The containment breach did not sound like an explosion. It sounded like the world was being torn in half by a pair of glass hands. A high pitched crystalline shriek ripped through the sub maintenance levels as the Aether core finally rejected its physical shackles. Raul was thrown against the rusted iron grating of the pump room. The force of the initial shockwave was enough to liquefy the synthetic pipes. Violet fire erupted from the vents and turned the toxic runoff into a searing cloud of radioactive steam.
He was twenty eight years old and his body was a wreck of radiation sores and atrophied muscle. But as the emergency bulkheads began to slam shut a primal instinct for survival clawed its way through the fog of his broken mind. He scrambled to his feet while his joints screamed in protest. The violet light was blinding. It was the raw essence of the Aether bleeding into the air. It was beautiful and it was lethal.
He ran. He did not run like the Zero Vector. He ran like a wounded animal. He blundered through the steam and tripped over the bodies of other slaves who had been instantly blinded by the flash. The heavy iron door of the primary intake was bucking under the pressure of the coolant leak. Raul reached for the manual override lever. Just as his fingers closed around the cold steel the pipe above him detonated.
A jagged sheet of reinforced alloy caught his left arm. It did not cut him. It crushed him. The weight of the falling machinery pinned his limb against the white hot casing of the pump. Raul let out a sound that was not human. It was a dry rattling howl of absolute agony. He could smell his own flesh cooking against the metal. The Aether was spraying from a nearby fracture and bathing his trapped arm in a violet glow that seemed to dissolve the very atoms of his skin.
There was no time for a lever. There was no time for a plan. The room was filling with plasma. Raul looked at the jagged edge of a broken floor plate. With a scream that tore his vocal cords he used his right hand to drive the metal shard into his own shoulder. He hacked at the muscle and the bone with the desperation of a dog caught in a trap. The Aether in the air acted as a cauterising agent and seared the wound as he tore himself free.
He fell backward and left the remains of his left arm smoking in the machinery. He did not look back. He cradled the bloody stump against his chest and crawled into the ventilation duct just as the pump room vanished in a silent sphere of purple annihilation.
He was inside the guts of the Citadel. He moved through the narrow shafts while his vision flickered in and out of focus. The blood loss was making him lightheaded but the Aether saturation in his blood kept his heart hammering. He climbed. He used his one remaining hand to hook into the ridges of the duct. Every inch was a battle against gravity. He passed floor after floor of luxury levels where the alarms were finally beginning to wail.
He kicked through a maintenance hatch and tumbled out into a narrow alleyway. The transition was jarring. He was no longer in the dark. He was in the lower residential tier of the Citadel. The air was thick with the scent of expensive incense and panic. Above him the sky was turning a bruised purple as the Aether leaked into the atmosphere. The gardens were wilting in real time. The greenery was turning to black sludge as the artificial suns overloaded.
Raul slumped against a wall of smooth white stone. He looked down at his tattered rags and the raw charred mess where his arm had been. He looked at the people running past the mouth of the alley. They were dressed in silks and fine linens. Even in their terror they looked like creatures from another planet. They were beautiful and they were healthy. They had never known the taste of recycled sludge or the sting of a slave collar.
He watched a man trip. Instead of helping him the woman behind him stepped on his hand and kept running. He saw a group of guards shoving a group of crying children out of the way to reach a private transport. This was the true face of the Citadel. The Exodus Project was already in motion. Across the horizon he could see the massive thrusters of the remaining bastions igniting. Most of the twelve Citadels had already suffered catastrophic failures or were in the process of plummeting. Only four remained stable enough to begin the launch into the void: the London Aegis, the Paris Spire, the Geneva Hub, and the Berlin Pillar.
Raul looked up as a high speed shuttle streaked across the violet sky. It bore the crest of the Vossen Group. He knew that Vossen was not among the dying. The doctor would have been the first to evacuate this doomed rock. He was likely already secured in the London Aegis or heading toward the Geneva Hub to oversee the final ignition. Vossen was moving on to a new laboratory while Raul was left to bleed out in the shadows of a collapsing monument.
The realisation broke something in him that the torture had failed to reach. He had spent ten years believing that the Citadel was a place of order and divinity. But they were shit. They were the same selfish and cruel monsters that inhabited the slums of Heliodor. The only difference was the height of their pedestal.
He felt a wave of crushing emotional weight settle on his shoulders. He looked at his one hand and his gnarled fingers. What was the point? He had survived the Alchemist. He had survived ten years of slavery. He had cut off his own limb to see the sun. And for what? To see that the world was rotten from top to bottom. There was no paradise. There was only the cage and the struggle to be the one holding the whip.
