The Morrows didn't sleep for three days.
When the dust finally settled from Ilias's battle with the Four Families, there was no victory parade. No celebration in the streets. No songs sung about the brothers who'd broken the Church's finest warriors like toys in a child's angry hands. Just smoke hanging in the air like a funeral shroud, concrete dust settling on everything until the whole district looked like it had been dipped in gray, and the slow, awful work of counting bodies and pulling survivors from rubble that shouldn't have been rubble in the first place.
The streets looked like something divine had walked through them. Because something divine had.
Cracks ran through the pavement in geometric patterns—too precise to be natural, too purposeful to be random. They formed shapes that hurt to look at too long, patterns that seemed to shift when you turned away. Buildings leaned at angles that should've made them collapse immediately, held upright by nothing but damaged structural integrity and stubborn refusal to fall. Metal bent in ways metal wasn't supposed to bend—twisted into curves and spirals that spoke of forces beyond simple physics.
The Crimson Jacks worked through the rubble for seventy-two hours straight, hands bleeding, backs aching, pulling survivors from collapsed structures. Old women who'd lived through three regime changes. Children who didn't understand why their homes had fallen. Gang members who'd seen violence before but never like this. Never violence that rewrote the laws of reality as it moved.
Mira ran her clinic on no sleep and sheer willpower, stitching wounds that resonance had torn in strange ways, setting bones that had broken at impossible angles, telling people they'd be fine when she wasn't sure they would be. When she wasn't sure anyone would be fine ever again.
She worked until her hands shook from exhaustion, until she couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten, until Reverb physically removed her from the clinic and made her drink water and eat something that vaguely resembled food. Then she went right back to work.
And through it all, Ilias stood alone in what used to be the central square.
Staff in hand. Body trembling with aftershocks of divine power that still hadn't fully left him. Eyes still flickering faintly gold when the light hit them right. He stood there like a statue, like a monument to something terrible and beautiful, and people walked past him in silence.
Some stared. Some whispered prayers—to gods they weren't sure existed anymore, for protection from gods they were suddenly certain did. None approached. Even the children who used to run up to him asking about his staff now kept their distance, hiding behind their parents' legs and staring with wide, frightened eyes.
For the first time since the Churches had come to the Morrows generations ago, the people looked at one of their own with fear instead of hope. The myth was real. The legend was standing in their square. And it wore the face of Ilias Venn—broken and powerful and terrifying in equal measure.
He hadn't meant to become this. Hadn't wanted the weight of divinity pressing down on his shoulders like a physical thing. But want didn't matter anymore. The gods had chosen. And gods didn't ask permission.
High above Elyria, in the emerald-and-black halls of Crescendia's cathedral, the Arch-Lectors gathered before the Divine Cascade. The wall of crystalline screens pulsed with stored resonance, showing footage from a thousand monitoring stations scattered across the city like mechanical eyes that never blinked.
They watched the battle footage in silence. Over and over. Frame by frame. Analyzing every movement, every surge of power, every impossible thing that had happened in that ruined street.
Alyon falling. His supposedly impenetrable armor dissolving like morning mist. Vareen trapped between dimensions, screaming as reality tore her apart. Mael's soul-severing blade shattering into pieces that couldn't be repaired or reforged. Sero fleeing like prey, all his terrible beauty reduced to simple animal fear.
And at the center of it all—Ilias Venn. Eyes burning gold with borrowed divinity. Moving like he was conducting a symphony only he could hear. Staff singing with power that shouldn't exist in mortal hands.
"Resonance levels beyond mortal tolerance," one Arch-Lector murmured, voice shaking slightly. His hands trembled as he adjusted his glasses, making the footage blur and refocus. "The readings don't make sense. His body should be dead. Should've torn itself apart from the inside out. The human form can't contain that much power. It's not designed for it."
"The bloodline was supposed to be extinct," another said, voice tight with something that might have been fear or might have been awe. Hard to tell which. "The Blessed were hunted down centuries ago during the Purge Wars. Every single one. There shouldn't be any left. We made sure of it."
"And yet." Arch-Lector Vaen stepped forward, hands clasped behind his back, face perfectly calm despite the chaos unfolding on the screens. "Here he stands."
The room fell into the kind of silence that felt heavy. Oppressive. Like the air before a storm.
