The elevator did not shudder. It did not groan. It descended with a smooth, sickening velocity that made Aria's stomach float into her throat.
She watched the floor numbers flicker on the digital display, counting down into the crust of the planet.
-10.-20.-30.
She wasn't going to a basement. She was going to a burial.
Aria Vance stood in the center of the car, her posture rigid, her hands clasped behind her back in the "at ease" position she had practiced a thousand times in the mirrors of the Vance estate. She wore the cadet grey of a Vanguard hopeful, the fabric crisp and stiff, the silver piping catching the cold light of the elevator.
It was the uniform she had dreamed of wearing since she was old enough to manifest her first spark of Augmentation. It was the uniform of heroes, of the men and women who held the line against the horrors of the Deep Dark.
But here, deep beneath the earth, it felt like a costume.
The air in the elevator smelled of lavender and recycled oxygen—a desperate, synthetic attempt to mask the reality of what lay outside the shaft. Aria took a breath, holding it, letting the mana in her blood cycle. Her soul, a vibrant, restless Purple, pushed against her skin, demanding release. She clamped it down.
Composure, she told herself. You are a Vance. You do not bleed before you are cut.
The elevator slowed. The G-force pressed her heels into the plush carpet.
Ding.
The doors slid open.
Aria stepped out into a space that shouldn't have existed this far underground. It wasn't a bunker; it was a palace carved from obsidian and steel. The walls were lined with tapestries depicting the First Schism, woven in threads of gold and crimson. The floor was polished black marble, reflective enough to show her the ghost of her own reflection walking upside down beneath her boots.
"Lady Vance," a voice said.
A secretary—a pale man with a data-jack implimented into his temple—sat behind a desk that looked more like a fortress barricade. He didn't look up from his screens. " The Director is expecting you."
"I know," Aria said. Her voice was steady, but it sounded thin in the vast, echoing silence of the anteroom.
She walked toward the double doors at the end of the hall. They were made of real mahogany, imported from the surface forests of Estrada. The cost of just one of those planks could have fed a village in the Rust Belt for a cycle.
She reached for the handle. Her hand trembled. She hated the tremble. She hated that he could still do this to her, even when he wasn't in the room.
She pushed the doors open.
The office was dim, lit only by the ambient glow of a massive, wall-sized aquarium behind the desk. Rare, bioluminescent Pisces from the abyssal trenches drifted through the water, casting shifting patterns of blue and green light across the room.
Director Quillen Vance stood by the tank, his back to her. He was feeding the fish, dropping tiny pinches of dried flake into the water with agonizing precision.
"You're late," he said softly.
He didn't turn around. He didn't have to. The pressure of his presence filled the room instantly. It was a heavy, suffocating weight—the Red Soul of a man who had long since forgotten the difference between power and cruelty.
"The transport was delayed," Aria replied, walking to the center of the room and stopping. She didn't sit. She wasn't offered a chair.
"Inefficiency," Quillen murmured. He dusted his fingers off—clean, white hands that looked like they had never held a weapon, even though Aria knew they could snap a neck with a twitch of Augmentation.
He turned.
He smiled. It was the smile of a shark recognizing blood in the water.
"Hello, little sister."
"Director," Aria corrected him. "I received your summons. My transfer to the Vanguard Academy in the Capital was... interrupted."
Quillen walked to his desk and sat down. The leather creaked. He picked up a file—her file—and flipped it open.
"Interrupted? No. Re-prioritized." He looked at her over the rim of his spectacles. "The Academy is a playground, Aria. It breeds soldiers who know how to march and how to salute. It does not breed... visionaries."
"I didn't ask to be a visionary," Aria said, her voice hardening. "I asked to be a Vanguard. I earned my placement. Top of the distract in tactical theory. Ninety-ninth percentile in mana efficiency."
"And that is exactly why you are here," Quillen said. He closed the file with a snap. "The Vance family has a legacy to uphold. Father is... concerned. He believes you lack the temperament for the high court. He thinks you are too soft."
Aria stiffened. "I am not soft."
"Aren't you?" Quillen leaned forward, the shadows form the tank dancing over his face. "You froze when the Kyn-form attacked the estate stables last winter. You hesitated."
"I was twelve," she shot back.
"And now you are sixteen," Quillen said. "Old enough to be useful. Or old enough to be a liability."
He stood up and walked to the side of the room, where a bank of high-definition monitors was embedded in the wall. He tapped a console. The screens flickered to life.