He slid down the wall and sat in the filth of the alley. Tears tracked lines through the grime on his face. He felt like a fool. The Zero Vector had been a lie. The Architect was a joke. He was just a piece of meat that had refused to stop twitching.
A scream echoed from the deep end of the alley.
Raul turned his head slowly. A woman was backed into a corner near a disposal unit. She was young and wore a dress of shimmering blue silk that was now torn at the shoulder. Three men stood over her. They were not guards. They were civilians. They had the frantic look of men who knew the world was ending and had decided to indulge in their darkest impulses before the lights went out. One of them held a heavy lead pipe. Another was unfastening his belt.
"Please," the woman sobbed. "Please just let me go."
The man with the pipe laughed. It was a jagged and ugly sound. "The Spire is falling sweetheart. There are no more rules. Might as well have a bit of fun before we hit the ground."
Raul watched them. He saw the filth in their eyes. It was the same look Miller had when he sold him. It was the same look Vossen had when he held the needle.
Something sparked in Raul's chest. It was not heroism. It was pure and unadulterated spite. He hated them. He hated the woman for being weak and he hated the men for being strong. He hated the Citadel for existing.
He stood up. His legs felt like they were made of glass. He stumbled forward and his one hand clenched into a fist.
"Leave her alone," Raul croaked.
The three men turned. They looked at the skeletal and one armed figure in blood soaked rags. They looked at his translucent skin and his clouded grey eyes. For a second they were startled by the sheer horror of his appearance. Then the one with the pipe sneered.
"Look at this piece of trash," the man said. "The sewers are overflowing. Get back in your hole you freak."
The man swung the pipe. Raul tried to dodge but his reflexes were gone. He was twenty eight and he was broken. The lead pipe caught him across the ribs. He heard the bone snap and he felt the air leave his lungs. He fell to his knees.
The men did not stop. They were angry now. They were taking out their fear of the falling Citadel on the easiest target they could find. The second man kicked him in the face and his nose shattered. He fell flat on his back. He looked up at the sky. The violet clouds were swirling in a massive vortex. The end of the world was beautiful.
The heavy pipe came down again and again. He felt his teeth break. He felt his skull fracture. He was being beaten to death in an alleyway by the very people he had spent ten years serving. It was the ultimate irony. He had kept their air clean and their lights on only for them to stomp the life out of him.
Through the gaps in his swelling eyelids he looked at the woman. He had given her a chance to run. He had drawn their attention. He expected to see gratitude. He expected to see a flicker of humanity.
Instead she was looking at him with a look of absolute disgust. Her face was twisted in a grimace of revulsion as if the sight of his broken and mangled body was more offensive to her than the men who were trying to rape her. She looked at his missing arm and his radiation sores and she spat toward him. The glob of saliva landed on his cheek.
"You disgusting thing," she hissed.
Without a second look she gathered her torn skirts and ran toward the transit hub. She did not look back. She did not care if he lived or died. To her he was a sub human error in the system.
Raul felt the last of his spirit crumble. It was worse than the extraction. It was worse than the Aether needles. He had died for nothing. He had tried to do one good thing and the world had spat on him for it. He realised then that he was not an architect. He was not a wolf. He was just garbage.
The man with the pipe raised his weapon for the final blow.
Raul did not close his eyes. He watched the lead pipe descend. He felt a strange and hollow peace. He was glad the Citadel was falling. He was glad the Aether was burning the gardens.
The pipe struck with a sickening crunch.
His world shattered into a thousand shards of violet light. The pain lasted for a fraction of a second before it was swallowed by a cold and infinite silence. Raul's heart gave its final and stuttering beat. His consciousness drifted away from the broken meat of his body. He was no longer Subject 09. He was no longer a slave.
Around him the Citadel groaned one last time. The gravity anchors failed. Millions of tons of white marble and steel began to plummet toward the toxic Earth below. The alleyway vanished in the descent.
But as his eyes glazed over the Aether in his blood reacted to the death of the host. The violet energy did not dissipate. It surged. It searched for a path. It searched for a new logic.
A rift of pure white energy tore open in the centre of his cooling mind. It was not the end. It was an input.
Raul felt himself being pulled through a needle's eye of infinite pressure. The sky of Earth vanished. The sound of the falling Citadel vanished. There was only a cold and ancient voice echoing in the darkness of the void.
"Aether signature 09 confirmed. Initiating Transmigration."
The Architect was gone. But something else was about to wake up.