The transition from gritty grit to climate-controlled hypocrisy smelled distinctly like melted sugar and aerosolized bergamot.
Five minutes after breaching the inner ring, I had abandoned the stolen bike in a maintenance culvert, picked the magnetic lock on a backstage wardrobe crate, and poured myself into an asymmetrical spill of silver nanoweave. The gown cost more than an average farm outpost made in three solar cycles. It had automated hem adjusters, a cooling collar set to a crisp sixty-two degrees, and zero structural support for running. Perfect. Running was entirely against my philosophy.
I tucked the metallic cylinder containing the city bypass into my faux-fur stole, slapped a discarded VIP wristband across my forearm, and dragged Kavol out of a service elevator by his immaculate linen collar. I had found him a tailored black tunic meant for a synth-orchestra conductor. It fit his mountainous frame tightly enough that seams groaned whenever he breathed.
"Nazari, the aura of this space is profoundly discordant," Kavol whispered, craning his neck toward the ceiling, where spun-glass chandeliers rotated on magnetic bearings. "The abundance mask hides a starved collective spirit. Look at those micro-greens. They carry no roots. No soil memory."
"Kavol. Close your mouth. You look like a golden retriever at a butchery."
Kufra, camouflaged against the silver fringe of my train by curling himself into a scaly, motionless handbag shape, grumbled softly and chewed on a stray sequin.
The grand ballroom of the Grand Ziggurat was a sprawling hive of chrome balconies, mirrored pillars, and private mezzanine boxes overlooking the sunken center ring. Below us, suspended inside a magnetic containment well, swirled the blue-white rot of the experimental core. Hovering directly above the churning vortex on industrial cables hung a suspended cage. In it sat Zavash. His jaw was mottled violet, one eye swollen shut, his dress shirt shredded down to the ribs, yet he remained stubbornly, infuriatingly rigid.
I adjusted my stole. My chest pulled tight, a knot of venomous spite and sickening relief settling behind my ribs. He looked terrible. He looked like an idiot. I was going to bill him for every calorie I expended tonight.
"Remember the plan," I murmured, leaning on Kavol's arm so I wouldn't have to bear my own weight. "We locate the terminal behind the chairman's riser, slot the key, trigger the safety purge, and let the emergency dampers lower the cage. We do not engage. We do not network."
"The appetizers," Kavol breathed, completely ignoring me. His eyes were wide, fixated on an automated floating tray that glided past at waist height. "Nazari, those are smoked river prawns with crystallized sea salts. Do you understand the metabolic value of this lipid profile? The desert starved our cellular reserves."
"Leave the prawns, you ape."
He had already moved. Kavol drifted toward the banquet spread like an enormous iron ingot drawn by a high-grade electromagnet, his massive hand plucking three skewered delights off the automated platter before the anti-theft sensors could register his manual intercept. An elderly heiress blinked at him through gold-plated spectacles; Kavol bowed deeply from the waist and began explaining the gut-brain axis to her with the fervor of an evangelist.
"Unbelievable," I muttered, shifting my weight to my left heel.
Left to fend for myself, I strolled through the high-density gathering of vultures, keeping my chin tilted high and my eyelids drooped at precisely sixty-five percent. The best way to look like an untouchable oligarch was to act thoroughly bored by existence. It required negligible physical exertion. If anyone tried to make eye contact, I looked just over their shoulder with an expression of faint pity, as if their lineage was an administrative oversight.
A white-suited waiter slid by; I lifted a tall glass of sparkling synth-wine purely to have a prop. Two steps past a marble column, someone backed into me with the momentum of a falling safe.
The collision rattled the glass against my teeth. The sparkling liquid sloshed, soaking into the pristine charcoal lapels of an older man with an angular beard trimmed like a razor blade. Six bodyguards in matte armor pivoted instantly, their holsters clearing leather with smooth, synchronized clicks.
