"Cut them down," Lyric had ordered.
Rook's hands were shaking so bad he almost dropped the laser cutter.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," Rook stammered, slicing through the heavy velvet of the penthouse drapes. "I'm wrapping myself in a bedsheet and jumping out a window. This is how I die. I'm going to be a stain on the pavement."
"You won't hit the pavement," Valerius said, kneeling on the floor and aggressively taping the corners of the fabric with a roll of industrial duct tape from Rook's bag. "You're aiming for the helipad on the West Tower. It's a hundred feet down. If you miss the roof, then you hit the pavement."
"Not helping!" Rook yelled.
02:00 flashing in red on the wall screens.
"We need harnesses," Lyric said, grabbing the curtain cords. "Loop these around your chest and under your arms. Tight. If it's loose, the snap when the chute opens will dislocate your shoulders."
"Or rip my arms off," Rook muttered, stepping into the makeshift harness.
"Ready," Valerius said, cinching his own straps. He looked ridiculous—a fugitive in a stolen coat wearing a gold velvet curtain like a cape. But his face was deadly serious.
"Lyric, the window," Valerius ordered.
Lyric approached the floor-to-ceiling glass. The storm outside was raging. Rain lashed against the pane.
Lyric placed a palm on the glass.
Erase.
The glass vanished.
The wind roared into the room instantly, sucking loose papers and napkins out into the night. The pressure change popped their ears.
"Go!" Lyric shouted over the wind. "Jump wide! Catch the updraft!"
Rook looked at the drop. He froze.
"I can't," he whispered.
"We don't have time for vertigo, Rook!" Valerius grabbed Rook's shoulder.
"I can't do it!"
"Sorry," Lyric said.
Lyric shoved Rook out the window.
Rook screamed—a long, trailing sound that vanished into the darkness.
"See you at the bottom," Valerius said, and he dove after him.
00:45
Lyric took one last look at the penthouse. The unconscious Architects were still slumped on the floor. The "Scorched Earth" protocol wasn't going to spare them. They were just code to be deleted.
"Goodbye," Lyric whispered.
Lyric ran and leaped into the void.
The freefall was violent.
It wasn't like flying. It was like being beaten up by the air. The rain stung like gravel. Lyric tumbled, seeing flashes of the city lights spinning below—a kaleidoscope of fire and neon.
Open it.
Lyric yanked the cords attached to the curtain corners.
SNAP.
The silk caught the wind. It didn't slow Lyric down gently; it jerked Lyric upward with brutal force. The makeshift harness dug into Lyric's ribs, knocking the wind out of them.
But it worked. The descent slowed from a death-plummet to a terrifying glide.
"Steer!" Valerius's voice drifted through the wind.
Lyric looked down. The helipad of the West Tower was a dark gray square rushing up at them. Rook was already there, tumbling across the wet concrete like a ragdoll. Valerius was coming in hot.
Lyric pulled the left cord. The curtain flared, banking Lyric toward the roof.
Too fast.
Lyric braced for impact.
SLAM.
Lyric hit the helipad feet first, collapsed, and rolled. The momentum dragged them across the rough concrete, shredding the knees of their pants. Lyric slammed into the base of a ventilation unit and stopped.
For a moment, there was only the sound of rain and ragged breathing.
"Sound off," Lyric wheezed, staring up at the rain.
"Ouch," Rook groaned from somewhere to the left.
"Alive," Valerius coughed.
Lyric sat up. They were on the roof of the adjacent office tower.
"The Spire," Valerius pointed.
They scrambled to the edge of the roof and looked back.
The Spire loomed above them, massive and dark. The red strobe lights inside the penthouse were visible through the rain.
00:00
There was no explosion. No fireball.
It started at the top. The needle of the Spire turned white.
"It's an erasure field," Lyric whispered. "Just like the boiler room."
The white nothingness spread downward, eating the building. Steel, glass, concrete—it all just dissolved into raw, white data, and then into empty air.
