Chapter 26 · The Door With His Name

"Don't touch it." Mina's hand snapped around my wrist before my fingers reached the copper.

I yanked back. "You see it too?"

"Everybody down here sees the door." She pulled me three steps away. "The question is why it showed up now."

The slab stood in the middle of the vault with no frame and no wall behind it. Copper, taller than me, covered in characters I hadn't seen since I was eight.

Cheng.

My family name. The old version, before the city records trimmed it down.

"How long has it been here?" I asked.

"Three minutes." Mina kept her distance and circled it. "It wasn't here when we came down. Then you touched the tributary line upstairs, and this thing pushed out of the floor."

"Pushed out?"

"Grew, then. Pick your nightmare."

Copper veins spread from the base, branching through the concrete. They glowed the same sick orange as the lines behind my eyes.

Mina pointed across the vault. "Theo. Readings. Now."

Theo crouched beside the roots and raised a black meter. It shrieked once. He jerked it away from the floor.

"Off the scale," he said. "It's pulling more power than the tower's main grid.