The explosion knocked Marcus off his feet.
The deck of the safe house bucked hard enough to throw him into the steel bulkhead. Dust and flakes of rust rained down from the ceiling, choking the air.
"Incoming!" Decimus roared, throwing himself over a pile of sleeping refugees.
Marcia was already up. She racked her scavenged shotgun, sweeping the room for a breach.
There was no breach. Just a deafening echo that rattled the bones in Marcus's chest.
It was a warning shot.
Marcus scrambled to his feet. His head throbbed. He pushed past Galen, who was curled in a ball next to Narcissus's lifeless frame, and ran to the small, grimy porthole.
He wiped the condensation away with his sleeve.
The gray morning sea was gone.
The water was burning.
A ring of fire encircled the massive aircraft carrier. Dozens of flame-skiffs—the same red jet skis that had chased them down the Arno River—were weaving through the waves, spraying arcs of liquid fire.
And behind them, breaking through the mist like a sea monster, was a Board stealth-frigate.
It was matte black. Angular. Invisible to old-world radar, but terrifyingly real to the naked eye.
[WARNING: MULTIPLE HEAT SIGNATURES.]
[CLASS: INCINERATOR VANGUARD.]
"Nero," Marcus breathed.
The frigate didn't fire its main guns. Instead, a massive laser projector on its bow whined to life.
A beam of light shot through the smoke, hitting the rusted hull of the carrier.
It formed a hologram. A huge, distorted image of a young man with a scarred face, wearing a pristine white suit that was singed at the cuffs.
He was playing a violin.
The music was amplified by acoustic drones circling the ship. It was a frantic, screeching concerto that cut through the roar of the fire.
Nero lowered the bow. The hologram smiled.
"Attention, King of Rust," Nero's voice echoed over the water, distorted and loud enough to make Marcus's teeth ache. "You have a rat infestation."
In the safe house, Lucilla backed away from the window. Her face was pale beneath the bloody bandage on her forehead. She recognized the madness in that voice.
"You are harboring a glitch," Nero continued, pacing on the deck of his frigate. "A Warlord who thinks he's a god. And a traitor named Lucilla. Hand them over. Toss them into the fire, and I will let your rusted floating junkyard live."
Nero pointed his violin bow at the carrier.
"You have one hour. Then, I boil the ocean around you."
The hologram blinked out.
The screech of the violin stopped, replaced by the low, hungry roar of the flame-skiffs circling the hull.
"He found us," Galen whispered, staring at the ceiling. "We're trapped."
"We fight," Marcia said. She checked her pockets. Three shells left. "We take the lift down to the hangar. We steal a skiff and break the line."
"No," Marcus said. "We can't outrun a frigate on a jet ski. And we can't carry Narcissus."
"Then what?" Marcia snapped. "We wait for the Boatman to hand us over?"
A heavy thud shook the thick steel door of the safe house.
Not an explosion. A fist.
Then another. And another.
Voices drifted through the heavy metal. Angry, panicked voices.
"Give them up!"
"Open the door! Save the ship!"
It was the mob. The scavengers from the market. They had heard the broadcast.
Marcus walked to the door. He pressed his ear against the cold steel.
"I know you're in there, Warlord!"
It was Alistair. The burned merchant whose family Lucilla had killed.
"You brought the fire to our home!" Alistair screamed. His voice was raw. "The Boatman won't burn for you! We won't burn for you! Open the door!"
Something heavy struck the metal. A pipe. Or a wrench.
CLANG.
"They're going to break it down," Decimus said, gripping his spear tightly. "We have to hold the line."
"There are thousands of them," Marcus said. "We can't fight the whole ship."
The pounding grew louder. The steel door groaned on its hinges.
Then, a new sound.
Not a pipe. Not a fist.
The deafening roar of a heavy kinetic slug.
BOOM.
A hole the size of a fist blew through the center of the door. Sunlight streamed through the jagged metal.
The mob outside screamed and scattered.
The heavy lock mechanism shattered.
The door swung open.
Scylla stood in the doorway.
Her red armor was scorched black on the left side. A stray incendiary round from a skiff had hit her on the flight deck. She didn't seem to notice the smell of her own burning paint.
Her mechanical claw was raised. Smoke curled from the barrel of the massive slug-thrower built into her forearm.
The mob was gone, fleeing down the corridor.
Scylla lowered her arm. She looked at Marcus with her whirring camera eye.
"The violin-boy talks too much," Scylla rumbled.
"Is the Boatman taking the deal?" Marcus asked. He didn't raise a weapon. He stood perfectly still.
"The Boatman is a businessman," Scylla said. "A frigate has heavy guns. We have rusted CIWS turrets that haven't fired in three years. You are bad for business, Warlord."
"If you hand me over, Nero burns you anyway," Marcus said. His voice was cold. Steady. "He doesn't leave loose ends. He's a Burner. He likes the ash."
"Maybe," Scylla said. "But giving you up buys us time to run."
Marcus took a step forward.
"You can't run," Marcus said. He pointed down at the deck. "Your reactor is dying. The Boatman told me. The control rods are jammed. If Nero heats the hull with napalm, the coolant loop boils off. The core goes critical in twenty minutes. You won't burn. You'll melt."