Vaen stared at the frozen image of Ilias—golden eyes blazing, staff raised, power radiating from him like heat waves rising from sun-baked concrete. Beautiful and terrible and wrong in ways that made even Arch-Lectors uncomfortable.
"The Godling," Vaen said softly. Almost reverently, like he was naming something sacred. "The churches were right to fear him."
"What do we do?" someone asked from the back of the chamber. Young. Uncertain. Scared. "The Families failed. Four Symphonic-level Tuned—some of our finest warriors—and he broke them like they were nothing. Like they were children playing at war."
"We do what we should have done from the beginning." Vaen turned to face them, and his smile was cold and beautiful and terrible in equal measure. "We stop trying to capture him. Stop treating this like a containment scenario." He paused, letting the words sink in. "We make him need us instead."
Confused silence rippled through the assembled Lectors.
"Increase the blockade," Vaen continued, voice calm and measured like he was discussing trade routes instead of slow starvation. "Food, medicine, water—everything flowing into the Morrows gets cut by half. Then by half again. And again if necessary. Let them starve. Let them suffer. Let them watch their children go hungry and their elderly die from treatable illnesses." His smile widened into something predatory. "And when they're desperate enough, when they're dying in the streets and turning on each other for scraps, we offer salvation. We tell them all they have to do is give us the boy."
One of the younger Lectors—barely twenty, still idealistic enough to be uncomfortable with this—shifted in his seat. "The people won't—they won't turn on one of their own. Will they?"
"The people will do what starving people always do." Vaen's voice was flat. Matter-of-fact. The voice of someone who'd studied history and learned all the wrong lessons. "They'll survive. No matter the cost. No matter who they have to sacrifice." He gestured to the screens showing the devastation in the Morrows. "We're not fighting the boy. We're fighting human nature. And human nature always breaks eventually."
He turned back to the Divine Cascade, dismissing them with the gesture. "Implement it immediately. And send word to the other Churches—Melodia, Symphona, all of them. This is no longer a theological dispute about bloodlines and divine law." He paused, staring at Ilias's frozen image with something like hunger. "This is an extinction event waiting to happen. Either we contain it, control it, make it serve our purposes—" His voice dropped to a whisper. "—or it unmakes us all. Unmakes everything we've built over centuries."
The Lectors dispersed, moving quickly and efficiently like pieces on a game board. Vaen remained alone, staring at the screen, at the boy with golden eyes who'd just rewritten the rules of their carefully ordered world.
"You should have stayed hidden, boy," he whispered to the empty chamber. "Should have remained a myth. A story to scare children." He reached out, fingers touching the crystalline screen. "Now we have no choice but to break you. Or die trying."
Deep beneath Crescendia's cathedral, in chambers that didn't exist on any official map, in levels that had been struck from architectural plans centuries ago, something else was happening. The air down here tasted sterile and chemical and wrong in ways that had nothing to do with cleanliness and everything to do with the things they did to maintain it.
Containment pods lined the walls like mechanical coffins—glass and metal cylinders filled with pale green fluid that glowed faintly in the dim light. Most were empty. Dark. Waiting. A few held things that had been people once. Bodies that had been Tuned, then pushed beyond Tuning, then pushed beyond even that in experiments that violated laws both legal and natural.
At the center of the chamber sat a single pod, larger than all the rest. The fluid inside glowed faintly white instead of green, pulsing with stored resonance like a heartbeat. And suspended in the center, body covered in crystalline growths that had spread like cancer across her skin—Lady Isolde Valencrest. Seraph's mother.
She floated unconscious, weightless, tubes running from her spine and chest and skull like she was being fed intravenously by the machinery itself. The crystals had spread since the last examination—covering both arms now in geometric patterns, creeping up her neck like frost on a window, beautiful and horrible and utterly inhuman.
The lead researcher—a thin man with tired eyes and hands that never stopped shaking—made notes on a datapad with stylus scratches that sounded too loud in the quiet chamber.
"Subject remains stable," he dictated to the recording system, voice flat and professional despite the tremor in his fingers. "Resonance integration at forty-seven percent. Crystallization spreading but within acceptable parameters." He paused. Swallowed hard. "Preliminary consciousness tests show anomalous results. Subject displays neural activity patterns inconsistent with normal human brain function. She's... thinking. Dreaming. But not in ways we can measure or understand."
Behind him, separated by reinforced observation glass, an Arch-Lector watched with clinical interest. His expression never changed as he studied the woman floating in artificial amniotic fluid like some terrible rebirth.
