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"Come on," Nia gasped as the floor dropped out from under her.
She hit stone on one shoulder, bit through her tongue, and rolled as the vault screamed around her. Metal ribs peeled open overhead. Dust punched into her eyes. A pipe burst behind the cracked shelves and sprayed boiling water across the floor.
"Nia!" Tavi shouted through her wrist unit. "Answer me!"
"I'm busy!"
The ceiling collapsed where she'd been lying.
Nia shoved herself upright and spotted the ember three feet away. It was smaller than she'd expected—a black-red coal trapped inside a cage of old gold wire, no bigger than a plum. It gave off no light, but every shadow in the vault leaned toward it.
Her shoulder throbbed. Blood slicked her palm where the stone had cut her. She wiped it on her jacket and reached.
The vault shook again. She slammed into a cabinet. Glass shattered above her, and a row of sealed relic jars tipped forward.
"Move!" Tavi yelled.
Nia threw up both arms and curled tight. The jars smashed around her boots. Black liquid spread across the floor.
One jar cracked open.
Something inside knocked.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
"Nope. Absolutely not."
She scrambled for the ember.
The knocking turned to scratching.
Nia grabbed the gold cage and pulled. Heat punched through her glove. She screamed and dropped it. Smoke curled from the leather.
"What was that?" Tavi demanded.
"The thing you said didn't exist."
"I said it didn't exist on the public maps. That's different."
"You want to explain the difference while the vault kills me?"
The door slammed shut behind her. Heavy locks engaged one after another. A red strip of light blinked above it.
SEALED DISTRICT FAILURE.
"Of course," Nia muttered. "Because tonight wasn't bad enough."
"You've got four minutes," Tavi said.
"Four minutes until what?"
"Until District Nine folds into the lower rail tunnels."
Thin blue lines spread through the stone under Nia's boots. The old power grid woke with a deep grind, like something huge dragging chains beneath the city.
She glanced at the sealed door. "Give me a route."
"I'm trying."
"You're always trying."
"I'm also the only reason you're not dead yet."
"Put that on your grave."
A crack split the ceiling. A slab of concrete dropped between Nia and the door.
Tavi swore. "West maintenance hatch. Twenty yards left. Behind the iron shelves."
Nia looked toward the shelves. Half had collapsed. The rest were packed with relics the government had spent two hundred years pretending were myths.
"Anything dangerous behind those?"
"Everything in there is dangerous."
"Helpful."
"Find a brass plate. Three bolts. Don't touch the red one."
The scratching behind her grew louder.
"Tavi."
"I heard it."
"Your route better be good."
"It's the best one I've got. Go."
A gray hand slapped onto the floor beside Nia's boot. Its fingers bent the wrong way.
The thing pulled itself from the spilled black liquid.
It had a human shape, but its cheeks were smooth and its mouth too wide. Carved letters crawled over its forehead, rearranging themselves before Nia could read them. A memory-born—something the city made from names people tried to bury and faces nobody dared remember.
It turned toward her.
"Nia," it whispered.
She backed toward the shelves. "Don't."
The creature smiled with her mother's mouth.
"Nia, sweetheart."
"I said don't."
"You left him alone."
Nia's fingers closed around a rusted pry bar. "Shut up."
"You left your brother in that room."
"Shut up!"
It lunged.
Nia swung. The bar cracked against its jaw and sent it into the wall. Bone bent. The creature's neck snapped back into place with a wet pop.
"Tavi, I'm changing plans," Nia said, sprinting for the shelves.
"You had a plan?"
"I had optimism. It didn't last."
She drove her shoulder into the iron shelving. It groaned but held. A dead security drone lay half buried beneath dust and old wires.
The vault shook hard enough to throw her sideways. The floor split open in front of her. Heat surged from the lower rail tunnels, followed by a flash of white light.
"Twenty yards!" Tavi shouted.
"I know what twenty yards is!"
"Then go twenty yards!"
Nia jumped the crack and landed behind the shelves. She found the brass plate bolted into the wall.
Three bolts.
Blue. Yellow. Red.
"Blue first?" she asked.
"Blue first. Then yellow. Don't touch red."
"You could've said that before I got here."
"I thought you knew how colors worked."
The blue bolt spun loose. The yellow one stuck.
Behind her, the memory-born dragged itself across the stone. Its fingers scraped closer.
"Nia?"
Her hand stopped.
The voice had changed.
It sounded like Kellan—the tiny break at the end of each word, the careful calm he used when he was terrified and didn't want her to hear it.
"Nia, please."
She gripped the wrench harder. "You're not him."
"It hurts."
"You're not him."
"You left me."
Nia twisted the yellow bolt until it snapped free. "I didn't leave you."
The memory-born hit the shelves.
Iron shrieked. Relics toppled around her.
"Nia!" Tavi barked. "Open the hatch!"
She ripped the brass plate away. A narrow service tunnel waited behind it, crowded with pipes and red emergency lights.
"Go!" Tavi shouted.
Nia dove inside.
The memory-born caught her boot. Its fingers locked around her ankle. One nail tore through her sock and cut skin.