Scylla stared at him. The servo in her jaw clicked.
She knew he was right. The ship was already vibrating with the stress of the failing reactor.
"I made a deal with your King," Marcus said. "I fix the heart. He fixes my giant."
"You have twenty-four hours," Scylla said. "Nero gave us one."
"Then I do it in one," Marcus said.
He stepped right up to the massive cyborg. He looked up into her scarred face.
"Tell the Boatman to hold Nero off for sixty minutes. Shoot down the skiffs. Drop scrap metal on them. I don't care. Just buy me an hour."
"And then?" Scylla challenged.
"If I fix the reactor," Marcus said, "the ship's power grid stabilizes. Your main guns come back online. You don't have to run from the frigate. You can blow it out of the water yourself."
Scylla's eye zoomed in on Marcus. She analyzed his face. Searching for the lie.
She found none.
"You are a crazy little man," Scylla said.
She tapped the comms unit bolted to her collarbone.
"Spire. It's the Butcher. Tell the Old Man the Warlord is going into the oven. Tell the deck guns to hold the line. Use manual cranks if you have to. Buy us an hour."
She dropped her hand. She looked at Marcus.
"You have fifty-nine minutes," Scylla said. "If the core isn't venting by then, I'm coming down there to drag your corpse to Nero myself."
"Understood," Marcus said.
He turned to the room.
"Marcia, barricade this door. Don't let the mob back in. Decimus, guard Narcissus."
Marcus looked at the trembling mechanic in the corner.
"Galen. You're with me."
Galen went pale. He looked at the floor. He looked at the massive, unmoving frame of Narcissus.
He swallowed hard. He nodded once.
"Good," Marcus said.
Scylla led them out of the safe house, down a narrow, grease-stained corridor that smelled of ozone and ancient sweat.
They bypassed the main elevators. They were too slow. They took a maintenance shaft, sliding down a rusted ladder deep into the bowels of the carrier.
They reached Level 14.
Engineering.
It was quiet here. Eerily quiet. The frantic noise of the slums above was muffled by feet of solid steel.
Scylla stopped in front of a heavy airlock. It was painted yellow, but the paint was peeling in long, ugly strips.
"Suit up," Scylla ordered, pointing to a rack of gear bolted to the wall.
Marcus pulled a suit off the rack.
It wasn't Board tech. It wasn't sleek or light.
It was an old-world hazard suit. Thick, lead-lined rubber. It weighed fifty pounds empty. The helmet was a massive brass dome with a thick glass visor and a heavy air-hose connection.
It looked like deep-sea diving gear from a nightmare.
"They smell like vomit," Galen gagged, holding a suit up.
"They smell like life," Scylla said. "Put them on. The ambient rads on the other side of that door will cook your eyeballs in seconds."
Marcus stepped into the heavy boots. He pulled the thick rubber up to his chest. It was stifling. Sweat instantly beaded on his forehead.
He helped Galen seal his suit. Galen was shaking so hard his helmet clattered against his collarbone.
"Hey," Marcus said. His voice was muffled inside his own helmet. He gripped the thick rubber of Galen's shoulder.
Galen looked up through the scratched glass visor. His eyes were wide with terror.
"We do this, Narcissus walks again," Marcus said slowly, clearly. "Focus on the giant. Focus on the wrench."
Galen closed his eyes. He took a deep, shuddering breath of the canned air.
"For the giant," Galen whispered.
Scylla walked over to the heavy airlock wheel.
She didn't wear a suit. She wasn't going in.
"The control room is at the bottom of the stairs," Scylla yelled over the hiss of the air cyclers. "The manual rods are jammed. You have to force them down. Then, use that fancy brain of yours to reboot the cooling pumps."
She grabbed the wheel with her mechanical claw.
"Fifty-two minutes, Warlord."
She spun the wheel.
CLANK. HISS.
The heavy blast doors groaned open.
A wave of heat rolled out of the dark tunnel beyond. It wasn't the heat of a fire. It was dry. It tasted like copper pennies on the back of Marcus's tongue, even through the suit's filters.
[WARNING. FATAL RADIATION SPIKE.]
JARVIS's voice flashed across the Gold UI on Marcus's retinas.
[Geiger counter reading: 400 Roentgens. Lethal dose in 42 minutes.]
Marcus stared into the gloom. The tunnel was lit only by flickering, neon-green emergency lights.
"Let's go," Marcus said to Galen.
They stepped over the threshold. The heavy boots clunked on the metal grating.
The airlock hissed shut behind them.
BOOM.
Total darkness, save for the green glow ahead.
[Boss.] JARVIS's voice was tight. Not sarcastic. Cold.
[Thermal scans show anomalies. Movement.]
Marcus stopped. He strained his eyes through the scratched visor.
[We are not alone down here.]
Marcus reached to his belt. He drew the six-inch combat knife. It felt ridiculously small in his thick, lead-lined glove.
"Stay close, Galen," Marcus whispered.
They walked down into the green light. Down into the heart of the Leviathan.