The air in the vault didn't smell like rot anymore. It smelled like ozone and frozen metal. Vane stood at the edge of the pit. His blue veins pulsed in time with the flickering lights of the city far above. He looked like a man made of glass and lightning.
"My father called him Julian." Vane said. His voice echoed against the black brick. "In the old myths. a twin was a bad omen. Silas kept him in a sensory deprivation tank beneath the primary vault. He was the backup. A blank slate of Vesper blood ready to be filled if I ever failed."
"He's not a blank slate anymore." Clara said. She looked at the blue eyes glowing in the dark.
The figures stepped forward. They weren't soldiers. They were shells. They wore the rags of the Underbelly. but their skin was translucent. You could see the blue fire circulating through their chests. They moved in perfect unison. a hive mind driven by a single will.
Then the circle parted.
A man walked into the light. He was a perfect physical match for Vane. He had the same sharp jawline and the same broad shoulders. But where Vane looked tired and burdened. Julian looked ecstatic. He wore a suit of charcoal silk that seemed to absorb the light around it. In his left hand. he carried a book.
It wasn't bound in skin. It was made of hammered silver.
"The Silver Ledger." Vane whispered. "The book of the unborn."
"Brother." Julian said. His voice was an octave higher than Vane's. vibrating with a manic energy. "You look thin. Mortality doesn't suit the Vesper name. You look like a candle guttering in the wind."
"The name is dead. Julian. I buried it in the mercury."
Julian laughed. It was a bright. hollow sound. He looked at Clara. His gaze was predatory. He didn't see a woman. He saw a tool. "And this is the Scavenger Queen. The girl who broke the world because she wanted to save a few slums. Tell me. Clara. does the city feel safer now? Or does it just feel cold?"
"It feels like it belongs to us." Clara said. She didn't flinch. She kept her hand on the bone shard in her pocket. "It doesn't belong to a ghost in a suit."
Julian stepped closer. The Sentinels moved with him. a wall of blue light. "The city is a beast. It needs a collar. You didn't free it. You just let it off the leash. My father was a sentimental old man. He liked the theater of the ritual. The blood. The moon. The drama. I find it inefficient."
He opened the Silver Ledger. The pages weren't paper. They were thin sheets of mercury held in place by magnetic fields.
"I don't need a blood moon." Julian said. "I have the ash. I have the echoes of every soul Vane released when he blew the well. I am the new frequency."
Julian raised his hand. The blue-eyed shells lunged.
They didn't use guns. They moved like liquid. One moment they were ten feet away. the next they were a blur of motion. Vane stepped in front of Clara. He didn't punch or kick. He opened his palms. and a wave of blue kinetic energy blasted outward.
The shells were thrown back against the walls. but they didn't break. They hit the stone and flowed back into a standing position. They were made of the same energy Vane was.
"You can't kill them. Vane!" Clara shouted. She saw one of the shells reaching for Vane's throat.
She pulled the silver knife and drove it into the shell's chest. The blade sank in. but there was no resistance. It was like stabbing a cloud. The creature grabbed her wrist. Its touch was ice-cold. It felt like her very heat was being sucked into its skin.
Vane grabbed the shell and tore it away from her. He slammed his hand into the creature's head. and a burst of blue light dissolved it into smoke.
"The shard!" Vane yelled. "Clara. use the shard!"
Clara pulled the white bone from her pocket. As soon as it hit the air. the blue eyes of the shells dimmed. The bone was a vacuum. It began to pull the blue fire out of the air. The creature nearest to her shriveled into a husk of dry skin and bone.
Julian's smile didn't fade. He looked fascinated. "So that is the kill-switch. A piece of the old world. It's a beautiful relic. Clara. But it's a sponge. and a sponge can only hold so much water."
Julian began to read from the Silver Ledger. The words weren't in any language Clara knew. They sounded like the grinding of metal and the static of a dead radio.
The air in the vault began to spin. A vortex of grey ash rose from the floor. swirling around Julian. He was feeding the ledger. The blue energy from the shells didn't vanish. It flowed into the silver pages.
The vault began to groan. The remaining pillars of the Zenith Tower started to glow red-hot.
"He's overriding the anchor!" Vane shouted. He was struggling to stand. The blue light in his own veins was being pulled toward Julian. "He's turning the whole tower into a transmitter!"
"For what?"
"For a new debt! He's not killing people one by one. He's signing the whole city into the ledger at once!"
Clara looked at the bone shard. It was turning grey. It was vibrating so hard her hand was bleeding from the friction. Vane was right. The sponge was full.
"We have to get out of here!" Vane grabbed her arm.
They ran for the elevator shaft. Vane didn't wait for a lift. He grabbed a cable and wrapped his arm around Clara. They surged upward. propelled by a burst of Vane's fading energy.
