The scream didn't start in Kaelen's throat. It started in the collective lung of a thousand dead souls she had just inhaled.
It was a sound of pure, pressurized entropy.
Kae didn't aim it. She simply opened the floodgates of her mind and let the torrent of borrowed agony erupt. It wasn't magic in the academic sense; it was a psychic vomit, a violent rejection of the foreign consciousnesses she had absorbed.
The air in the Pneumatic Exchange rippled. The iridescent Dreg-haze was blasted back as if by a gale force wind. The steel catwalks groaned, the rivets vibrating at a frequency that made teeth ache.
Yes! The Voice in her head roared, riding the wave like a surfer on a tsunami of blood. Sing for him, darling! Sing the song of the broken!
The blast hit the killer square in the chest.
He didn't fly backward. He didn't crumble. Instead, the impact seemed to slide around him, his coat whipping violently in the invisible wind. The mirrors on his mask cracked, spiderwebs of silver fracturing his reflection, but he didn't fall.
He leaned into it.
"Beautiful!" the killer howled, his voice cutting through the psychic shrieking. He spread his arms wide, as if catching rain. "Do you feel it, Kaelen? The resonance! We are the tuning fork!"
Kae fell to her knees, blood streaming from her nose and ears. The effort was tearing her apart. She was emptying herself, scraping the bottom of her soul to keep the pressure up, but he was drinking it in.
"He's feeding on it!" Kae gasped, clutching her head. "Valerius! He's feeding on the chaos!"
Valerius didn't hesitate. While the killer was distracted by Kae's psychic assault, the Inquisitor had moved. He wasn't aiming at the man. He was aiming at the machine.
He racked the slide of his shotgun, loading a shell painted with a hazard-orange rune.
"Close your eyes, Vance!" Valerius bellowed.
Kae slammed her eyes shut just as Valerius fired.
The shot didn't hit the killer. It hit the primary pressure manifold of the Dreg-pump—the very heart of the system the killer was trying to overload.
BOOM.
The explosion was deafening. Metal sheared, steam screamed, and a massive cloud of superheated vapor erupted into the chamber. The delicate, crystalline filament the killer had attached to the controls shattered instantly.
The rhythmic thrumming of the pumps died with a mechanical groan. The overload was aborted, replaced by a catastrophic, but contained, mechanical failure.
"The exit!" Valerius was suddenly there, grabbing Kae by the back of her leather coat and hauling her up. "Move!"
Kae stumbled, her vision swimming in greyscale. The world was tilting. "The killer... did we...?"
She looked back toward the catwalk.
The steam was thick, blinding white and choking. But through the swirling vapor, she saw a silhouette. The killer was still standing there, unharmed by the explosion. He raised a gloved hand and waved. A polite, mocking gesture.
Then he stepped backward, into the steam, and vanished.
He's gone, the Voice whispered, sounding disappointed. And just when the party was getting started.
"He's escaping!" Kae cried, trying to pull away from Valerius.
"The building is venting toxic accelerants!" Valerius shouted, dragging her toward the service door. "If we stay, we breathe liquid fire. Move!"
They burst out into the cold, rainy night, the heavy iron door slamming shut behind them just as a secondary explosion rocked the facility.
Kae collapsed onto the wet cobblestones, gasping for air that tasted of rain and ozone instead of copper and death. She retched, dry heaving until her ribs ached. The adrenaline was crashing, leaving her hollowed out, shivering violently.
Valerius stood over her, reloading his shotgun with methodical, shaking hands. He looked back at the smoking building, then down at her.
"You held the line," he said. It was the closest thing to a compliment she had ever heard from a Luminary.
"I didn't hold anything," Kae wheezed, wiping blood from her upper lip. "I just... let go."
"You weaponized a psychic fugue state," Valerius corrected. "I've seen Mindsinks break under the weight of one memory. You channeled hundreds. That shouldn't be possible."
Kae looked at her hands. They were trembling so hard they looked blurred. "It wasn't me. It was... the Passenger. He helped."
