Long-press a paragraph to send danmaku
"You're coming with me." Mina's hand locked around my wrist before I could even think about running.
"The hell I am." I tried to shake her off. Her grip stayed tight, fingers cold through my sleeve. The glowing lines in my head hadn't stopped since I cut the one inside her, and now they were pulsing like a second heartbeat I didn't ask for.
"You just saved my life," she said. "That means you're useful. And useful means you don't get to walk away."
"I didn't save anything. I panicked and grabbed something I shouldn't be able to see." My voice came out too loud. The alley around us was still empty, but it wouldn't stay that way. The tower window we'd lit up was a beacon, and every faction in Copperfall would be coming to check what happened.
Mina pulled me toward the far end of the alley, where a rusted grate sat half-buried in the pavement. "You can see the meridian lines. That's not panic. That's talent, and I need it."
"For what?"
"My brother." She let go of my wrist and crouched by the grate, fingers working the edge. "He's stuck in a place only the lines can reach. You're going to help me get him out."
I should've run right then. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to put distance between myself and this woman who talked about hidden power lines like they were subway routes. But the core in my pocket was still warm, and the crack I'd put in it was leaking something that made my skin itch.
"What if I say no?"
Mina looked up at me. Her face was pale, but her eyes were steady. "Then the wardens find you first, and they'll cut you open to figure out how you did what you did. They're not gentle about it."
"You're threatening me."
"I'm giving you a choice." She pulled the grate free. Below, a tunnel dropped into darkness, and I could smell old water and rust. "Come with me, help me get my brother back, and I'll teach you how to use what you've got without killing yourself. Or stay here and wait for the wardens to arrive. They're maybe three minutes out."
I listened. Somewhere in the distance, sirens were starting to wind up, thin and high.
"Damn it." I crouched beside her. "How far down?"
"Far enough." She swung her legs over the edge and dropped. I heard her boots hit metal, then her voice floated back up. "Move."
I went down after her. The ladder was slick, and halfway down my hand slipped. I caught myself on a rung that bit into my palm, and when I looked at my hand I saw blood. Just a scratch, but it was already stinging.
Mina was waiting at the bottom with a small flashlight. The beam cut through the dark and showed me a tunnel that stretched in both directions, low and narrow. Water dripped somewhere, and the air tasted like copper.
"This way." She started walking without checking if I was following.
I followed. What else was I going to do.
The tunnel curved, and after a minute the sound of the sirens faded completely. Mina moved fast, like she'd been down here a hundred times. I tried to keep up, but my head was still full of glowing lines, and they were getting worse. Every few steps I'd see one flare bright in the corner of my vision, and I'd stumble.
"What is this place?" I asked.
"Old maintenance access. They built it when Copperfall was still expanding. No one uses it now except people who need to move without being seen."
"People like you."
"People like us." She stopped at a junction where three tunnels met and shone her light down each one. "The lines are stronger down here. Can you see them?"
I could. They were everywhere, running through the walls and floor like veins under skin. Some were dim, barely visible. Others pulsed with light that made my teeth ache.
"Yeah," I said. "They're all over."
"Good. That means we're close." She picked the left tunnel and kept moving.
"Close to what?"
"The safe house where I'm keeping my brother."
That stopped me. "You said he was stuck somewhere only the lines could reach."
"He is." Mina didn't slow down. "He's in a coma. The lines are the only thing keeping him alive, and they're also the thing killing him. I need you to see which ones are which so I can cut the right threads."
I caught up to her in two strides and grabbed her shoulder. She spun around, and suddenly there was a scalpel in her hand, the blade an inch from my throat.
"Don't touch me unless I say you can," she said.
I let go. "You want me to do to your brother what I just did to you? I have no idea how that worked. I could kill him."
"You won't." She lowered the scalpel but didn't put it away. "Because I'll be guiding you. And because if you don't, he's dead in three days anyway."
"That's not my problem."
"It is now." She stepped closer, close enough that I could see the faint scar along her jawline and smell antiseptic on her clothes. "You lit up a tower window. Every power in this city just got a wake-up call, and they're all going to be looking for the person who did it. You think you can hide from that on your own?"
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to tell her I'd been hiding from worse for years. But the lines in my head were getting louder, and I knew she was right.
"Fine," I said. "But if this goes bad, I'm gone."
"Deal." She turned and started walking again.
