Maya slammed Ken against the sweating metal bulkhead of the sub-levels, her forearm pinned against his chest. The air here was a stagnant soup of recycled oxygen, coolant leaks, and the iron-scent of ancient rust. Above them, the muffled shriek of sirens filtered through the heavy floors, signaling that the Silver Guard's perimeter was closing in.
"You're a high-value target now," Maya hissed, her face inches from his. Her combat knife hummed with a low-frequency vibration, its edge hovering dangerously close to his jugular. "The Empress just flagged your biometric ID as 'Primary Anomaly.' If I hadn't jammed the localized sensor grid in this shaft, you'd have a dozen railgun slugs in your chest by now."
Ken looked at the vibrating blade, his expression remaining flat, his eyes fixed on hers. He didn't struggle. He didn't even raise his hands. "If you wanted me dead, you would have stayed on the gantry. You need me to open the Heart, and you need me alive to bypass the Vaelstron fail-safes."
Maya's eyes flared with a spark of annoyance, followed by a sharp, jagged grin. She lowered the knife, the vibration dying out. "Smart boy. The Syndicate's best decoders couldn't crack the encryption on a Royal Core if they had a century. It needs a blood-signature and a Null-source to stop the core from vaporizing the district. You're the only key in existence."
She grabbed the collar of his tunic—her grease-stained hand leaving another dark mark on the white fabric—and pulled him toward a massive, circular hatch embedded in the floor. It was marked with a faded, white skull and a series of warning runes. This was the Black Valve, the only unmonitored artery connecting the pristine Academy to the rot of the Under-Sector.
"Where does this lead?" Ken asked, adjusting his grip on the toolkit.
"To the world you were never supposed to see," Maya replied. She kicked the manual override lever. The heavy iron teeth of the hatch ground together, groaning as they retracted into the floor.
A blast of humid, sulfurous air surged upward, smelling of heavy industry and desperate lives. Ken looked down into a canyon of vertical slums, neon signs flickering through chemical smog thousands of feet below.
"Ken! Stop!"
The voice echoed down the corridor, sharp and desperate. Ken turned to see Isabella Thorne. She stood at the end of the long, narrow hall, her silver armor scorched from the simulation and her eyes wide with a mixture of betrayal and terror. Her sword was drawn, the blade glowing with a blinding, holy light that pushed back the shadows of the sub-level.
"Isabella," Ken said, his voice level.
"Don't," she snapped, her mana flaring so intensely that the overhead light casings began to melt and drip like wax. "I followed the trail. I saw the Empress touch you. You aren't a failure, Ken. You're a catastrophe waiting to happen. If you go down that hatch with a Syndicate Scavenger, there is no coming back. The Knights will hunt you as a traitor."
She leveled her blade at Maya, the tip of the sword trembling slightly. "Step away from him, Scavenger. He belongs to the Academy."
"He belongs to whoever keeps him from being lobotomized by his own mother," Maya shot back, her hand moving toward a pulse-grenade on her belt.
Ken stepped forward, walking calmly until the tip of Isabella's white-hot blade pressed against his chest, right over his heart. The heat was immense, singeing the fibers of his tunic and blistering the skin beneath.
"Stop me, then, Isabella," Ken whispered, staring directly into her grey eyes. "Do your duty. Kill the 'anomaly' before he leaves the building."
Isabella's hand shook violently. The white light of her sword flickered and dimmed, her resolve crumbling against the absolute silence in Ken's gaze. She saw the boy she had protected for three years, and for the first time, she saw the terrifying depth of the Void he carried. She realized that he wasn't being kidnapped; he was choosing this.
"I can't," she choked out, her voice breaking.
"I know." Ken reached out, his fingers gently pushing the glowing blade aside. He leaned in, his lips brushing against her ear. "Tell the Guards the core collapsed. Tell them the radiation dump was so high there was no body left to recover. Give me twenty-four hours to disappear, Isabella. If you ever cared for the boy I pretended to be, give me that much."
He didn't wait for her answer. He turned and stepped onto the edge of the hatch.
Maya grabbed Ken's shoulder and pulled him backward into the abyss. They plummeted into the darkness of the Black Valve just as the first squad of Silver Guards rounded the corner, their rifles raised.
Isabella stood alone in the hall. She looked at the empty hatch, then at the approaching guards. She dropped her sword, the metal clattering loudly against the floor, and slumped against the wall, her face buried in her hands.
"Report, Knight Thorne!" the Guard Captain barked, his visor scanning the room. "Where is the Prince?"
Isabella looked up, her face a mask of faked horror and soot-stained grief. "He's gone," she lied, her voice steady with a newfound, dark purpose. "The core inside his kit... it went critical when I tried to seize it. There was a dissociation wave. He's atomized. There's nothing left to find."
End of Chapter 15