It was silent. Terrifyingly silent.
The erasure moved down the tower, floor by floor, faster than gravity. It ate the offices. It ate the labs. It ate the elevator shaft they had just climbed.
Within ten seconds, the Guild Spire—the tallest building in the city, the symbol of absolute power—was gone.
Where it had stood, there was only a massive, vertical column of empty space. The rain fell through the gap where the building used to be, hitting the ground far below.
"They deleted it," Rook whispered, clutching his bruised arm. "They actually deleted their own headquarters."
"Scorched Earth," Valerius said, watching the empty space. "They'd rather destroy the evidence than let us control it."
A shockwave of air finally hit them—the vacuum collapsing to fill the void. It knocked them back from the ledge.
"It's over," Lyric said.
"No," Valerius turned away from the edge, his face grim. "The Spire was just the administration. The Guild isn't a building, Lyric. It's a network. And we just cut off the head."
"So the body dies?" Rook asked hopefully.
"No," Valerius said. "The body thrashes."
They sat under the overhang of the stairwell access door, out of the rain.
Rook was checking his datapad. "The force field is definitely down. But look at the comms chatter. It's insane. Police, private security, the Guild remnants… everyone is screaming orders. The city is in total anarchy."
"We need to get off this roof," Lyric said, wringing rainwater out of their shirt. "If a patrol flies by, we're easy targets."
"And go where?" Rook asked. "Look out there."
He pointed past the city limits.
Now that the Spire was gone and the lights of the city were dimming due to the power fluctuations, the horizon was visible.
The Fog.
It wasn't just a mist. It was a towering wall of gray cloud that seemed to pulse. It surrounded the city completely.
"Valerius," Lyric said. "You said the Guild was keeping the world out. What is that stuff?"
Valerius was staring at the Fog with a look of deep unease.
"I don't know the scientific name," Valerius said. "But in the Archives, they called it 'The Entropy.' It's where memories go when they aren't anchored to a mind. It's raw, unprocessed chaos. If you walk into it… you dissolve."
"So the city is an island," Lyric realized. "And the water is rising."
"Without the Architect's force field," Valerius said, "the Fog will start to encroach. We didn't just free the city, Lyric. We broke the dam."
Lyric leaned back against the metal door. The victory felt hollow. They had taken down the wall, but maybe the wall was there for a reason.
"We fix it," Lyric said.
"Fix it?" Rook laughed, a tired, hysterical sound. "We aren't builders, Veyne! We're breakers! Look at us! We blew up a tower and jumped out a window!"
"We find someone who knows how to build," Lyric said. "We find another Architect. One who isn't a psycho clone."
"They're all psycho clones," Rook muttered.
"Not all of them," Valerius said softly.
Lyric and Rook looked at him.
"There was one," Valerius said, closing his eyes, searching his perfect memory. "Years ago. The original. The one who designed the Isolation Protocol in the first place. He defected."
"A defecting Architect?" Lyric asked. "I thought they were loyal to the code."
"He realized the Guild was twisting his design," Valerius said. "He went into hiding. If he's still alive, he's the only one who can stabilize the Fog without enslaving the city."
"Where is he?"
"I don't have an address," Valerius said. "But I remember a file. A location in the 'Old Quarter'. The district that got condemned fifty years ago."
"The Old Quarter is flooded," Rook said. "It's half underwater."
"Then we better learn to swim," Lyric said, standing up.
The adrenaline was gone. The pain in the shoulder and the burned hand was back. But there was a new objective.
"We get off this roof," Lyric said. "We find a safe place to sleep for a few hours. Then we go to the Old Quarter."
Rook groaned and stood up, peeling the wet duct tape off his jacket. "Swamps. Why is it always swamps or sewers? Can't we ever go to a nice hotel?"
"Next time," Lyric promised, patting Rook on the back.
They pushed open the stairwell door and descended into the dark, leaving the empty sky where the Spire used to be behind them.