# Chapter 161: The Unchained's Stand
The clunks of the unlocking cells were a death knell. For a heartbeat, the entire cargo bay froze, the combatants locked in a tableau of dawning horror. Isolde's triumphant laugh echoed in the sudden silence, a sound of pure, unadulterated malice. "You wanted in, Sableki?" she sneered, clutching her bleeding arm. "Welcome to the menagerie."
From the darkened corridors behind her, a cacophony of sounds erupted. Shouts, screams, the crackle of raw, uncontrolled Gifts. A hulking figure with crystalline skin burst from the doorway, its eyes glowing with malevolent green light as it threw an Inquisitor across the bay like a toy. Another figure, all whirling shadows and blades, darted past, engaging Lyra in a blur of motion. The transport was no longer a prison; it was a hornet's nest, and they had just kicked it. The emergency lights flickered, then surged to life, bathing the entire cargo bay in a harsh, sterile white glow. The ship was waking up.
"Boro! Lyra! Hold the ramp!" Nyra's command cut through the din. She kicked a discarded Inquisitor's shortsword up from the deck, catching it by the hilt. The familiar weight was a small comfort. "Do not let anything past us! Torvin, you're with me. We're going for the detention block!"
Isolde, seeing her momentary advantage slipping, scrambled back toward a secondary control console. "Inquisitors! Contain the breach! Recapture the assets! The Sableki woman is priority one!"
The Unchained moved with desperate precision. Boro planted his feet, his Gift flaring as a shimmering, kinetic barrier materialized before him, absorbing the wild energy blast from the crystalline prisoner. Lyra, a whirlwind of motion, parried the shadow-blade assassin's strikes, her own gauntlets sparking as she sought an opening. Faye, her face pale with exertion, wove illusions of collapsing corridors and snarling beasts, sowing confusion among the newly freed prisoners and buying the rearguard precious seconds.
Nyra and Torvin plunged into the chaos of the ship's interior. The air was thick with the smell of ozone, fear, and stale recycled air. The corridor was a battleground. A prisoner with skin like flowing magma melted through a bulkhead, while a Synod soldier desperately tried to seal it with a foam-spewing canister. The fighting was close, brutal, and utterly without rules.
"This way!" Torvin yelled, grabbing Nyra's arm and pulling her down a side passage. "The high-security block is sub-level three! The schematics show a service ladder that bypasses the main fighting!"
They sprinted down the narrow corridor, their footsteps echoing on the grated metal floor. Alarms blared, a rhythmic, pulsing shriek that vibrated in their bones. Red emergency lights flashed, painting the scene in strokes of blood and shadow.
"Isolde knew we were coming," Nyra panted, her side screaming in protest. "She knew who I was. How?"
"Valerius has his ways," Torvin grunted, kicking open a locked door. "He probably has a seer or a traitor in the League. Doesn't matter now. What matters is that she's turned this rescue into a free-for-all, and she's using the chaos to rally her forces."
They burst into a maintenance junction. A massive power conduit hummed with deadly energy, its surface glowing a faint blue. Torvin skidded to a halt, a grim smile on his face. "She wants to turn the lights back on? Let's give her something to think about."
He unslung a bulky, custom-built rifle from his back. It wasn't a standard projectile weapon. The barrel was a series of interlocking rings, and the power pack glowed with a sinister violet light. "My own design. An electromagnetic pulse projector. A little gift from my time as an Inquisitor. It'll fry the primary and secondary relays for this entire section. Buy us time, but it'll also trip every failsafe the ship has. They'll know exactly where we are."
"Do it," Nyra said without hesitation. "We're out of time for subtlety."
Torvin knelt, bracing the rifle against a conduit. He took a deep breath, his eyes narrowing as he sighted down the barrel. A high-pitched whine built, climbing rapidly in pitch. Nyra shielded her eyes as he pulled the trigger. There was no bang, no explosion. Just a silent, visible wave of distortion that shot down the rifle's barrel and slammed into the main power conduit.
The world went black.
The humming stopped instantly. The alarms died. The red lights vanished, plunging them into absolute, suffocating darkness. The only sounds were their own ragged breaths and the distant, muffled shouts of confusion from the cargo bay.
"Move!" Torvin yelled, his voice a disembodied command in the void.
Nyra fumbled for the glow-tube on her belt, cracking it to cast a weak, greenish light. They were in a maintenance tunnel, the walls lined with thick, insulated cables. Torvin was already moving, his hand running along the wall until he found a recessed handle. He pulled, and a section of the wall swung inward, revealing a steep, vertical ladder.
"Down," he said, swinging himself onto the first rung. "Quickly."
Nyra followed, the glow-tube clenched between her teeth. The metal was cold and slick with condensation. They descended into the bowels of the ship, the darkness pressing in on them. The silence was more unnerving than the noise had been. Every creak of the metal, every drip of fluid from the pipes above, sounded like a gunshot.
After what felt like an eternity, they reached the bottom. Torvin kicked open another hatch, and they tumbled into a corridor that was different from the ones above. The air was colder here, stiller. The walls were made of a darker, denser metal, and the doors were heavy, reinforced slabs with no visible handles or controls. Each door had a single, small, reinforced window, darkened from the inside. They had found the detention block.
