I shake my head.
“Stop moving, please,” Bash says, and I almost forgot I’m still hooked up to this machine.
No, it wasn’t a hallucination. She was real. She was Subject One, according to her file, which also said something about being psychic, maybe. Fuck, I can’t remember the exact details. I’ll need to ask Cade to look at it again, but maybe her gifts had something to do with how we communicated just now.
Do our abilities pass on with us after we die?
I guess I’ve never thought about it before.
If all I’m going to get out of her are cryptic riddles that only spawn more questions, I’ll need to try researching her on my own time.
Spirits usually can’t show themselves to me unless I will it, unless I’m actively thinking of them or trying to reach them. And I wasn’t doing either. Mish is the only one who appears frequently without being summoned, and that’s usually because she’s always lingering in the back of my mind.
What if whatever this equipment is doing to me makes my gift evolve into something where I can no longer block spirits out? What if I don’t have to deliberately summon them anymore? What if they start popping up uninvited, like when Bash helped me cross the Veil before and I was bombarded by desperate souls reaching for me?
The thought sends a chill through me, and I force myself to stay perfectly still.
I try to meditate, thinking this is going to take a while, but then Bash suddenly announces, “That’s it.”
It hasn’t even been that long.
“Did it work?” I ask as he comes around to release all my straps and unhook the sensors.
“On my end, it looks like everything worked perfectly,” he explains, carefully removing the last electrode from my temple. “But I don’t know how it will affect you yet. You’ll have to keep me updated on anything different, and I want you to come see me again tomorrow so I can run some follow-up tests.”
I shrug, sitting up slowly. “Okay, but let’s keep this between us for now, if you don’t mind.”
He brushes some of his curly hair off his forehead, glancing away like he doesn’t enjoy the idea of lying to Malachi.
“I don’t want to cause any unnecessary worry until we know if it actually does anything,” I press, trying to sound reasonable.
“Alright,” he concedes, “but you have to promise to come check in tomorrow and report anything out of the ordinary.”
I cross my fingers behind my back. “I promise.”
I hop to my feet and am genuinely surprised by how normal I feel—no dizziness, no lingering pain, no spirit coming to drag me to hell, nothing.
“I’m going to go look for Malachi,” I say, stretching my armsabove my head. “You should check on Aurora and make sure she’s not driving Nasha and Alex completely insane.”
“Good idea,” he chuckles, already turning back to his computer screens.
“Hey, Bash,” I call back before reaching the door.
He glances up expectantly.
“Can you make a small vial of Avidian with my essence now? From whatever data you collected during the procedure?”
He immediately starts shaking his head. “I wouldn’t do that without your explicit permission. I know you didn’t want me to before.”
“I want you to now,” I state firmly. “Between us. Make me one vial of it, please.”
He cocks his head to the side, and I think he’s about to ask me why, but instead he flashes me a grin. “You got it.”
This place is enormous.I can’t even begin to count how many floors this underground silo contains. The Depths is definitely a fitting name for this architectural marvel that seems to burrow endlessly into the earth’s core.
I stand near the elevator bank, taking it all in with fresh eyes. Without the usual bustle of people, you’d think it would feel peaceful, but instead there’s something eerie about the emptiness. It’s like standing inside the ribcage of some massive, sleeping beast.
The chandelier that hangs suspended in the center of the vast atrium is nothing short of breathtaking. Each crystal catches and refracts the ambient light, sending rainbows and prisms dancing across every surface of the levels below, painting the curved walls in shifting kaleidoscopes of color. I guess it was a way to bring artificial sunlight beneath ground.