"When can we wake her?" The Lector's voice came through speakers, distorted slightly.
The researcher didn't look up from his notes. Couldn't look up. "I don't recommend attempting consciousness restoration until we better understand the integration process. The resonance we've pumped into her, the way it's bonding with her nervous system at the cellular level—" He finally looked up, met the Lector's eyes through the glass. "She won't be human anymore when she wakes. Not fully. Maybe not at all."
"Good." The Lector smiled like that was exactly what he wanted to hear. "Humanity is what made her weak in the first place. What made her fail to control her daughter. What made her insufficient for our purposes." He tapped the glass with one manicured finger. "When she wakes, she'll be something better. Something useful. Something we can actually employ."
The researcher said nothing. Just went back to his notes, hands shaking worse than before, trying not to think about what they were doing. What they'd been doing for months. What they'd continue doing because orders were orders and refusing meant joining the experiments themselves.
Inside the pod, Lady Isolde's eyes moved rapidly beneath closed lids. REM sleep. Dreaming. Or screaming. In her current state, hard to tell which. The crystals pulsed with her heartbeat, growing slowly, inevitably, transforming her into something that would make her daughter weep if she ever saw what remained.
Reconstruction in the Morrows was slow. And getting slower every day.
The markets that used to overflow with scavenged goods and black-market supplies sat half-empty now. Vendors stared at bare shelves and tried to remember when everything started disappearing. Food prices tripled overnight, then tripled again. Clean water became currency more valuable than coin. Medicine disappeared entirely—Mira's clinic ran dry within forty-eight hours of the blockade intensifying.
The Church's strategy was working. Slowly. Inexorably. Like a noose tightening one millimeter at a time.
People were getting desperate. You could see it in their eyes, in the way they moved, in how they clutched what little they had and eyed their neighbors with growing suspicion. And desperate people made dangerous choices. Everyone knew it. Everyone felt it coming.
The gang leaders gathered in neutral territory—an old warehouse on the border between Crimson Jack and Iron Crescent turf, chosen specifically because it belonged to neither and therefore belonged to both. No weapons allowed inside. No crews backing them up. Just leaders and their lieutenants, trying to figure out how to survive what was coming.
The Crimson Jacks. The Iron Crescent. The Violet Tongues. The Rusted Saints. The Black Sparrows. Five gangs that usually spent more time fighting each other than anything else, now crammed into one room that smelled like rust and old violence, trying to find common ground that might not exist.
Kojo sat at the head of the makeshift table—just a sheet of scavenged metal balanced on cinder blocks, but it served. Arms crossed over his chest. Face carefully unreadable. The gauntlets gleamed even in the dim light, gold and black metal that seemed to drink shadows.
Ilias stood behind him, staff leaning against the wall within easy reach. He looked exhausted in ways that went beyond lack of sleep—dark circles under his eyes like bruises, hands wrapped in fresh bandages, jaw tight with tension that never quite left anymore. He hadn't slept more than a few hours since the fight. Couldn't. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt the divine power surging through him again, felt Orun-Fela's presence like fire in his veins, and woke up gasping.
Seraph sat to Kojo's right, her father Taren beside her. Both quiet. Both watching. Reading the room with old soldier's eyes that missed nothing.
Mira stood near the back with Reverb, medical bag at her feet even though she had almost nothing left in it. Just bandages and empty vials and the desperate hope that she could keep people alive with willpower alone.
The arguing had been going on for over an hour. Circular. Pointless. Old grudges surfacing like bodies floating to the surface of poisoned water.
"—can't keep taking these losses! My people are starving—"
"Then maybe you should've thought of that before you started that territorial dispute last month—"
"Don't you dare blame us for trying to survive when you're sitting on supplies you won't share—"
"We worked for those supplies! Risked our people to get them! Why should we just hand them over to—"
"Enough." Rhea's voice cut through the noise like a blade through silk.
She stood near the entrance, arms crossed, amber eyes cold and calculating. Tzark loomed behind her like a volcanic mountain given human shape—patient, immovable, radiating heat. Vess and Kaela flanked the door with Kemi, all of them relaxed but ready. The Iron Crescent never came unprepared.
The room went quiet immediately. Rhea Vance had that effect. Always had.
She walked forward slowly, deliberately, boots clicking against concrete. Eyes scanning the room, cataloging weaknesses, calculating angles and outcomes the way a chess master calculated moves ten steps ahead.
