated every safety code written in the upper towers.
It would also pull four thousand pounds of thrust without blowing their faces off.
“Climb in,” Kizra commanded, vaulting over the low carbon cowl and dropping into the pilot’s bucket seat.
Varek scrambled into the secondary jump-rig behind her, his knees pressed against her spine. He latched the four-point harness with trembling fingers. “If this manifold leaks, the ignis-vapor will boil us alive.”
“Keep your mouth shut and check the regulator gauge,” she snapped back, flicking three overhead toggles. The instrument cluster woke with an angry amber glow. The hybrid engine shrieked to life behind them, vibrating through their teeth with terrifying ferocity.
A thunderous crash rattled the shop’s reinforced outer barrier.
The hydraulic blast doors bowed inward, then blew completely off their tracks with a concussive bang. Acrid gray smoke poured into the room, silhouetting three tall figures in matching charcoal dusters, each wielding a military-grade Jin pulse-rifle.
The lead enforcer raised his weapon, the barrel humming with charged kinetic fire aimed directly between Kizra’s eyes.