Voldir Hext’s words settled over the shattered lab like lead dust. The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the hum of distant Hext Spire systems and the faint, metallic scent of ozone from the fried drones. Nausea seized Ryzalia, tightening the knots in her gut. This wasn’t just about proving Kylian a fraud anymore. This was a blood feud.
“My late wife was researching advanced Kinetic-Weave applications,” Voldir continued, his voice still low, but now edged with a lethal precision. “A prototype she was developing, a spatial displacement unit, was stolen during a system-wide blackout nine years ago. The device was critical, volatile. A week later, it was used to detonate the power grid of the Skyport District, causing the worst infrastructure collapse in Previa’s history. Thousands died. She was in the Skyport that day, presenting her research.”
Ryzalia swallowed dry spit. She remembered the Skyport Collapse. Every child in Previa knew the stories, the images of the crumpled towers, the endless ashfall. Kylian had claimed credit for emergency bypass conduits within hours, buying his status as the Morcrest heir apparent while real artificers choked in the dust.
“The saboteur, the ‘Ghost’ as the media dubbed them, vanished,” Voldir said, his eyes now locked on the charred Zenith device. “But the signature, the unique energy spike from the initial EMP burst… it matches the schematics your brother used on this contraption.” His gaze lifted to Ryzalia, an intensity in his dark eyes that made her feel transparent. “He murdered her. He consolidated his own power, leveraged the chaos to secure his early patents. Your family, Ryzalia, built its current empire on the ashes of my wife’s ambitions and the lives of Previa’s citizens.”
Isken pushed himself up from the workbench, his features tight with pain and a grim understanding. “Voldir… if Kylian is the Ghost, and he’s activating the core live, he’ll have security protocols designed to prevent any interference. Any attempt to cut the feed during that final run…”
Voldir gave a slow, predatory smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Indeed, Isken. Which is why we won’t cut the feed.” He turned to Ryzalia, his voice dropping to a near-whisper that was far more terrifying than a shout. “Your brother will power the core, expose his fraud before every screen in Zenith, and then, at the peak of his ruin, my operatives will slit his throat. It will be an accident, of course. A catastrophic system failure, a tragic oversight of his own design. The Morcrest name will be extinguished, his reputation utterly annihilated.”
The room seemed to tilt. A sniper's bullet through Kylian’s skull would leave the core running wild. Without her mathematical override entered to safely shut down the stolen turbine, the runaway matrix would rupture. The shockwave would flatten the lowlands, scouring the junkyards and everyone living in them.
“No,” Ryzalia said, stepping toward him. “If Kylian dies before the manual shutdown, the matrix collapses. It will blast the lowlands into molten glass.”
Voldir’s expression remained utterly unyielding. “A risk I’m willing to take, Ryzalia. His death is paramount. The casualties among the scrap-districts are regrettable, but acceptable collateral damage for justice.”
Regrettable. Acceptable collateral damage. The words clawed at Ryzalia’s throat. She wanted to scream, to lash out at this man who had given her everything, only to reveal a chilling disregard for the lives she held dear. Her hot-tempered loyalty flared, overriding all reason. She had to stop this. She had to save the people who had kept her alive.
She turned sharply, heading for the lab’s pneumatic door. Isken, despite his wound, moved faster. He blocked her path, his arm shooting out to brace against the doorframe, his uninjured hand gripping her arm. “Ryzalia, where are you going?”
“To find his operatives,” she snapped, trying to pull away. “To disarm them. To stop this before it happens.”
“You think you can just waltz into Hext command and disarm Voldir’s personal assassins?” Isken’s voice was low, urgent, laced with frustration. “He’ll have them on a closed channel, direct orders. You’ll be shot before you get within ten meters.”
“Then I’ll find Kylian, I’ll warn him, I’ll… I’ll do *something*!” Her voice rose, raw with desperation. “The lowlands, Isken! My friends are down there! He can’t burn millions of scrap-dwellers for an old grudge!”
Isken’s gaze softened, a flicker of understanding replacing the anger. He pulled her closer, his voice dropping to a fierce whisper. “I know. I know what’s at stake.” He looked past her, towards Voldir, who watched them with an unreadable expression. “But running in blind is suicide. It doesn’t save anyone.”
“So what do we do?” Ryzalia demanded. “Let him fire that bullet? Let the lowlands turn to ash?”
Isken’s hand tightened on her arm, his eyes locking with hers, a spark of pure defiance igniting within their depths. “No. We don’t. We find another way.” He glanced back at Voldir, then at the shattered lab, and finally back to Ryzalia, his resolve hardening. “I’m with you, Ryzalia. Whatever it takes. Even if it means committing treason against Voldir Hext.”
A gasp escaped her lips. Treason against Voldir. The city’s most feared billionaire. The thought was terrifying, exhilarating. Together, they could do this. They *had* to.
“Okay,” Ryzalia said, her voice steadier now. “Okay. The broadcast is in three days. We need to get Kylian to input the disengagement code himself, but without knowing it’s a kill-switch. Or, we activate it remotely. The problem is, the core is shielded against external commands once the activation sequence begins.”
“Unless,” Isken interjected, his mind already spinning, “we piggyback on an existing channel. The transmission grid itself. Nimra’s schematics showed a back-end comms link to the core for live diagnostics. It’s low-bandwidth, but it might be enough to inject a sub-routine.”
“A payload to trigger the emergency decoupling,” Ryzalia finished. “We need access to the studio mainframe, or Nimra’s security cipher. She maps the studio telemetry for live distribution.”
They started brainstorming furiously, their voices hushed, their heads close. The plan was audacious, dangerous, treasonous. It was perfect. They needed Nimra. They needed to reach her.
Just as Ryzalia pulled up Nimra’s comms ID, her datapad vibrated, a new message already waiting. It was from Nimra. One line.
`Kylian knows. He locked me in the chamber, and the runaway countdown has begun.`