She stopped beside Kojo. Didn't look at him directly. Didn't need to. The history between them filled the space like smoke.
"You all think this is about money," she said. Voice low and controlled and absolutely certain. "Think the Church is just flexing. Reminding us who's in charge. Showing us they can squeeze whenever they want and we'll just take it like we always have." She smiled—sharp and dangerous and utterly without humor. "You're wrong."
"Then what is it?" One of the Sparrow leaders—a woman with burn scars covering half her face, veteran of the Fire District riots ten years ago—leaned forward. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks exactly like every other time they've—"
"It's extermination." Rhea's voice was flat. Simple. Stating fact. "They're not trying to control us anymore. Not trying to keep us in line or extract tribute or maintain order. They're trying to erase us. Wipe the Morrows off the map like we never existed."
Silence fell like a weight.
"The blockade isn't temporary," Rhea continued, moving slowly around the table, making eye contact with each leader in turn. "It's not a negotiating tactic. It's not about making us compliant. It's a siege. They're going to starve us out, let us tear each other apart fighting over scraps like animals, and when we're weak enough—when we've done half their work for them—" She looked at Ilias, and something passed between them. Understanding. Respect. Fear. "—they'll come for him. For the boy with golden eyes. And for anyone stupid enough or brave enough to stand with him."
Kojo finally spoke, voice quiet but carrying. "So what do you suggest?"
Rhea turned to face him fully. For a moment, everything else fell away. Just two people who'd loved each other once, who'd built something together and watched it fall apart, standing in a room full of desperate people trying to decide the future.
"We hit back," she said simply. "Not as gangs. Not as rivals fighting over territory and pride and old grudges that don't matter anymore." She looked around the room, meeting every pair of eyes. "As the Morrows. United. One voice. One force. One people who refuse to die quietly."
The Rusted Saints leader—an older man missing three fingers from a resonance accident years ago—laughed bitterly. The sound was harsh and ugly in the quiet room. "United? Us? You've lost your mind, Vance. We've been killing each other for decades. You think we can just stop because things got hard?"
"Maybe." Rhea smiled without warmth. "But I'm not the one who's losing territory every single day because I'm too proud to ask for help. Too stubborn to admit that maybe—just maybe—we need each other to survive this."
The man's jaw clenched hard enough that tendons stood out in his neck. But he didn't argue. Couldn't. Because she was right.
One of the Violet Tongues spoke up—young, maybe nineteen, voice uncertain. "And who leads this alliance? If we do this—and I'm not saying we should—but if we did, who's in charge?"
"We all are," Rhea said. "Equally. No single leader. No hierarchy. No one gang calling the shots." She paused, letting that sink in. "Just survival. Just people doing whatever it takes to see tomorrow."
Taren leaned forward, one good eye studying her with the kind of intensity that came from decades of seeing people lie. "And when the Church comes? When they send more Families? More Tuned warriors? More of everything they have until we're buried under bodies?"
Rhea's smile widened into something feral. "Then we show them what happens when you corner desperate people who have nothing left to lose." She looked at Ilias again, and her voice dropped. "And we show them what gods look like when they're angry. What divine power looks like in the hands of people who remember how to fight."
The room erupted. Arguments. Accusations. Old grudges surfacing like infected wounds. Territory disputes from five years ago. Blood feuds from ten. Insults traded. Threats made. The kind of chaos that came from people who'd been enemies so long they'd forgotten how to be anything else.
But underneath it all—slowly, painfully, like bone knitting back together—something else was forming. Agreement. Reluctant. Angry. Desperate. But real.
Kojo let it go on for another minute. Let them yell and posture and threaten. Let them get it out of their systems. Then he stood, and the Ọwọ́ Ogun gauntlets caught the light in a way that made everyone remember what he was carrying.
The room went quiet immediately.
He looked at each leader in turn. Held their eyes until they looked away. Then at Rhea. Then at his brother standing silent and powerful behind him.
"If they want gods," Kojo said quietly, voice carrying despite the low volume, "let's show them what kind of gods the Morrows make. What kind of monsters you create when you try to kill people who refuse to die."
He slammed his gauntleted fist on the table. The metal dented inward with a sound like thunder. The impact rang out like a bell, like a declaration, like the beginning of something that couldn't be stopped once started.
