The meeting chamber of the Fatui gradually emptied.
One Harbinger after another departed, their cloaks sweeping across the polished floor as they returned to their duties.
Columbina had already left with Lucian Vale, and before long, only a single figure remained seated at the long table.
Il Dottore.
The Doctor claimed he was merely waiting for one of his subordinates to bring him another coat.
Considering that Lucian had stolen the cloak from his shoulders without anyone seeing so much as a blur, the excuse sounded reasonable enough.
It was also completely false.
Dottore sat in silence, his fingers resting against the arm of his chair while uncertain light flickered behind his mask.
Lucian’s methods had left him with a sensation he despised: powerlessness.
At the same time, they had awakened an overwhelming desire to understand.
What kind of movement had allowed him to cross the chamber unnoticed?
Had he manipulated space?
Time?
Perception?
Had he altered the observers rather than moving quickly himself?
Was the ability elemental, biological, technological, or something beyond every category Dottore currently used?
The unanswered questions gnawed at him.
In his hunger for power, Dottore was no less obsessive than The Balladeer.
The difference was that Scaramouche sought strength for himself, while Dottore wanted to tear strength apart, examine every component, and rebuild it in whatever form pleased him.
Lucian was now heading toward the prison.
That was convenient.
Three of Dottore’s segments were stationed within the prison complex, along with a considerable number of failed experimental subjects.
All of them could be used.
Through the connection linking his consciousness to his other segments, Dottore quickly transmitted everything that had happened inside the meeting chamber.
The stolen cloak.
The impossible speed.
The unknown intruder’s apparent confidence before seven Harbingers.
After a brief discussion, the three segments inside the prison agreed to proceed.
They would provoke Lucian, observe his response, and gather whatever information they could.
The prison belonged to Dottore in every way that mattered.
Its laboratories, guards, prisoners, and experimental subjects were all under his influence.
If Lucian became angry, the losses would be acceptable.
Segments were replaceable.
Failed test subjects were even more so.
For the sake of research, every sacrifice could be justified.
Orders spread through the lower levels.
Soon afterward, the security around the underground laboratory weakened with suspicious precision.
Locked doors opened.
Patrol routes broke down.
Restraints disengaged.
Prisoners who had survived Delusion experiments and years of torment sensed the sudden opening before them.
For the first time in years, freedom seemed close enough to touch.
And the prison erupted into chaos.
“Where are the guards?”
Lucian stood in the main hall of the prison and looked around.
The enormous building should have been crawling with Fatui soldiers.
Snezhnaya had recently implemented an aggressive security campaign, arresting foreign agents, suspected traitors, smugglers, and anyone else judged inconvenient.
A prison this important should never have been left unattended.
Yet not one guard stood at the entrance.
Lucian frowned.
“Does Snezhnaya’s largest prison normally operate on the honor system?”
Columbina floated beside him, her clean bare feet hovering just above the floor.
Her expression also tightened faintly.
“There should be guards here,” she said.
“I do not know why they are absent.”
That was enough to confirm Lucian’s suspicion.
Something was wrong.
Before Columbina could say more, a mechanical hum sounded from the far side of the hall.
The elevator was rising.
Its indicator climbed floor by floor until it reached the entrance level.
With a soft chime, the metal doors slid apart.
A huge man stood inside.
His body was covered in bruises, scars, and the unmistakable traces of prolonged experimentation.
In each hand, he dragged an unconscious prison guard by the collar.
Both guards were still breathing, though barely.
Among the escaped test subjects, this man had been the first to break free.
He had also defeated every other prisoner who challenged him, relying on the unstable power of the Delusion embedded in his body.
His eyes swept across the hall.
Then they fixed on Lucian and Columbina.
The man’s pupils contracted.
Their clothing marked them as people of extraordinary status.
Columbina’s attire, in particular, was unmistakable to anyone who had suffered beneath the Fatui.
A Harbinger.
Memories of pain surged through him.
Needles.
Restraints.
Cold instruments.
Voices discussing his survival rate as though he were livestock.
He knew what would happen if they captured him again.
He would not return to a cell.
He would return to the laboratory, and this time the experiments would continue until there was nothing left of him.
Fear rose until it became unbearable.
Then fear burned into rage.
He had only wanted to live.
What crime justified this?
Years ago, poverty had forced him to work as an enforcer for one of Snezhnaya’s underground gangs.
The court sentenced him to three years.
He had spent five years in prison.
For most of that time, Dottore’s researchers had treated his body as experimental material.
The man threw his head back and roared.
“AAAAARGH!”
