Chapter 283: The Second Extraction.
I moved on down the corridor, checking doors, looking for anything that would keep the two of us alive if this building turned out to be where we stayed. The boards creaked under each step.
Morning light came in thin and uneven through the high windows, laying pale rectangles across the floor that didn’t quite reach the corners. Dust hung in the beams. The air still carried the faint chemical edge of last night’s charge.
My comms vibrated. Sherry’s message.
I stopped in the narrow corridor, the sound of running water still coming through the wall behind me.
「Hey. Hope you’re well. I’m safe. I’m in the stray town with Becky and Daph.」
Something let go in my chest that had been holding since Sinn’s voice came through the speakers. The tightness that had lived under my ribs all night loosened by a fraction.
「Network was down. Becky had already told me Max was planning to spread the infection. I just couldn’t reach you.」
I stopped on that line and read it twice.
Becky had tried to tell me. Twice. Standing in a corridor with her hand on my arm, saying it was life and death, and I’d put my palm on her cheek and told her my head wasn’t in the right place.
That was it. That was what she was carrying.
「Nesto is dead. I just wanted you to know I’m okay. Don’t worry about us, we’re safe here. Reply if you’re safe. I don’t want to be worried all day.」
I started typing. My thumbs felt clumsy against the small screen.
I’m safe. Don’t worry about me at all.
I sent it.
The water stopped.
"I’m clean now. We have to do it again. Obviously we have to, what else are we going to do all day. I want to feel all of him again."
Venna’s voice came through the corridor perfectly clearly. Soft. Private. The kind of voice a person uses when they think they’re alone.
I didn’t answer it. It had the shape of a woman talking to herself, but it was loud enough that she had to know I could hear.
The bathroom door opened and she came out with a towel around her. Water still clung to her collarbones and the tops of her shoulders, beading along the line of her throat. The blue hair was darker when wet, plastered in places against her neck, dripping slow trails down her back. The towel sat low on her hips, barely holding.
"I know you’re already hard." Her mouth didn’t move at all. "Don’t pretend you’re not looking."
"What did you say?"
She looked at me. The expression was open, slightly puzzled, completely without the awareness of what I’d just heard. Morning light caught the wet sheen on her skin.
"Nothing. Unless you’re saying something."
She went into the room where we’d slept. The towel shifted with the movement, revealing the soft curve of one hip, the line of her spine. I stood in the corridor and swore under my breath.
[She didn’t say anything.]
What?
[You’re hearing her mind.]
Wait.
I started walking toward the reception. Whatever was about to happen between me and the system, I didn’t want it happening within earshot of a woman who might be able to hear it back.
The corridor felt longer than it had a minute ago. The air cooler.
[Two abilities unlocked following extraction of the second source.]
[You can hear the minds of primordials. And you can move into the past and glimpse the future.]
"You didn’t tell me that." I kept my voice low as I came into the reception room. The chairs were still where we’d left them.
[I told you a skill would come after Eleanor. I told you it would activate on the second source.]
"That’s not what I’m asking and you know it."
I sat down in one of the chairs. Not the one from yesterday. The one beside it, where I’d sat the very first time I came into this building, before any of it. The wood was cold under my palms.
"You knew who she was."
Nothing.
"That’s why you didn’t want me in the libra. You knew what I’d find."
[I can’t comment on that.]
"You knew that if I found out who she was, I wouldn’t extract her."
[This is small next to the awakening, Abram. The awakening ends the world.]
"Fuck the awakening." I leaned forward. The words came out flatter than I meant them to. "Is that why you pulled me out last night? Right at the door?"
[I pulled you out because the infected had reached the dark room and would have killed you. Without you, the awakening cannot be stopped.]
"The awakening." I laughed and there was nothing in it. The sound sat in the empty reception like something that didn’t belong. "What is the awakening when the infection is already inside the walls? Look outside. It’s already here."
[The infection does not stop the awakening. It does not slow it. You know this.]
A pause. The system’s silence had weight.
[Don’t let it stop you either.]
I sat with that.
Then I asked the thing I’d been carrying since a baby turned in my father’s hands and looked at me with blue eyes.
"Is she my sister?"
[No.]
"You’re lying."
[Her mother was Riya Belmonte. Everything I hold says Riya lived inside the walls.]
"She was a primordial. You think she couldn’t find a way out?"
[You need to get back on track. The awakening is closing.]
I let out a breath and looked at the counter, at the place three of them had come over it at me last night. The boards still carried faint dark marks. The air still held the memory of burning.
There was nothing in that argument I could win, and the worst part was that the system might be right about all of it.
But that was a problem for later.
First I had to work out how the two of us were going to survive in this building.