We walked for another five minutes before the tunnel opened up into a wider space. Mina's flashlight swept across old brick walls and a vaulted ceiling, and I saw we were in some kind of cistern. In the center, someone had set up a makeshift camp: a cot, a folding table, medical supplies stacked in plastic bins.
And on the cot, a kid.
He couldn't have been more than sixteen. His face was thin, and his chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. Lines ran through him like I'd seen in Mina, but these were different. Darker. Tangled.
Mina knelt beside him and put her hand on his forehead. "This is Kai. My little brother."
I moved closer. The lines around Kai were pulsing, but not in sync. Some were fast, some were slow, and where they crossed they sparked. It looked like a traffic accident frozen in time.
"What happened to him?" I asked.
"He tried to open the tower." Mina's voice was flat. "He thought if he could get inside, he could find the old healing cores our family used to guard. Instead, the tower burned him out and sent him back like this."
"And you think I can fix it."
"I think you can see what I can't. The rest we'll figure out together." She stood and looked at me. "But first, you need to prove you can control it. The wardens are going to sweep the lower city after what just happened. If they come down here, we need to be invisible."
"How?"
Mina walked to the edge of the cistern and pointed at the wall. "There's a line running through here that feeds the ward grid. If you can pull it through yourself and hold it, the wardens' scanners won't pick us up. It'll look like a dead zone."
I stared at her. "You want me to pull a power line through my body."
"You already did it once. This time you just have to hold it longer."
"I didn't pull anything. I grabbed something that was killing you and ripped it out."
"Same principle." She crossed her arms. "You have maybe two minutes before the first sweep passes over this sector. Either you do it, or we both get dragged in for questioning. Your choice."
I looked at Kai on the cot, then at the wall where Mina was pointing. I couldn't see the line she was talking about yet, but I knew if I focused it would light up.
"If this kills me—"
"It won't," Mina said. "Probably."
"Probably."
"You're still talking. That's a good sign." She checked her watch. "Ninety seconds."
I closed my eyes and let the lines come into focus. There it was: a thick cord of light running through the brick, humming with a low frequency that made my bones vibrate. It looked stable. It also looked like it could burn me to ash if I touched it wrong.
I reached for it anyway.
The moment my fingers brushed the line, pain shot up my arm. It felt like grabbing a live wire, but worse, because the current wasn't just electricity. It was something older, something that knew I didn't belong.
I pulled.
The line resisted, then suddenly gave. It snapped free of the wall and whipped toward me, and I barely had time to brace before it hit. The impact knocked me back a step, and then the line was inside me, coiling around my ribs like a snake.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. The world narrowed to the burning in my chest and Mina's voice saying, "Hold it. Don't let go."
I held it.
Above us, somewhere in the tunnels, I heard footsteps. Heavy boots. Voices calling coordinates.
The wardens.
Mina crouched beside Kai and put a hand over his mouth, even though he was already unconscious. I stayed frozen, the line thrashing inside me, trying to break free.
The footsteps got closer. Stopped. A flashlight beam swept through the tunnel entrance, and I saw the edge of a uniform.
"Sector twelve, sublevel three," a voice said. "No signatures. Moving on."
The footsteps faded.
I let go.
The line snapped back into the wall so fast I didn't see it leave. I dropped to my knees, gasping, and tasted copper in my mouth.
Mina was beside me a second later, checking my pulse. "You're fine."
"I'm not fine," I said. "I'm dying."
"You're not dying. You're just not used to it yet." She helped me sit up. "That was good. You held it longer than I thought you would."
"Great. Next time you can do it."
"I can't. That's why I need you." She stood and looked toward the tunnel entrance. "They'll come back. The tower lighting up means something big just shifted, and they're not going to stop until they figure out what."
"Then we leave."
"Not yet." Mina pulled a small device from her pocket, something that looked like a compass but with too many needles. She held it up, and all the needles swung toward the same direction. "The blackout you just caused knocked out half the ward grid. That means there's a gap in the tower's defenses."
I looked at the device, then at her. "You're saying we can get in."
"I'm saying there's a route now that wasn't there ten minutes ago." She turned the device, and the needles tracked with her movement. "The tower marked it. Like it's waiting for someone."
"For who?"
Mina looked at me, and for the first time since I'd met her, I saw something close to fear in her eyes.
"For you," she said.
The needles on the device flared bright, and somewhere far above us, the tower began to hum.