CHAPTER 9
The first sound Kade heard was dripping.
Water, slow and deliberate, hitting metal like seconds on a dying clock.
His eyes opened to darkness.
Not complete darkness — thin light spilled through a narrow slit in the wall, a mechanical pulse: *white, black, white, black.* Like the blinking of an indifferent god.
He was lying on a metal floor. His wrists were free. His neck was not.
A thin collar — new — hummed faintly.
Not the Maw collar.
Something subtler.
More elegant. More dangerous.
His breath caught when he tried to sit up. Pain roared across his ribs. Every movement carried a quiet threat.
For a moment, he couldn't remember where he was.
And then memory returned in shards:
Sera's shout.
Dorian leaping the case.
Arden's cold smile.
The shard glowing like an unborn star.
The blow.
He exhaled carefully. Someone had cleaned the blood off his face after knocking him out. Someone had tended the cut above his eyebrow. Someone wanted him alive.
Kade looked around.
The cell was clean.
Too clean.
It wasn't a prison cell.
It was a suite.
A white cot.
A small table bolted to the floor.
A single glass of water on it.
And a camera in the ceiling, its iris shifting.
A door hissed open.
Kade braced himself.
But it wasn't a guard.
It was **her**.
Director Halima Arden.
She entered like she owned the silence. A woman sculpted from steel and secrets. Her coat moved like a second skin, her posture immaculate.
"Kade," she said softly, "you're awake."
He forced himself onto his elbows.
"Where are they?"
Arden raised a brow. "Which they? You're always collecting strays."
He held her gaze.
"Sera. Dorian."
She circled the room, graceful, thoughtful, like a surgeon studying a living patient before the incision.
"Sera," she said, "is stable."
He didn't miss the tone.
Sera was alive.
But "stable" did not mean safe.
"And Dorian?" Kade pressed.
A faint, amused exhale left her.
"Dorian is… complicated."
Kade felt his jaw tighten.
"Is he alive?"
"That depends on your definition."
She tapped something on her wrist console.
The screen in the wall flickered to life.
Kade's heart froze.
It was a feed of a white room.
Circular.
Silent.
Inside it stood Dorian.
Or a man wearing Dorian's body.
His posture was perfect, statuesque.
His eyes glowed faintly again — that thin violet shimmer.
He wasn't restrained.
He didn't move.
Not even to blink.
He looked like he was waiting to be turned on.
Kade stared.
"What did you do to him?"
Arden leaned on the table, fingers steepled.
"Dorian was never yours," she said calmly. "He was Citadel's long before he was Blackridge's. He volunteered for an earlier iteration of Parallax. A living implant."
Her mouth twitched in something like pity.
"He was meant to be Elias's stabilizer."
Kade felt like someone had reached into his chest and squeezed.
"What does that mean?" he demanded.
"It means," Arden said simply, "he was designed to keep Elias sane. A human anchor. But after the transport escape, Dorian's architecture began to decay. Patterns break down without their primary complement."
Her voice went quiet.
"He was dying."
"No," Kade whispered. "He wasn't—"
"Yes." Her tone held no malice. Only truth sharpened into something brutal.
"You saw the flickering. You saw the activation spikes. His system is failing. The Parallax graft inside him has nowhere to connect."
Her gaze softened.
"You are the only living scaffold."
Kade's blood turned to ice.
She stepped closer.
"Kade, listen to me. You think I'm your enemy. Maybe I am. But there are things you don't understand yet — things about your family, your mother, your brother."
He swallowed hard.
"You said before that Elias 'might not still be Elias.' What does that mean?"
Arden's eyes flickered.
A rare hesitation.
"Kade… the boy you knew died the moment Scylla handed him over. Parallax broke him apart. The Keepers rebuilt him from scraps. What stands in that suite down in Sublevel 12 is a possibility — not a person."
Kade felt dizzy.
Arden continued.
"But he still remembers you."
A beat.
"And he wants to see you."
Kade's breath stopped.
Elias.
Alive.
"Alive."
Arden watched him carefully.
"He asked for you by name."
He stared at her, disbelieving.
"I don't trust you."
She smiled faintly.
"Good. You shouldn't."
He pushed himself to his feet despite the pain.
"Take me to him."
Arden stepped back.
"There's something else you need to see first."
She pressed a button.
The door to his suite slid fully open.
Two guards flanked the doorway — not Blackridge guards.
Citadel grey.
Higher clearance.
"Walk with me," Arden said.
He followed, every instinct screaming.
The hallway turned left.
Then down.
Then deeper still.
Arden didn't speak until they reached a sealed observation lounge lined with glass.
Inside was a single exam table.
Equipment.
Monitors.
And Sera.
She was conscious.
Barely.
Sitting upright.
Her wrists unbound but her eyes unfocused, as if something inside her was trying to reorder itself.
Kade pressed a hand to the glass.
"Sera!"
She lifted her gaze. Tried to smile.
Failed.
Arden spoke softly.
"She's not hurt. She's overwhelmed. The shard reacted to her when she picked it up. It was not meant for her neural structure. But she refused sedation."
"Let me in," Kade said.
"I will," Arden replied, "after you hear something."
Kade turned, the air around him charged.
Arden tapped her console again. A second feed opened.
A new figure appeared on-screen.
A boy.
Thin.
Hair too long.
Eyes too dark.
He sat on the floor of another cell, legs crossed, humming.
A haunting, childlike melody.
Kade felt his heart stop.
"Elias…"
Arden nodded.
He looked older than the last memory Kade had of him.
But the face was there — underneath the static, the too-slow blinking, the unnatural calm.
"Kade," Arden said quietly. "He's been waiting for you for ten years."
The boy on the screen suddenly snapped his head up.
He looked directly into the camera.
Directly at them.
A slow smile spread across his face.
"Kade," he whispered.
The audio crackled.
"Kade… you came back."
Kade staggered backward, hitting the wall.
His breath shook.
Arden watched him, unreadable.
"I will take you to him," she said. "But you need to understand something first."
Her voice dropped to a razor-thin whisper.
"Your brother is not alone in that room."
Kade stared at her.
Arden tapped a final command.
The camera view widened.
And behind Elias, in the far corner of the cell—
shadows moved.
A second silhouette.
Breathing.
Watching.
Silent.
Not Elias.
Not Dorian.
Not human.
Arden exhaled.
"That," she said, "is the part of your mother's architecture no one has been able to explain."
Kade's blood ran cold.
"What is it?"
Arden looked at him.
"It calls itself **Scylla's Heir**."
The silhouette shifted.
Lifted its head.
Turned—
And the feed cut to black.