Youri walked forward with the cold press of gun barrels at his back, one measured step at a time, the sound of boots against polished metal echoing back at him from every direction at once. The Prime Lab of Batuzane was an entire sector built deep beneath the surface of the Batuzane continent, a sprawling expanse sheathed in white-clad iron that threw back the light of everyone who stepped across it, turning even soldiers into faint, ghostly reflections of themselves as they walked, doubled figures trailing along beneath their own feet. This wasn't Youri's first time here. Once he'd been designated Altopereh's pilot, once he'd survived his first mission — the one that had turned his entire world upside down — this was exactly where he'd been rushed afterward, barely alive, critical enough that no one expected him to wake again. It was here, in this very building, that he'd first opened his eyes on the biggest regret of his miserable life.
The memory of that day rose up in front of him now, and with it came a picture he hadn't let himself think about in a long time. Volar. He lowered his head, closing his eyes, and let his mind drift back to the years he'd spent in the orphanage there. A faint smile crossed his face as he lifted his head again — a smile that visibly unsettled the soldiers marching him forward. How could a man walking, by every appearance, straight toward his own execution smile like that? What none of them understood was that the smile had nothing to do with happiness. If anything, it was the opposite. He smiled from sorrow. It had become something of a habit these last few years — smiling whenever the past surfaced in his mind, not out of any fondness for it, because fondness wasn't something he had left to offer it, but because he found himself endlessly circling the same question: how different might his life have turned out, if he'd only made a handful of different choices along the way. Regret and sorrow had become something close to a badge of honor for him, worn without complaint.
Leonora noticed the smile too. She recognized it instantly — she'd seen it settle over his face more times than she could count, back in years she still occasionally let herself think about. Whenever she'd asked him, back when asking was still something she was allowed to do, why he was smiling, Youri would simply look at her and say, "Regrets. They have a way of comforting me." She walked beside him now across the white, reflective floor of the Prime building, turning the same private question over in her own mind, unable to set it down: what could a man possibly find to regret, in a godforsaken place like this one.
The Prime Lab stretched six full floors beneath the main building above, and each of those floors served exactly one purpose — a dedicated facility, maintained and monitored, for every God Unit the empire had ever found. Altopereh's own sector sat at the very bottom, on the sixth floor. The elevator built to carry them all down was wide, but not wide enough to hold everyone gathered at its doors. Of the twenty soldiers who'd escorted Youri this far, fifteen stayed behind to wait for the next descent, leaving only five to accompany Adin, Alan, and Leonora inside.
The three of them stepped in first. As the remaining guards moved to bring Youri in after them, Leonora positioned herself squarely in front of the doors and fixed the soldiers with a look that left no room for argument.
"You'll follow behind on the next ride," she said, her voice cold and entirely without room for negotiation. "I'll be escorting the prisoner to the lower floor myself."
The guards hesitated, exchanging an uncertain glance between them, clearly unsure whether refusing a general outright was worth whatever consequence might follow, until Alan stepped in smoothly to settle it for them. "Don't trouble yourselves. There's no one better suited to handling this particular prisoner than the General here." A faint, knowing smile touched his mouth. "After all, she once shared a bed with him — and nobody understands a man quite as thoroughly as someone who's lived beside him."
The soldiers took an involuntary step back at that, and the elevator doors slid shut a moment later, sealing in only the four of them — Alan, Adin, Leonora, and Youri.
The descent to the sixth floor didn't take long. Within moments the doors parted again, revealing the vast interior of the lab beyond — banks of screens and articulated robotic arms crowding the entrance to the sixth floor's main chamber, and beyond all of it, a massive sheet of glass overlooking the gallery at the heart of the space. There, suspended in its restraints, stood Altopereh itself, exactly as monstrous and exactly as sinister as Youri remembered it.
A familiar voice reached them the moment they stepped through — one Youri hadn't heard in a very long time. "Your Highness."
The man had been speaking to Leonora, who turned at the sound of it and recognized him instantly — Mikali, director of the science division. He bowed to her first, then turned to Alan and inclined his head. "It's an honor to have you here, Prime Minister."
"Thank you for waiting on us, Doctor Mikali," Alan said.
Mikali's gaze shifted to Youri, and he offered a slight bow in his direction as well. "Despite the circumstances, I'm glad to see you're still among the living, Duke." Youri answered him with nothing more than a faint smirk. Mikali turned back toward the glass overlooking the gallery, his tone shifting into something more clinical. "I've been fully briefed on the purpose of this visit. Altopereh is prepared, and ready to begin the test whenever you are."