"Soren should be in the high-value wing," Torvin whispered, his voice barely audible. "Isolde would want him under maximum watch."
They moved cautiously, Nyra's glow-tube casting long, dancing shadows. The first few cells were empty, their doors hanging open. But as they progressed deeper, they found signs of struggle. A clawed handprint was scorched into the wall beside one open cell. Another had a gaping hole melted through its door.
"They're not all prisoners," Nyra realized, a chill creeping down her spine. "Some of them… they're experiments. Monsters the Synod created."
"Or failed to destroy," Torvin added grimly.
They reached a T-junction. To the left, the corridor ended in a heavy blast door, the kind used for an isolation ward. To the right, the corridor continued, lined with more cells. A low, guttural growl echoed from the left.
"The isolation ward," Torvin breathed. "That's where they'd keep someone like ruku. Or something worse."
"And Soren?" Nyra asked, her heart pounding.
"He'd be in a standard cell, but with a power-dampening field. Isolde would want to study him, not just contain him. He's the key to her prophecy."
The decision was made in an instant. "You check the ward. I'll find Soren."
"Nyra, that's a mistake. We should stick together."
"There's no time," she insisted, her voice firm. "If we're split up, we cover more ground. Use your comm. Signal me the second you find anything."
Torvin hesitated, then gave a sharp nod. "Don't die, Sableki. I have a score to settle with your family, and I can't do it if you get yourself killed."
He turned and sprinted toward the blast door, his figure swallowed by the darkness. Nyra took a deep breath and turned right, her grip tightening on the shortsword. The glow-tube cast a sickly green light on the cell doors as she passed. She peered into each darkened window, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs.
Empty. Empty. A puddle of something viscous and green on the floor. Empty.
Then she saw it. A cell at the very end of the corridor. The door was slightly ajar. And through the crack, she could see the faint, rhythmic pulse of a power-dampening field. She broke into a run, her boots pounding on the metal deck. She slammed her shoulder against the door, forcing it open.
The cell was small, sterile, and bathed in the dim, blue light of a shimmering energy field that filled the center of the room. And there, kneeling in the middle of the field, was Soren.
He was thinner than she remembered, his face gaunt and shadowed with stubble. He wore only a pair of loose grey trousers, and his torso was a roadmap of old scars and new bruises. But it was the collar around his neck that made her gasp. It was a thick band of black metal, etched with glowing Synod runes, locked tight around his throat. His Cinders-Tattoos were dark, almost black, the life drained from them. He looked up as she entered, his eyes, hollow and exhausted, slowly focusing on her face.
"Nyra?" His voice was a dry rasp, full of disbelief.
"I'm here, Soren," she said, rushing to his side. The air around the field crackled, making the hairs on her arms stand on end. "We're getting you out."
She looked around the cell, searching for the control panel. It was on the wall beside the door, a complex interface of glowing runes and sliders. She had no idea how to work it.
"Don't," Soren said, his voice strained. "It's a trap. The field is tied to the door. If you try to disable it from out here, it'll trigger a lockdown."
"Then how do I turn it off?"
"There's a manual release," he said, gesturing to a small, almost invisible panel on the floor of the cell, directly beneath the field. "You have to get inside. But the moment the field drops, the collar will go into overdrive. It's designed to incapacitate the wearer if the cell is breached."
"I'll risk it," Nyra said, her eyes scanning the control panel. She saw the emergency release, a large, red rune. It was her only option. "Brace yourself."
She slammed her palm down on the rune. The blue field vanished with a sharp *crack*. The sudden silence was deafening. For a split second, nothing happened. Then the collar on Soren's neck flared with a blinding white light. He cried out, a raw, agonized sound, and collapsed to the floor, his body convulsing.
"Soren!" Nyra screamed, rushing into the cell. She knelt beside him, her hands hovering over his thrashing form. The collar was burning hot, the runes searing his skin. She had to get it off. She searched for a lock, a clasp, anything. There was nothing. It was seamless.
"Torvin!" she yelled into her comm. "I need you! Now!"
She grabbed Soren's shoulders, trying to hold him still. His eyes were rolled back in his head, his muscles locked in a painful spasm. The collar's light was beginning to fade, but the low hum it emitted was growing louder, more menacing. It was recharging.
"Come on, come on," she muttered, her fingers desperately probing the collar's surface. There had to be a way. A weakness. Anything.
Her fingers found a slight indentation near the back, a place where two runes didn't quite meet. It was a long shot, but it was all she had. She took the hilt of her shortsword and, with a desperate prayer, jammed it into the gap.
There was a shower of sparks. The collar sputtered, the light flickering wildly. Soren's convulsions stopped. He lay still, his chest heaving. The collar went dark.
Nyra let out a shaky breath, her heart hammering against her ribs. She had done it. She had freed him.
She looked down at his face, his eyes now open and looking at her with a mixture of pain and profound relief. "You came," he whispered.
"I told you I would," she said, a small smile touching her lips. "Now let's get you out of here."
She helped him to his feet. He was weak, leaning heavily on her for support. The collar was still locked around his neck, a dead weight and a grim reminder of his captivity. But he was free. As they stumbled out of the cell, a new sound reached them. The heavy, rhythmic *thump* of marching boots, getting closer. And from the other end of the corridor, the sound of the blast door to the isolation ward grinding open. They were trapped.