They emerged into the night air halfway up the tower. Below them. the city was changing.
The streetlamps weren't yellow anymore. They were turning a ghostly. electric blue. The hum of the city changed pitch. It was a high-pitched whine that made Clara's ears bleed.
"Look." Vane pointed toward the North District.
The people in the streets had stopped moving. They were standing still. looking up at the Zenith Tower. Their eyes were beginning to flicker with that same blue fire.
"He's claiming them." Clara whispered.
"He's giving them a choice." Vane said. He was leaning heavily against a steel beam. His blue veins were dimming. He looked more like the man he used to be. mortal and fragile. "He's offering them a world without pain. A world where the blue fire does the work and they never have to be hungry again. All it costs is their will."
"We have to stop the transmission." Clara said. She looked at the bone shard. It was dead. A piece of calcified grief.
"The transmitter is at the top." Vane looked up. The crown of the tower was glowing like a sapphire. "But I don't have the strength to get there. Julian is draining me."
"I do."
Clara looked at the shard. Then she looked at the silver knife. She didn't have magic. She didn't have blue blood. She had the skills of a scavenger. She knew how to break things that were built to last.
"Jax!" she keyed her earpiece. "Are you there?"
"Clara? The whole grid is going haywire! My monitors are melting!"
"I need a blueprint. Jax. The very top of the spire. Is there a manual override for the broadcast array?"
"The spire? Clara. that's a suicide mission. The wind up there will blow you off the edge!"
"Just find it!"
A map flickered onto her retinal display. a gift from the tech Jax had installed in her eyes weeks ago. There was a maintenance hatch. A small. hidden door meant for the drones that cleaned the glass.
"Vane. stay here." Clara said. She kissed him quickly. It tasted like ash and copper. "If I don't come back. find a way to kill the light."
"Clara—"
She didn't wait. She began to climb.
She used the jagged edges of the ruined walls. She climbed through the skeletons of offices where billionaires used to sip scotch. She climbed past the ghosts of her own fear.
The higher she went. the stronger the vibration became. Her teeth felt loose. Her vision was blurring. The blue light was everywhere. It was a beautiful. seductive hum. It promised her that her father was safe. It promised her that she would never have to steal again. It promised her peace.
She bit her lip until the pain cleared her head.
She reached the spire. It was a needle of white steel. Julian was standing at the base of it. His back was to her. He was holding the Silver Ledger open to the sky.
The book was acting as a lens. It was gathering the blue energy from the well and shooting it into the clouds. A storm was forming. A storm of blue lightning that would cover the entire world.
Clara pulled the silver knife. She didn't go for Julian. She went for the cable.
The primary power line for the spire was a thick. insulated cord that ran along the floor. It was the umbilical cord of the new empire.
She slammed the knife into the cable.
A surge of electricity threw her back against the railing. Her heart stopped for a second. The smell of burning hair filled her nose. But the cable was cut.
The blue light in the spire flickered. The hum dropped an octave.
Julian spun around. His face was a mask of fury. The perfect Vesper mask had shattered. "You! You think a knife can stop the future? You are a flea on the back of a god!"
He raised the Silver Ledger. A bolt of blue fire shot from the pages.
Clara rolled to the side. The fire hit the railing. melting the steel instantly. She scrambled to her feet. she was trapped on the narrow ledge.
"The shard." she whispered.
She took the grey. dead bone and the silver knife. She didn't throw them. She jammed the bone into the wound she had made in the cable.
The shard wasn't a sponge anymore. It was a bridge.
The raw energy of the tower poured through the bone and into the silver knife. The knife began to glow with a light so bright it turned the night into day.
Clara gripped the hilt. Her skin began to blister. She didn't let go.
"Vane!" she screamed.
Below her. Vane felt the surge. He looked up and saw the white spark at the top of the spire. He closed his eyes and reached out with his mind. He didn't try to fight the blue fire. He invited it in.
He became the ground.
The energy looped. From the spire. through Clara. into the shard. down through the building. and into Vane.
It was a closed circuit.
The Silver Ledger in Julian's hand began to vibrate. The mercury pages started to boil.
"No!" Julian shrieked. "This is my world! I am the heir!"
The ledger exploded.
A shockwave of silver and blue hit the top of the tower. Julian was thrown into the abyss. disappearing into the clouds without a sound.
Clara was knocked unconscious. She slumped against the spire. her hand still fused to the knife.
The blue lights in the city went out.
The silence that followed was absolute.
In the ruins below. Vane fell to his knees. He was no longer glowing. He was just a man in a torn jacket. coughing in the dust. He looked up at the spire.
"Clara." he whispered.
He started to climb.