"We fight," Kojo said. "Together. For once in our miserable, violent, stubborn lives, we fight as one. We make them regret ever thinking we'd just roll over and die quietly."
The leaders looked at each other. Years of hatred and rivalry and bloodshed hanging between them like ghosts. Then, slowly, one by one, they nodded.
It wasn't enthusiastic. Wasn't beautiful. Wasn't the kind of alliance that would last beyond the immediate threat.
But it was real. And right now, that was enough.
Mia stood on a rooftop three buildings away, hood pulled low against the cold wind, watching through high-powered binoculars she'd stolen from a Church supply depot. She'd seen the gangs gather, seen them disappear into the warehouse, seen the tension in how they moved. Couldn't hear the words through reinforced walls, but she didn't need to. She knew what unity looked like. Had seen it before. And it terrified her more than violence ever could.
Because violence you could control. Unity? Unity was dangerous. Unpredictable. Strong.
She lowered the binoculars with hands that shook slightly. Pulled out a small communicator from an inner pocket. Hesitated, thumb hovering over the button. Thought about not pressing it. Thought about dropping it over the edge and walking away and never looking back.
But she knew better. The Cult didn't tolerate hesitation. Didn't tolerate doubt.
Then she pressed the button.
Static crackled for a moment. Then a voice—layered, distorted, fundamentally wrong in ways that made your brain hurt trying to process it.
"Report."
"They're organizing," Mia said, forcing her voice flat. Empty. Professional. "All five gangs. Kojo and Vance are leading it. They're forming an alliance."
"And the boy?" The voice somehow conveyed interest without inflection.
"He's with them. Stronger than before. Whatever happened in that fight with the Families—" She stopped, choosing words carefully. "He's not going to be easy to turn anymore. Maybe impossible. The divine power is part of him now."
Silence on the other end. Long enough that she thought the connection might have dropped. Then: "Then we stop trying to turn him."
Mia's stomach dropped like she'd stepped off a ledge. "What?"
"—remove the obstacles. Everything that keeps him human. Everything that keeps him grounded."
"You mean—" She couldn't finish the sentence.
"The brother. The healer. The soldier. The girl who pretends to be his friend." The voice was cold. Absolutely certain. Like discussing the weather.
"Anyone who keeps him connected to his humanity. Isolated and broken, he'll have no choice but to come to us. To accept what we offer."
Mia's hands clenched into fists hard enough that her nails drew blood from her palms. "That's not what I signed up for. I agreed to watch him. To report. Not to—"
"You signed up for whatever we tell you to sign up for." The voice sharpened like a blade being drawn. "Or have you forgotten what happens to those who disappoint the Primordial? What happens when the Silence claims those who fail to serve?"
She had seen it. Once. A cultist who'd tried to leave. Who'd thought they could just walk away from the Primordial Silence and live a normal life.
The screaming had lasted for hours. The body had never been found. Just pieces scattered across three districts, each one crystallized and frozen in expressions of absolute terror.
"I remember," Mia whispered.
"Good." A pause. "Then you understand what's at stake. Your life. Your purpose. Your very existence hangs on your obedience." Another pause. "Do not disappoint us again."
The connection cut.
Mia stood there, communicator in hand, staring at nothing. At the city lights spreading out below her like stars that had fallen and gotten stuck in concrete and glass. Beautiful and ugly and full of people who didn't deserve what was coming.
She thought about running. About warning them. About doing something—anything—that wasn't this.
But she'd seen what the Primordial Silence did to those who betrayed it. Had seen bodies frozen mid-scream, souls torn apart and scattered across dimensions. Had watched friends disappear into the void and never return.
"I'm sorry," she whispered to the wind. To Ilias. To all of them. "I'm so sorry."
Then she vanished back into the shadows, hood up, becoming just another ghost in a city full of them. Another tool in the Cult's hands. Another person doing terrible things because the alternative was worse.
Mira worked by candlelight because electricity in the Morrows was rationed now too. Inventory spread across her desk in neat rows that mocked her with their emptiness. Four vials of antibiotics left. Six rolls of bandages that were more holes than fabric at this point. Maybe enough painkillers for another week if she rationed carefully, if she only gave them to people who were screaming. It wasn't enough. Would never be enough.
She pressed her palms against her eyes, exhaustion and frustration warring in her chest like two animals fighting for space. A soft knock at the door made her look up.
"It's open," she called without much energy.