The hair on my forearms prickled. The man turned slowly, brushing droplets off his lapel with a diamond-studded signet ring shaped like a coiled viper. Iron-gray hair, pale eyes that looked through people rather than at them, and a cybernetic neck brace humming with low-level shielding: Varos Mal, chairman of the Hexad Syndicate, the man who owned half the border militia and the dredgers scraping the dunes.
A tremor of pure panic tried to hijack my lungs. I smothered it under an avalanche of sheer exhaustion.
"You spilled vintage press on my suit, little bird," Varos said, his voice flat, dry, and cold enough to frost glass.
I sighed, loud and drawn out, slumping against the column. I offered no apology. Refusing to step back, I raked my gaze over his posture with utter disdain.
"Your tailor failed you, darling, not my glass," I drawled, waving a limp, dismissive hand at his chest. "Your left collarbone hangs half an inch low. You're slouching through your lower lumbar to compensate for that ridiculous heavy-metal spinal brace. When you back into people like an uncalibrated street sweeper, of course physics happens. Straighten your spine. You look like a disappointed vulture."
A guard raised a silenced barrel toward my chin. Varos raised a single finger, freezing him in place.
The crime lord stared at me. The silence in our tiny radius went brittle. I kept my face blank, half-yawning behind my stole, though beneath the fur, my fingernails dug into the brass cylinder until my knuckles went white. He wasn't used to anyone treating him like an annoying traffic jam.
Then, Varos smiled, thin and sharp as a bone hook. "Arrogant trash from the Upper Terrace. I despise your breed, but your nerve is amusing. Walk away before I test the tensile strength of your gown's hem against an industrial incinerator."
"Delighted to," I muttered, stepping around his armored wall of meat with deliberate slowness. My heels clicked against the polished quartzite floor, each step measured so my trembling knees wouldn't give away the game.
Ten yards clear. The service riser was just ahead, tucked behind the master projection booth. The override console sat unguarded, pulsing with standby amber indicators.
I reached into my stole, slipping the cold cylinder into my palm. Just five more steps. A quick slot-and-turn, the emergency suppression would fire, the reactor well would flood with cold foam, and I could finally collapse in an air-conditioned jail cell or hotel lobby—I didn't care which.
"Nazari!"
The shout tore through the refined chatter of the gala like a siren through silk.
It didn't come from behind me. It came from above.
Up on the suspended iron cradle, dangling twenty yards over the incandescent blue hell of the plasma pit, Zavash had dragged himself against the bars. His bloody face was pressed through the iron slats, his swollen eyes wild with sheer, frantic horror as they locked onto my silver dress.
"Nazari, don't! It's a closed loop! Run! Get out of here!"
Every pair of eyes in the ballroom pivoted. The ambient music stuttered. Heads snapped from the suspended prisoner down to me, tracking the line of his panicked scream like laser pointers.
Varos Mal stopped. His head turned back toward me, the amused disdain vanishing from his features, replaced by a razor-sharp realization that hit him like a live wire. "The disgraced engineer," he murmured, his voice cutting through the hushed hall. "The cipher holder."
"You absolute idiot," I hissed upward toward the cage, grinding my back teeth so hard the enamel ached. "I had it handled, Zavash!"
"Nazari, flee!" he roared, thrashing against his chains, his voice cracking with pure terror. "They know the frequency! They just needed—"
A scream cut him off from the banquet table. Not of fear, but of righteous indignation.
Kavol was pinned across a marble spread by three syndicate enforcers, his face pressed directly into a bowl of artisanal melon purée. He was bucking like a bull, scattering crystal flatware across the floor while trying to disarm a man with a wrestling sweep he had clearly read about in an unaccredited fitness manual.
Varos moved with terrifying, cybernetic speed. He closed the distance before I could take two steps toward the console, drawing a heavy plasma-pistol from beneath his damp jacket. He didn't point it at me.
He slammed the glowing emitter muzzle directly against the side of Kavol's skull, digging into the temple until the flesh white-rimmed under the pressure of the superheated barrel.
"Freeze, little bird," Varos whispered over the terrified gasps of the socialites, cocking the slide with a metallic snap. "Hand over the override key, or I paint this banquet with your life coach's brains."