Valerius's expression hardened. "Then we have a problem. If he is growing stronger, your window of utility is closing."
He offered her a hand. "Get in the carriage. We need to get off the street before the Guild security forces arrive."
The carriage ride back was a blur of shadows and pain. Kae drifted in and out of consciousness, her mind a bruised landscape of retreating ghosts.
She woke up with a start as the carriage hit a pothole.
They were stopped. But not at the Ossuary. They were in a narrow alleyway, flanked by tall, windowless tenements.
"Where are we?" Kae mumbled, sitting up. Her head felt like it was packed with wet sand.
"Safe house," Valerius said. "The Ossuary is compromised. If the killer can project into mirrors, he can project into the Inquisition's reflective surfaces. This place is analogue. Brick and mortar. No glass."
He opened the door.
Kae followed him into a small, damp apartment on the ground floor. It was sparse—a cot, a table, a fireplace, and heavy velvet drapes covering the only mirror on the wall.
Valerius lit a kerosene lamp. The yellow light threw long, dancing shadows.
"Sit," he ordered, pointing to the cot. "I need to check your eyes."
Kae sat. Valerius leaned in, tilting her chin up. He stared into her pupils, looking for the tell-tale fracture of the iris that signaled a broken mind.
"Your pupils are blown," he muttered. "But the iris is intact. You're lucky."
"I don't feel lucky," Kae whispered. "I feel... heavy."
"That's the residual psychic weight. It will pass."
Kae looked down at her coat. It was stained with mud and oil from the factory floor. She reached into her pocket, looking for her handkerchief to wipe the remaining blood from her nose.
Her fingers brushed against something hard.
She frowned. She hadn't put anything in her pocket. She pulled it out.
It was a chess piece.
A Black Queen.
But it wasn't made of wood or ivory. It was carved from bone. And it was warm to the touch.
Kae stared at it, her breath hitching. "Valerius."
He looked down. "What is that?"
"I... I don't know. It was in my pocket."
"From the factory?"
"No," Kae said, her voice rising in panic. "He was never close enough to put this in my pocket. He was on the catwalk. I was on the floor. There was fifty feet between us."
Valerius took the piece from her, examining it with a grim expression. "Then how did it get there?"
Kae felt a cold dread wash over her. A memory flashed—not from the ghosts, but from the blank space in the carriage ride. A micro-second of lost time.
Did you sleep, little thief? the Voice whispered. Or did you just blink?
"I lost time," Kae whispered, horror dawning on her. "In the carriage. Or... during the blast. I blacked out."
"You were with me the whole time," Valerius said, but there was a flicker of doubt in his eyes. "I dragged you out. I put you in the carriage."
"Did you watch me every second?" Kae demanded. "Did you look away to check the road? To reload?"
Valerius went silent.
"He didn't put it there," Kae said, staring at her own trembling hands. "I did."
She looked at the Inquisitor, her eyes wide. "Valerius... I think I met him. During the blackout. I think... I think I took it from him."
"Or he gave it to you," Valerius said softly. He turned the chess piece over.
Carved into the base of the Black Queen was a set of coordinates. And a time.
Docks. Pier 4. Dawn.
"It's an invitation," Valerius said.
"To what?"
"To the next act."
Kae grabbed the chess piece back, clutching it tight. It felt familiar. Sickeningly familiar. Like holding the hand of an old friend she hated.
See? the Voice giggled. I told you we were a team. You handle the screaming, I handle the logistics.
Kae looked at the draped mirror on the wall. She wanted to tear the cloth down and scream at her reflection, but she was terrified of who might scream back.
"Tie me up," she said to Valerius.
He blinked. "What?"
"Tie me to the bed," she said, her voice shaking. "If I can take things from him... if I can meet him in the spaces between seconds... then I can't be trusted to sleep. Tie me up, Valerius. Before I walk out that door and finish what I started."
Valerius looked at her for a long moment. Then, without a word, he reached into his coat and pulled out a length of rope.
"Sleep, Vance," he said, his voice grim as he bound her wrist to the iron frame of the cot. "We have a game to play at dawn."