Reverb stepped in, carrying a crate that looked heavy. "Got you something."
She looked up, blinking tired eyes. "Where did you—"
"Don't ask." He set it down carefully. "Medical supplies. Not much, but it'll buy you another week or two. Maybe longer if you're careful."
Mira stood on legs that protested, crossed to the crate, pulled it open with hands that shook slightly from exhaustion. Antibiotics. Real ones, Church-grade, not the diluted street versions. Bandages still in sterile packaging. Antiseptic that hadn't been watered down. Painkillers strong enough to actually work.
"Reverb, this is—" She looked up at him, really looked at him. Saw the exhaustion there that matched her own. "This is expensive. Black market prices for Church medical supplies are insane right now. How did you—"
"I called in some favors." He shrugged, trying to look casual and failing completely. "Figured you needed it more than I need my reputation intact. Or the money. Or whatever."
She stared at him for a long moment. Then, without thinking, without planning, she crossed the space between them and hugged him. Hard. Tight. Real.
He froze for a second like he'd been shot. Then slowly, carefully, wrapped his arms around her and held on.
"Thank you," she whispered into his shoulder. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
"Yeah, well." His voice was rough, thick with something he wouldn't name. "Don't get used to it. I'm still an asshole. Still annoying. Still—"
She laughed against him—small, tired, but genuine. "The best kind of asshole."
They pulled apart slowly, reluctantly. Stood there for a moment too long with something unspoken hanging between them like smoke. Something that might have been about to be said.
Then the door banged open hard enough to rattle the hinges.
Mia stood in the doorway, breathing hard, eyes wild with something that might have been fear or guilt or both. Her hood was thrown back, hair disheveled, looking like she'd run the entire way here.
"Mira," she gasped. "I need to talk to you. Right now. It's urgent."
Mira frowned, medical instinct immediately cataloging details. Elevated heart rate. Dilated pupils. Shallow breathing. "Mia? What's wrong? Are you hurt?"
"It's about Ilias." Mia glanced at Reverb like he was a problem she hadn't expected. "I need to talk to you. Alone. Please."
Reverb's eyes narrowed immediately. Years of running cons and reading people screaming warnings. "Anything you say to her, you can say in front of me. We don't keep secrets in—"
"Please." Mia's voice cracked, and tears started streaming down her face. Real ones. Or fake ones that looked real enough. "I'm trying to help him. Trying to save him. But I need Mira's help to do it. Medical help. And I can't—I can't explain with other people here. Please. Please."
Mira looked at Reverb. Then at Mia. Something felt wrong. Off. But Ilias was involved, and she'd do anything for her brothers.
"Five minutes," Mira said.
Reverb didn't move. "Doc, I don't think—"
"I'll be fine." She met his eyes, trying to convey confidence she didn't quite feel. "Five minutes. Then you can come back in and hear everything."
He hesitated. Every instinct he had screaming that this was wrong. But Mira was looking at him with those eyes that trusted him to trust her.
He nodded once, sharp and reluctant, and stepped outside.
The door closed with a sound like finality.
Mia let out a shaky breath that might have been relief or might have been something else entirely. "Thank you. I know you don't trust me, but I swear I'm trying to—"
"I don't trust you," Mira said flatly, crossing her arms. "So talk. Fast. What's wrong with Ilias?"
Mia's expression shifted. Just slightly. The fear fading like a mask being removed. Replaced by something colder. Emptier. Professional.
"I am sorry about this," she said softly, and her voice was different now. Controlled. "I really, truly am."
Then she moved. Fast. Too fast for someone who wasn't Tuned.
Mira barely had time to react before Mia's hand clamped over her mouth and something sharp—a blade, small and precise—pressed against her neck hard enough to draw a single drop of blood.
"Scream and I push," Mia whispered directly into her ear. "Stay quiet and you live. Fight and you die. Understand?"
Mira's eyes went wide. She nodded once, fractionally, mind racing through options and finding none that didn't end with her bleeding out on the floor.
"Good." Mia's other hand pulled out a syringe from a pocket. The liquid inside was clear and slightly luminescent. "This won't kill you. Just keep you sleeping for a while. Few hours. Maybe more. You'll wake up with a headache but otherwise fine." Her voice cracked slightly, genuine emotion breaking through the professional facade. "I really am sorry. If there was any other way—if they didn't have ways of making us obey—"
The needle went in.
Mira's vision blurred. Her legs gave out.