Pain didn't leave.
It relocated.
Astra felt it like a second body inside her—sealed behind an unseen wall, pressed into a place the collar had just created in panic. The burn at her throat dulled, but the absence wasn't relief. It was a loaded weapon, cocked and waiting.
Her vision flickered in the Underchain dark.
STATUSPAIN PARTITION: ACTIVERESERVOIR: 12%WARNING: OVERFILL WILL DUMP ALL
Twelve percent, and she already felt it vibrating under her skin, eager to spill.
Rusk's hand tightened on her chain. Administrative grip. Clean ownership.
Kael stood a pace behind her, body rigid with a command he couldn't disobey. His wrist crest glowed faintly, not with power—with constraint.
And Lyra… Lyra smiled at him like betrayal was just another currency.
"Sorry, Hound," Lyra had said. "I'm profitable."
Astra didn't believe in apologies. Not in this city.
But she believed in angles.
Lyra's eyes flicked—quick, precise—past Kael's shoulder, to the Underchain door she'd just sealed. Then to Astra's throat. Then to the floor near Rusk's boot, where the canal water ran thin over stone.
Astra followed the glance.
There, half-submerged and almost invisible, was a carved sigil—older than Dominion work. Cruder. Sharper. A scar of a mark.
A hinge.
Lyra's betrayal had locked the obvious exit.
Maybe to force them into the only exit that mattered.
Rusk didn't spare Lyra another look. "Sable," he said, already done with her. "Stay out of my way."
Lyra spread her hands. "Captain, I'm never in the way. I'm the signpost that says you're about to fall."
Rusk ignored her and tugged Astra forward. "Move."
The recall command yanked at Astra's spine in the same direction, hungry to be obeyed.
RETURN.
Her collar loved when orders agreed with each other.
Astra walked.
Not docile—strategic.
Kael followed, forced to stand down from violence but not from movement. The leash allowed him to escort his own defeat.
Astra hated that for him. Hated that it warmed something in her anyway—this cruel intimacy of being escorted by the man who wanted to keep her alive.
They moved deeper into the chamber, toward a narrower tunnel that sloped up. Dominion routes, not Underchain routes. Rusk walked like he'd memorized the underworld from a map someone had paid for in blood.
Astra's interface trembled as the dampening weakened.
TRACE: 9.4%AUDIT: TRACKING BROADCAST SIGNATURERECALL TRIGGER: ACTIVE
The number crawled upward like rot.
Rusk glanced back once. His gaze landed on Astra's face, then Kael's. "You made a mess," he said to Kael.
Kael's jaw flexed. "I prevented a Guild abduction."
Rusk's mouth twitched. "You prevented an inconvenience. You created a headline."
Lyra walked beside them, unhurried. She looked bored, as if she wasn't walking between two leashed weapons and a branded anomaly. "Captain, you're so dramatic. Headlines are for the Free Cities."
Rusk finally looked at her. "You already got paid. Leave."
Lyra smiled sweetly. "I got paid to lock a door, not to disappear."
Rusk's patience thinned. "If you're still here when I deliver her, I'll file you as an accessory."
Lyra's eyes gleamed. "File me however you want. I've been called worse by better men."
Kael's gaze cut to Lyra—cold, hard.
Lyra met it, unfazed. "Don't look at me like that, Hound. I didn't write your leash."
Kael's voice was low. "You tightened it."
Lyra shrugged. "I redirected it."
Astra stored that word. Redirected.
Lyra had not said sold.
She had said redirected.
Rusk reached a junction where the tunnel narrowed into a throat of stone. He paused and pressed his palm to a Dominion ward etched on the wall. It flared and clicked, opening a concealed iron gate.
On the other side was a stairwell leading upward—toward surface, toward light, toward Dorian's hands.
Astra's collar pulsed with pleasure.
RETURN.
Her legs tried to go faster.
Astra kept her pace steady. She couldn't fight the compulsion head-on. She needed a hinge—something that made the system contradict itself.
Her eyes flicked again to the faint Underchain scar-sigil near the water.
Lyra had guided them past it.
On purpose.
Astra's pulse kicked.
The scar-sigil wasn't near the locked door. It was near this junction.
Near the iron gate.
The only place Rusk had to pause.
Astra took in the space: canal water, slick stones, the ward line, Rusk's stance, Kael's forced restraint, Lyra's casual posture.
And she made her move in the only way the collar allowed.
She obeyed.
She obeyed so convincingly that she got close.
