"Yes," Mira says, tears falling. "Total. Absolute. With the deep trench gone, the glittering Reef expands. The Council takes the rich thermal vents. They harvest all raw resources."
She pulls at her silver wisps of hair.
"Ignorance blinded me," she sobs into her hands. "And Vaelis, after you were taken by one… I believed we fought mindless monsters. I missed our own transformation into the beasts."
Heavy, suffocating silence fills the shell.
Vaelis looks at me. Devastation mars his beautiful features.
"My tragic death," he says, his voice shaking with raw fury. "My death triggers the weapon."
Closing the distance, I place my hands on his trembling shoulders and ground his frantic energy.
"You remain alive," I say.
"They won't believe it's really me," he argues, shaking his head. "If I appear at the gate, it changes nothing... Soryn will brand me a disguised imposter. Or he will kill me to finish the job."
"He lacks the power to kill a living legend," I say, my voice dropping into a lethal, vibrating register. "Not when the legend becomes a signal for a reckoning they never saw coming."
Vaelis looks back at me. I frame his face with my scarred hands.
"My beautiful signal," I rumble.
A sad smile touches his lips. I brush the floating crimson hair from his cheek.
I turn to Bolt.
"Does this rotting shell possess speed?" I ask the eel.
Bolt snorts. "She's a rusted garbage scow, shark. Not a sleek military racer."
"How high can she climb?"
"Climb what?"
"The vertical face of the continental shelf," I say, pointing to the ceiling. "From the Silt District to the High Plaza."
Bolt’s light flickers. "A two-mile ascent. A vertical climb. Fighting the heavy gravity. Fighting the downward current."
"Can she do it?" I demand, my voice a booming roar.
Bolt studies the jury-rigged engine. He studies his own glowing copper coils.
"Overriding the mechanical safeties offers a chance," he says. "Burning the core to the breaking point might work. But we would have to rise naked. No shields or excess weight. The automated perimeter guns will tear us to shreds short of the halfway mark."
"Then we rise with company," I say.
Striding to the main entrance, I rip the heavy kelp curtain aside.
I stare into the freezing Silt District. Into the toxic smog. Into the deep shadows where the glowing yellow eyes tracked our arrival.
"What are your plans, Kael?" Vaelis asks, swimming to my side.
"I possess a voice," I say, flashing a feral grin. "And I intend to use it."
I swim onto the rusted porch of the shell.
Taking a breath, I fill my large lungs with the foul water of the outcast district.
