Chapter 17 · Beneath the Signature

The core died badly.

Not with a clean shutdown, not with the solemn silence of a machine accepting defeat. It died in spasms. Blue-white light snapped between the fractured pillars. Copper conduits writhed across the floor like severed nerves, spitting sparks into the ankle-deep water. Somewhere beneath the platform, a gear the size of a house continued turning, each rotation slower than the last.

Xia Lan stood in the middle of it, fists bleeding, smoke curling from her fingertips.

The voice was gone.

X-13 was gone.

But the name Nolan had spoken remained.

Lan.

It pressed against the inside of her skull with the weight of a locked door.

Nolan Vey was on one knee several paces away. Blood darkened the side of his uniform where a fragment of the command spine had torn through his armor. His sword lay beside him, half-submerged in the black water. He had not reached for it.

He had not looked away from her either.

“You knew,” Xia said.

Her voice sounded scraped raw. The ruined chamber threw it back at her from every wall.

Nolan’s jaw tightened.

“You knew my name.”

“I knew what they called you.”

“No.” She took one step forward.