Astra stepped forward as if she were eager to climb the stairs and return to her owner. She tilted her throat slightly, letting Rusk keep his grip on the chain. She softened her face into compliance.
Rusk's gaze didn't soften, but his attention shifted—fractionally—toward the stairwell.
Astra's foot slid in the shallow water.
Not a dramatic slip. Just enough.
Her heel scraped the stone—
—and her boot scuffed over the Underchain scar-sigil.
The sigil flared once, dim and ugly, like a bruise lighting up.
Astra's interface snapped bright.
RULESET (INTERFERENCE DETECTED)— UNDERCHAIN WARD: ACTIVE— AUTHORITY SIGNAL: JITTERING— RECALL PATH: DEGRADED
The pull in Astra's spine stuttered.
For half a second, RETURN became a question instead of a command.
Rusk felt it. His grip tightened immediately. "Stop that."
Kael's head snapped up. His eyes sharpened, seeing what Astra had just done without needing to see her interface. He read bodies. He read pressure. He read the tiniest shifts in the air.
Lyra's smile deepened—just slightly.
Astra's throat burned as the collar tried to correct the interference. Pain surged toward her nerves—
—and the reservoir swallowed it.
RESERVOIR: 19%
Astra's breath caught. The partition held, but she felt the bottled pain thrash inside her like an animal in a cage.
Rusk yanked her chain. "Move."
Astra moved—one step toward the stairs, like obedience.
Then she stepped back onto the scar-sigil again.
The jitter hit the recall path a second time. Stronger.
Rusk's crest flared angrily.
He turned, finally giving her his full attention. "You're clever."
Astra smiled, soft and poisonous. "I'm trained."
Rusk's gaze flicked to Kael, and Astra saw it: suspicion, calculation.
"You taught her," Rusk said.
Kael's mouth tightened. "I kept her alive."
Rusk's voice went colder. "You compromised yourself."
Kael's eyes burned. He couldn't deny it.
Lyra sighed dramatically. "Captain, if you're going to lecture, do it after you deliver her."
Rusk ignored her and leaned closer to Astra. His hand tightened on the chain until the metal bit.
"You will walk," he said, voice calm as a seal. "Or you will crawl."
Astra's collar flared at the command. Obedience enforcement surged.
Astra's body twitched, ready to comply.
Astra didn't fight it.
She simply looked at Kael over Rusk's shoulder and let Kael see her decision.
The hinge wasn't in resisting the command.
The hinge was in making the system punish her in a way she could store.
Astra lifted her hand and brushed her collar again—deliberate, forbidden touch.
Pain snapped toward her nerves like a whip—
—and the reservoir drank it.
RESERVOIR: 27%
Astra's vision swam. The bottled pain was growing heavier, denser, like it was pressing on her bones from the inside.
Rusk hissed. "Enough."
He dragged her toward the stairs.
Astra allowed it.
Because she'd already gotten what she wanted.
A degraded recall path.
A jitter in authority.
And a reservoir filling with pain she could weaponize later—if she didn't drown in it first.
They started up.
The stairs were narrow and damp. Each step echoed like a countdown.
Kael climbed behind Astra, close enough that she felt him without touch. His discipline kept him from reaching, but the need in him was visible anyway, like a blade in a sheath that wanted out.
Lyra followed last, lantern bobbing.
Halfway up, Astra felt the recall command surge again, stronger now as they left the Underchain interference behind.
RETURN.
Her legs faltered. Her throat burned. The reservoir trembled.
RESERVOIR: 29%WARNING: INSTABILITY RISK
Kael leaned in, voice low at her ear. "Astra."
Her name landed like a hand on her spine.
"Breathe," he murmured. "Slow."
Astra did, because his voice was the only stable authority in her world that didn't want to own her.
Rusk glanced back, annoyed. "Stop whispering."
Kael's eyes went flat. "You don't control my mouth, Captain."
Rusk's crest flared, and Kael's shoulders stiffened under the leash. Not silence this time—pressure. Reminder.
Kael swallowed it without flinching.
Astra's stomach turned.
She wanted to bite someone.
She wanted to kiss Kael just to prove the leash couldn't dictate what heat did to her.
She wanted too many things, and wanting was dangerous.
The stairwell ended in a rusted hatch. Rusk shoved it open.
Cold night air spilled in.
Lantern District again—but not the silk streets. This was behind the district, where the walls were bare stone and the alleys were teeth. The kind of place the Dominion used when it didn't want witnesses.