"Project Gemini," he said. "The future of the Argent Legion. And your new assignment."
Aria stepped forward, her curiosity warring with her dread. She looked at the screens.
She expected to see weapons. She expected to see golems, or maybe high-level criminals being processed for the penal legions.
What she saw made the breath freeze in her lungs.
On the center screen was a room that looked like a cell. It was grey, sterile, and cold. Inside, three figures were huddled together on a narrow cot.
They were children.
One—a boy with messy hair—was kneeling on the floor, holding a wet cloth to the forehead of another boy who lay unconscious. The unconscious one's arm was splinted with crude metal braces, bent at a sickening angle. A third figure, smaller, huddled in the corner, clutching a limb that looked... wrong. Mutated.
"What is this?" Aria whispered. The nausea hit her hard, a sour wave rising from her stomach.
"Assets," Quillen said. "Units Alpha, Beta, and Gamma of the 79th batch. They are the prototypes for the Dual-Sigil integration program."
Aria stared at the screen. The boy on the floor—Unit Beta, presumably—looked up at the camera. His eyes were hollow, dark pits in a pale face. There was no defiance in them. Only a terrifying, empty acceptance.
"They're... they're just kids," Aria said, her voice trembling. "Quillen, these are children."
"They are orphans," Quillen corrected, his voice dropping to absolute zero. "Found in the gutters of the Ningen slums or bought from the scaver-tribes of the Wastes. Nobody misses them, Aria. They have no names. They have no rights. They have only potential."
He walked up behind her. She could feel the heat of his body, the terrifying hum of his mana. He placed a hand on her shoulder. She wanted to flinch, to pull away, but she forced herself to stand stone still.
"And they are failing," Quillen whispered into her ear. "They have power, yes. But they lack direction. They lack... cohesion. They are wild kyns snapping at the leash. I need someone to train them. Someone to make them a pack."
"You want me to be a jailer," Aria said, looking at the broken boy on the screen.
"I want you to be a Handler," Quillen said. He squeezed her shoulder, his fingers digging into the muscle. "I am giving you a chance, Aria. A chance to prove that you are not just a spoiled little girl playing soldier. Turn these things into a squad. Make them functional. Do that, and I will sign your transfer to the Academy myself. I will give you the recommendation that will make you a captain before you are twenty."
Aria looked at the screen. The boy, Beta, was wiping blood from the unconscious one's chin. The tenderness of the action was heartbreaking in the cold, grey room.
"And if I refuse?" she asked quietly.
Quillen released her shoulder. He walked back to his desk and picked up a piece of paper. He held it over the flame of a small, mana-powered lighter.
"Then I will tell Father that his daughter is defective," Quillen said. He watched the paper curl and blacken. "I will tell him that you are a liability. And you know what House Vance does with liabilities."
The threat hung in the air, unsaid but screaming. Exile. Or worse. An accident in the deep tunnels. A training mishap.
"Furthermore," Quillen added, blowing the ash from his fingers, "I will have the 79th batch liquidated. If they cannot be trained, they are a waste of resources. I will have the incineration unit clear their cell by morning."
Aria felt the blood drain from her face. She looked back at the monitors. At the boys.
If she walked away, they died. If she stayed, she became part of the machine that broke them.
It wasn't a choice. It was a trap.
She looked at Beta-79 again. He seemed to be looking right through the camera lens, looking at her. He looked so tired.
"Fine," Aria said. The word tasted like poison.
"Excellent," Quillen smiled. It was a genuine smile, which made it all the more grotesque. "Your clearance is active. You start immediately."
He sat down and waved a hand dismissively. "Go on, Papilio. Go meet your pets. Try not to let them bite."
Aria turned on her heel. She walked to the door, her boots clicking on the marble. She didn't look back at her brother. She didn't look back at the fish tank or the tapestries.
She stepped out into the hallway, the heavy doors closing behind her with a sound like a tomb sealing shut.
She leaned against the wall, her legs suddenly shaking so hard she could barely stand. She pressed a hand to her mouth, forcing the bile back down.
She was a Vance. She was Highborn. She was powerful.
But as she looked down the long, dark corridor that led to the containment sectors, Aria realized the truth.
She wasn't the Handler. She was just another prisoner.
She straightened her uniform, smoothing the grey fabric over her pounding heart. She took a deep breath, pulling the cold, recycled air into her lungs.
"Show me the way," she whispered to the empty hall.
She pushed off the wall and began to walk. Down. Into the dark. toward the children who had no names.