"Let go!"
"Nia—"
She kicked once. Twice. The grip slipped.
Nia slammed the hatch shut and dragged the locking bar into place. The creature struck the other side hard enough to bow the metal.
"Nia!" it screamed in Kellan's voice.
She pressed her back to the hatch, breathing through her teeth.
"Tavi, talk to me."
Only static answered.
"Tavi."
His voice returned thin and broken. "You're in the old Crown conduit."
"Sounds fancy."
"It runs straight to the district boundary."
"Great. Get me out."
"It also runs through the core lock."
Nia looked down at the gold cage still clutched in her burned hand. The ember pulsed between the wires.
Once.
Twice.
Like a heartbeat.
The cage began to melt.
Tavi went quiet.
Nia's stomach tightened. "What?"
"Tell me exactly what you're holding."
"You said it was a power source."
"I said it might be a power source."
"You also said it wouldn't kill me."
"I said it probably wouldn't kill you."
"Tavi."
"Okay. That part was a guess."
The gold wires snapped apart.
The ember rolled into Nia's palm.
Pain ripped up her arm. Her fingers clamped shut around it, but the coal pushed through her glove and sank beneath her skin.
"Oh, hell!"
She dropped to her knees.
The service tunnel vanished.
For one breath, she saw Kellan's room: the blue blanket, the chipped mug, the paper stars taped above his bed because he'd said the Crownstack looked less ugly when he had his own sky.
Then the room changed.
Ash coated the walls. Kellan sat on the floor with his back against the bed. Silver wire bound his hands behind him.
Nia tried to reach him, but nothing moved except his head.
"Kellan!"
He lifted his face. His eyes burned red.
"Nia," he whispered.
The ember dug deeper into her palm.
"Where are you?"
Kellan leaned toward her from inside the vision. "Run."
The room shattered.
Nia came back screaming. Smoke filled the conduit. The hatch buckled behind her.
"Nia!" Tavi yelled. "What's happening?"
"My hand!"
"What about it?"
"It's in me!"
Silence held for half a second.
Then Tavi said, "That's not supposed to happen."
"You think?"
Red lines branched beneath Nia's skin, crawling from her palm toward her wrist. The pain blurred her sight, but another sensation cut through it—a hard pull from somewhere ahead.
The tunnel. The district boundary.
The ember knew where to go.
Nia dug her heels into the floor. "No."
The pull tightened. Her arm jerked forward.
"Don't let it reach the core lock," Tavi said.
"Why?"
"Nia, listen to me."
"Why?"
The hatch exploded inward.
Gray fingers reached through the gap.
The memory-born forced its head inside. Kellan's face stretched across its blank features—his mouth, his eyes, his tears.
"Nia, please," it said. "Don't leave me."
Her throat closed.
The ember flared.
Kellan's real voice whispered from inside her palm.
"Run."
Nia grabbed the emergency pipe overhead and swung both feet into the creature's face.
Bone cracked. The thing recoiled.
She tore free and ran.
The conduit narrowed fast. Pipes scraped her shoulders. Steam burned her cheek. Behind her, District Nine began folding into the tunnels with a roar of collapsing stone.
"How far?" she shouted.
"Keep moving!"
"That's not a distance!"
"Three hundred feet! Then you'll hit the lock!"
"The lock you told me not to open?"
"The one you're dragging toward, yes!"
Nia staggered around a bend. The ember pulled her arm toward a circle of black metal set into the tunnel wall.
A core lock.
She dug her boots into the floor. "You don't get to boss me around."
The lock opened anyway.
Not with a key.
With her.
Black metal split down the center. Heat blasted through the conduit and threw Nia into the wall. Beyond the opening, the district boundary flickered.
For one impossible moment, she saw the Crownstack through it: twelve sealed districts stacked above one another, towers and bridges wrapped around the central crown like layers of a machine.
Then every light in the city went out.
One breath of darkness.
When the lights returned, they were red.
A siren wailed above her.
Then another.
Then hundreds.
Nia shoved herself upright. "Tavi?"
His voice came through beneath the alarms. "Get out. Now."
"I'm trying."
"You have no idea what you just did."
"Not really the time."
"No. It's exactly the time."
The tunnel behind her collapsed.
Nia ran through the open boundary. A blast door rose ahead. She slid beneath it as twisted metal and stone crashed down behind her.
The shock wave threw her onto a platform outside the ruin.
For several seconds, all she could hear was the ringing in her ears.
Ash covered her jacket. Blood ran from her ankle. Her left hand shook in front of her face.
The burn had spread across her palm.
It wasn't a burn anymore.
It was a scar—red lines branching beneath her skin like veins of fire, all leading to the ember trapped in the center.
Nia turned her hand over.
The mark pulsed.
Every siren in the Crownstack cut off at once.
Tavi sucked in a breath over the wrist unit. "Nia. Don't move."
She stared at the red lines. "Why?"
"The Crownstack just registered you as the core's host."
Nia looked toward the red-lit boundary. "And what does that mean?"
Before Tavi could answer, every sealed door on the platform unlocked at once.