A carriage waited.
Not a transport cage.
A proper carriage with black lacquer, no slats, no mercy.
House Veyrn's crest stamped in silver on the door.
Astra's collar warmed, delighted.
RETURN.
Rusk hauled her toward the carriage. "In."
Astra's body tried to comply.
But the Underchain jitter had left a residue—just enough uncertainty in the recall path that she could insert one thought without the collar crushing it.
Not no.
Not run.
Something smaller.
A question.
Who benefits?
Lyra moved alongside them, too close to Astra for comfort. Her voice brushed Astra's ear, low and quick.
"Don't fill it past half," Lyra murmured, eyes forward as if she wasn't speaking. "You'll crack."
Astra's breath hitched. "You know about—"
"Shut up," Lyra whispered. "You want to live? Don't be loud."
Astra's heart hammered. Lyra wasn't just an information broker.
Lyra understood the system's ugly edges.
Rusk stopped at the carriage door and reached for the handle.
Kael stepped forward one inch.
The leash tightened.
He couldn't attack. He couldn't disobey direct stand-down enforcement.
But he could speak.
And speech, Astra had learned, was a kind of power.
Kael's voice came out controlled and hard. "Captain. By statute, custody transfer requires verification of subject stability."
Rusk's eyes narrowed. "You're stalling."
Kael didn't blink. "I'm following protocol."
Rusk's mouth tightened. Protocol was a weapon too—and Kael knew how to use it.
Rusk's gaze slid to Astra's face. "Are you stable."
Astra smiled faintly. "Define stable."
Rusk's hand lifted as if to strike her.
Kael's voice cut low, dangerous. "Don't."
Rusk paused—not because he feared Kael, but because he feared the paperwork that came after. The Dominion loved clean procedures more than it loved pain.
Rusk exhaled sharply and leaned in close to Astra. "Get in."
Astra's collar tugged. Her legs moved.
Astra stepped toward the carriage—
—and on the threshold she stopped.
Not defiant.
Just still.
Rusk's grip tightened. "Move."
Astra didn't.
She tilted her chin up slightly, letting the night air cool the sweat on her skin. She looked at Kael.
He met her gaze.
Heat surged—sharp, raw, and viciously alive.
Kael wanted to touch her.
Astra wanted to be touched.
Both of them wanted it in a way that felt like rebellion, because in the Dominion, wanting was a private crime.
Astra's voice dropped, low enough that only Kael would catch it.
"You said you wanted me alive," she murmured.
Kael's jaw flexed. "Yes."
Astra's smile turned wicked. "Then claim me."
Kael went still.
Rusk's head snapped toward them. "What did you say."
Astra didn't look at him. She kept her eyes on Kael, steady and dangerous.
Kael's throat worked. The leash on his wrist glowed brighter, resisting the direction of his will.
Lyra watched from the side, eyes too bright. Interested.
Kael drew a breath like a man stepping into fire.
"Astra Vey," he said, voice loud enough for crests and laws to hear. "By Hound custody—"
Rusk's crest flared.
The command pressure slammed down.
Kael's mouth stopped mid-syllable.
Astra's interface flashed.
AUTHORIZED CLAIM: BLOCKEDSOURCE: CAPTAIN RUSK DAINCOMPLIANCE: ENFORCED
Kael's eyes burned with rage.
Astra's chest tightened—not fear this time. Fury.
Rusk smiled thinly. "Nice try."
He shoved her.
Astra stumbled into the carriage.
The door slammed shut behind her with a final, polished click.
Darkness swallowed her—expensive darkness, padded and perfumed. A cage dressed as comfort.
Astra's collar surged.
RETURN.
The carriage moved.
Wheels rolling over stone, carrying her toward the Marquis.
Astra's hands clenched in her lap. The reservoir inside her thrashed.
RESERVOIR: 34%WARNING: DUMP THRESHOLD UNKNOWN
Through the small window, she saw Kael outside—still, rigid, leashed, watching the carriage take her.
Lyra stood beside him, close enough to look like an ally, far enough to be a threat.
Astra's breath fogged the glass.
She lifted one finger and traced a single word onto it, slow and deliberate, letting Kael read her lips through the window.
Wait.
Kael's eyes narrowed.
The carriage jolted forward, pulling her away.
And in Astra's vision, the interface flickered one more cruel line—calm as bureaucracy, deadly as law:
AUDIT LOCK: INITIATING — SUBJECT TRANSPORT CONFIRMED.