My world compressed to the sound of my own blood roaring in my ears and the sight of two of my "family" members preparing to end me.
Valerius, the perfect shield. Fen, the silent mountain.
They were not my friends. They were not my faction-mates. They were tools, and their master had just given them an order.
"Valerius. Fen. Subdue him."
Krauss's words were a death sentence. Valerius raised his obsidian shield, the very sight of it a monument to my own futility. Fen, his massive, fur-covered form a wall of silent, unquestioning obedience, took a heavy, grinding step forward.
I did the only thing I could. I drew my weapon.
The standard-issue magun, the one Lunet had given me, felt like a child's toy in my hand. It was a pathetic, meaningless gesture of defiance against two beings who had faced down gods.
"Don't," I warned, my voice a low, desperate growl. "Don't make me do this."
Valerius didn't even register my words. He began to advance, his footsteps a slow, rhythmic, and inescapable drumbeat. He wasn't a warrior coming to fight; he was a glacier, coming to crush. Fen moved with him, flanking to my left, his golden, wolf-like eyes cold and analytical, cutting off my only path to the door.
They were herding me. Subduing me.
Elara watched from her stool, her violet eyes glowing, her face a mask of detached, clinical analysis. She was calculating the probability of my success. It had to be zero.
I was trapped. I had no weapon that could hurt them, no path of escape. My mind raced, clawing for any option, any advantage. And I found only one. The caged, raging monster sleeping in my soul.
The echo.
The Founders had bound it, chained it in white, ethereal light. They had locked the door. But I was the one who still held the key. I had felt it, a low, sleeping thrum of power. It was weak, suppressed, but it was mine.
I didn't have time to think. Valerius was ten feet away. Fen was tensing, preparing to lunge.
I didn't need the full, raging inferno that had fought the Founder. I just needed a spark. I needed a distraction.
I slammed my free hand onto the stone floor of the workshop.
I reached deep inside myself, past the cold, white chains of the sealing, and I pulled. I called on the grief. I called on the rage. I called on the memory of Silas's fall.
LET ME OUT! I screamed, not with my voice, but with my will.
The echo of Helias Rogue roared in response. The white chains held, straining against the sudden, violent surge of my emotion. The power didn't flood me. It leaked. A single, agonizing trickle of raw, geological force.
It wasn't enough.
The floor beneath my hand didn't erupt. It just… cracked. A pathetic spiderweb of fractures. A single, stunted pillar of stone, no bigger than my arm, sputtered from the ground and then crumbled into dust.
My heart sank. The sealing was too strong. I had failed.
Valerius raised his shield, preparing for the final, subduing charge.
But I had been wrong. I hadn't been trying to fight them. I had been trying to escape.
I was in the heart of the Builder's Faction. I was standing on a foundation he had laid. And for the past three weeks, I had been learning its language, mending its walls, feeling its data-flow. I didn't need to create a mountain to stop them.
I just needed to find a door. Or make one.
I turned, still on one knee, and slammed my hand against the solid stone wall behind me. This time, I didn't try to pull the echo's power. I pushed my own will, my own desperate, frantic desire to escape, into the wall's data-structure.
The wall wasn't a wall. It was a file. And I had just become a virus.
"No!" Elara shouted, her analytical calm finally breaking, her eyes flashing with genuine shock. She had seen what I was about to do.
The stone groaned. The runes that held the foundation together flickered and died. With a sound like a thunderclap, the entire section of the workshop wall exploded outward into the adjoining corridor.
Stone and dust filled the air. For a single, priceless second, everyone was stunned. Valerius, Fen, even Krauss—their logic had not accounted for this. Their asset was not fighting. He was vandalizing. He was breaking the very home he was meant to protect.
I didn't wait. I scrambled through the jagged, smoking hole I had created, my lungs burning, my body screaming in protest from the sheer effort.
I was in a maintenance corridor. I could hear the heavy, thundering footsteps of Valerius and Fen recovering behind me, their shock turning to grim pursuit. I had seconds.
I ran. I sprinted down the hall, my only thought a frantic, repeating prayer: Nara. Nara. Nara.
I burst through the doorway into the dining hall, skidding on the polished stone floor.
Lyra was there. She stood by the long table, exactly where I had left her. Nara was behind her, her small face pale with terror from the explosion, her eyes wide.
"Lyra, move!" I screamed, my voice raw. "Get out of the way! I have to take her!"
Lyra just stood there, a perfect, porcelain statue of neutrality. She didn't move toward me. She didn't move away. She just… watched me.
The thundering footsteps were closer now. Valerius's heavy, armored tread. Fen's lighter, four-limbed, animalistic lope. They were coming. They would be here in ten seconds.
"Lyra, damn it!" I pleaded, my voice breaking. "He's going to kill her! Please!"
Lyra turned her head, her placid gaze fixed on the doorway I had just come from. I could see the massive, charging silhouettes of my pursuers.
"The Master's order is absolute," Lyra stated, her voice a cold, flat monotone. "The girl is a threat. She must be purged. You are a liability. You must be subdued."
My blood ran cold. She wasn't going to help. She was a machine. And her master had given her an order. I was trapped.
I raised my pathetic magun, my hand shaking. I couldn't fight them. I couldn't get past her. It was over.
Then, Lyra moved.
She didn't move toward me. She didn't move toward them. In a single, fluid motion, she grabbed Nara's small arm and shoved the girl at me, pushing her so hard Nara stumbled and fell into my chest.
I stared at Lyra, my mind completely unable to process what had just happened.
"My core directive," Lyra said, her voice a perfect, unbroken monotone, her back now to me as she faced the oncoming summons, "is to protect the structural and operational integrity of this Faction."
Valerius and Fen burst into the room, their forms filling the doorway, their expressions grim.
"Kael-sama," Lyra continued, not even looking at them, her voice a calm, clean statement of pure logic, "your current data-conflict with the Master is causing a cascade of systemic instability. The most logical solution to restore operational harmony is to remove the primary source of the conflict from the premises."
I stared at her back, my heart hammering in my chest. She… she was helping me. She had found a logical loophole. She wasn't saving a child. She was ejecting an error.
"The western maintenance exit is thirty meters to your left," she said, her voice as cold as ice. She slowly raised her hands, as if to block the two massive summons, a ridiculously frail and hopeless gesture. "I will be forced to log this as a critical security breach, Kael-sama. I will also be forced, by my core programming, to delay them."
"Lyra…" I whispered, my voice thick.
"My internal chronometer calculates that my maximum delay, given their superior combat parameters, is approximately 4.7 seconds," she stated. "Go. Now."
She was a glitch. The most perfect, logical, and beautiful glitch in the entire system.
I didn't waste the 4.7 seconds she was about to buy me with her own "life." I scooped Nara into my arms. The girl was light, trembling, but she wrapped her arms around my neck and held on tight.
"Hold your breath!" I yelled, and I ran.
I sprinted, my legs pumping, my lungs on fire. Behind me, I heard the crash of Valerius's shield colliding with something—a table? Lyra? I didn't look back. I couldn't.
I slammed my shoulder into the maintenance door, which burst open onto a quiet, sunlit street.
I was out. I was free.
I ran. I ran like I had never run before, away from the stone heart of the city, away from the only home I had known. I was a fugitive. An enemy of the state. I had a child to protect. My weapons were gone, my power was caged, and the four most powerful beings in the world were now my sworn enemies.
I had no allies. I had no sanctuary.
My gaze turned west, toward the only place in this entire, god-forsaken city that was as broken and lawless as I now was. The one place that had no rules, no Founders, and no masters.
I ran, my destination clear. I was heading for the Neutral Sector.