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Another flash of lightning lit the deeper structure inside the storm, revealing metal towers, massive storage tanks, and thick cables feeding into the platform’s central core.

Daven followed Vandor down the narrow walkway, his hand resting lightly on the weapon at his hip. His jaw tightened when Vandor moved ahead again, too close for his liking, too comfortable beside the place Ryneth should’ve been. Useful bastard. Annoying bastard.

“You talk more than usual tonight.”

Vandor didn’t look back. “You also talk more than usual.”

“Jealous?”

Vandor stopped and turned slightly. “Of what?”

Daven stepped past him and continued down the corridor. “Of Ryneth.”

“You keep talking.”

“And you keep listening.”

The walkway turned sharply around a cluster of chemical tanks, bright white light spilling from the next chamber as voices echoed somewhere inside.

Vandor lifted a hand and both men moved toward the corner, keeping close to the metal wall.

A chamber opened below them.

Daven stopped. For a second, all he could do was stare.

A handful of worktables had been set up across the floor under harsh lamps, the whole space thrown together inside the metal skeleton of the storm platform. Large containers stood open beneath the lights while masked workers moved between them, their white coats streaked with dark stains. Others sealed smaller canisters and shoved them into transport crates stacked near the far wall.

Vapor curled through the air.

The smell hit him a second later.

Daven’s hand tightened on the railing. “What the fuck…”

Lightning flashed through the chamber, silvering the masks, the steel, the dark liquid sloshing inside the open containers.

“Daven—”

“I see it.” He kept staring. “That’s Attica.”

Vandor came up beside him, looking down at the floor below. “Shit. Their drug lab was here the whole time?”

“Right above us. Those fuckers.”

He watched one worker pour a thick black stream from a larger vat into a row of sealed containers while another locked down a crate beside him.

“All that hatred.” Daven stared at the vats. “With this volume, they could hook half the fucking city.”

Lightning pulsed through the structure again, bright enough to make the metal hum under his hands.

“It also explains the storms,” Vandor muttered.

Daven looked out into the dark beyond the platform, then back at the lab below. “Yeah. This place shouldn’t be pulling this much power. Not now. Not with an army nowhere near this place. They’re feeding it from somewhere else.”

Vandor’s gaze tracked across the steel around them. “So Concordant set this up for them, and in exchange⁠—”

“Bought themselves time,” Daven said.

His mouth hardened at the thought of Ryneth in that cage. Beaten. Taken through Helion’s skies while everyone still had to pretend the rules mattered.