The fact that it was only three of them made Kai wary. He had seen enough in the Lawless City to know that numbers didn't always equal strength. The three Legionnaires had dismantled Aluth with ease, and though their silhouettes faded into the distance, the echo of their boots still rang in his head.
His ribs ached from being shoved around in the mob. Every breath felt shallow, raw. He tried to sense them—one of the three was clearly a seer, the woman with her faraway eyes and constant murmurs. The pale-haired man with cold blue eyes might have been the leader, but Kai wasn't sure. He hated not being sure.
He sighed, forcing himself down a side alley. The crowd was dispersing, and he needed quiet, needed space to think. But when he turned the next corner, his gut dropped.
It was a slave street.
A convoy trundled past, iron cages lashed onto carts. Inside, captives huddled together: some with bruises fresh, others thin as sticks, eyes glazed. Men and women, Resonants and mundanes, even a child no older than ten with a collar biting into her neck. Guards walked alongside the carts, chains rattling in their fists, clubs slung over their shoulders. The air stank of piss, sweat, and hopelessness.
One guard spotted him. His grin split wide.
"We got a fresh one! Grab the Bonker!"
Kai's stomach fell through him. He spun, trying to run, but boots pounded behind.
"BONK!"
The sound cracked against his skull like thunder. A laugh went up from the convoy guards. Kai staggered, vision flashing white. His legs wobbled but didn't give.
Instinct kicked in—fight or flight, and he chose fight. Snarling, he yanked his bone knife from his belt and drove it into the guard's side. The man grunted, barely flinching. His eyes shone with savage amusement.
"That tickled."
The Bonker's club came down again. This time Kai couldn't dodge. Wood and iron smashed across his temple. The world tilted. The last thing he heard was the guards' laughter before the dark swallowed him.
---
When he came to, his head throbbed, every breath ragged. The world rocked beneath him—he was on a cart, bound in chains, wrists cuffed in cold steel that prickled against his resonance like ice. Around him, others sat slumped, their gazes empty, their collars heavy.
Kai swallowed blood and croaked, "Where are we going?"
A prisoner beside him laughed without humor. "The zoo. Where else?"
The word meant nothing at first, but then the convoy turned a corner, and he saw it looming.
The Glass Dome.
It rose like a blister against the skyline, shards of old architecture fused with newer layers of wire and stone. The structure had once been a zoo—that much was obvious. The domed glass ceiling still glistened in the torchlight, patched but intact. Beneath it, barbed wire and electrified fencing ringed every wall, keeping anything inside from ever climbing out.
The carts rumbled through a gate flanked by guards in spiked armor. Chains rattled as captives were hauled down, shoved into lines. The air inside was hotter, thicker, filled with the cries of the desperate.
Kai stumbled as they pulled him forward, the resonance-blocking cuffs burning cold around his wrists. He felt naked without his power, stripped of every tool that had kept him alive until now.
Inside, the zoo had been gutted and twisted. What were once animal enclosures were now pens for humans. Some were stacked with hay and troughs, others with nothing but bare concrete. The difference was clear—captives marked for high-value buyers were clothed, washed, even fed. The rest were left half-naked, skeletal, withering where they sat.
Above, walkways had been built for the buyers to stroll, pointing down at the "stock" like merchants at a market. Shouts and bartering echoed overhead. The dome itself glowed with a sickly light, lanterns casting everything in jaundiced hues.
A guard shoved Kai into line with the others. His ribs screamed, his skull throbbed, but he forced himself to look around. This wasn't just prison—it was a machine. A funnel. The Lawless City bleeding directly into the zones.
The boy beside him whispered, "Keep your head down. If they like you, you get fed. If not…" He didn't finish. His eyes flicked to a pen where bodies lay still, unmoving.
Kai clenched his fists, the cuffs biting tighter. He thought of the world map painted on the wall, of the so-called freeworld, of zones pretending to be salvation. And now he stood here, livestock behind glass.
He had thought the pit was the worst the Lawless City had to offer. He was wrong.