Chapter 23 · Her Second Key

The dead anchors opened their eyes.

Not all at once. One blue slit flickered awake beneath the maintenance deck, then another answered three corridors away. A third pulsed inside the wall beside Sable’s shoulder, bathing her face in the color of deep water.

Brom swore and raised his rifle.

The weapon shook in his hands. Blood had soaked through the bandage around his thigh and dripped onto the grated floor, vanishing between the bars into the darkness below.

‘They’re coming back online,’ he said.

Sable did not look at him. She was staring at the thin veins of light crawling through the metal. Each one moved toward the central shaft, toward the Crown Core buried somewhere above them, like nerves reaching for a brain.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘They never went offline.’

A scream rose through the deck.

It belonged to no living person. The sound came from the walls, layered with the echoes of hundreds of voices—workers begging, children crying, soldiers gasping through ruined lungs. The air trembled. Brom staggered, pressing one hand against his ear.

Sable caught his shoulder before he fell.

‘Brom.’

‘Don’t touch me.’ His gaze snapped toward her, raw and bright with pain.