He hurled the two guards in opposite directions—one toward Lucian, the other toward Columbina—then exploded forward.
His speed surpassed the limits of an ordinary human.
Purple lightning crackled behind him as the Delusion released power far beyond what his body could safely endure.
Several strands of hair at his temples turned white in seconds.
Lucian stared at the charging giant.
What was wrong with this fellow?
He had taken one look at them and immediately decided to die dramatically.
Columbina drifted one small step backward.
She had been curious about Lucian’s power ever since he entered the Harbingers’ meeting chamber.
This seemed like a convenient opportunity to see how he fought.
Lucian noticed her movement.
Then, demonstrating a complete absence of martial dignity, he retreated three full steps.
He reached into his pocket, produced a lollipop, tore away the wrapper, and placed it in his mouth.
He was here to rescue Diluc.
Subduing escaped prisoners was not included in the commission.
Columbina paused.
Slowly, she withdrew the foot she had moved backward.
Blue energy spread from her in a gentle wave.
The two airborne guards stopped before striking the ground, suspended as lightly as feathers.
A second, far more powerful force struck the charging prisoner squarely in the chest.
The huge man flew backward.
He crashed into the wall hard enough to fracture the stone, convulsed once, and collapsed unconscious.
Columbina carefully lowered both guards to the floor.
Lucian sighed around the lollipop and walked over.
Earth Song appeared beside him, then shifted.
Its form and ability became those of Crazy Diamond.
A pulse of restorative power passed through the injured guards.
Broken bones realigned.
Torn flesh closed.
Internal bleeding vanished.
Within moments, wounds that should have required weeks of treatment disappeared as though they had never existed.
Columbina’s eyes widened.
She had expected speed, perhaps spatial manipulation, or some form of overwhelming physical power.
She had not expected Lucian to restore two dying men with a touch.
How could one person possess so many unrelated abilities?
Lucian, meanwhile, was no longer pretending the riot had nothing to do with him.
If poor prison management had allowed the inmates to escape, he would have happily stepped aside and let the Fatui clean up their own mess.
But the moment the giant attacked, Earth Song confirmed what Lucian’s instincts had already suggested.
Someone was watching.
More importantly, someone had arranged this incident specifically to test him.
Before the giant even charged, Lucian had switched Earth Song’s ability to Wonder of U.
The moment hostile pursuit and intent formed around him, calamity began to move.
It had triggered three times.
The first calamity struck the giant prisoner.
His Delusion went out of control, forcing it to consume his life force at an accelerated rate.
That was why his hair had begun turning white even before Columbina blasted him into the wall.
The second calamity targeted Columbina.
She had stepped back with the intention of making Lucian fight so she could judge his power.
It was not an attack, but it still carried a form of pursuit and interference.
A raised screw on the floor caught the sole of her left foot.
The injury was small, but distinctly unpleasant.
The third calamity travelled along the gaze of the person watching through the surveillance system.
Whoever was hiding behind those cameras was probably having a terrible day.
Inside a monitoring room deeper within the prison, one of Dottore’s segments leaned toward the screens.
A cup of scalding coffee sat on the table beside him.
Without warning, the cup tipped.
Hot liquid rushed toward his lap.
Dottore reacted instantly.
He pushed away from the desk and rolled backward on a pneumatic office chair, narrowly avoiding the coffee.
A victorious smile crossed his face.
He had predicted the danger and escaped it.
Then the chair made a sharp metallic sound.
The pneumatic cylinder beneath the seat suddenly shot upward.
The reinforced rod punched straight through the cushion.
And struck the exact center of its target.
Dottore’s smile vanished.
His eyes widened behind the mask.
For one suspended second, the room became perfectly silent.
Then a sound escaped him that no dignified Harbinger should ever have made.
“Aaaah—ah—ah—AHHH!”
The segment toppled sideways with the chair still attached, landed on the floor, and began kicking both legs in uncontrollable agony.
One strike.
Complete defeat.
This was a pain no ordinary man was designed to endure.
Moving could worsen the injury and cause catastrophic bleeding, so the segment did the only sensible thing available.
With the final scraps of his concentration, he transmitted the mission and all current observations to another segment stationed nearby.
Then he peacefully lost consciousness.
The next Dottore segment entered the monitoring room moments later.
He took one look at his collapsed counterpart.
His expression turned cold.
Was that truly another version of himself?
Perhaps destroying the defective segment would be less embarrassing than preserving it.
He kicked the unconscious body aside, dragged over another pneumatic chair, and sat down.
Only after settling into it did he pause.
His gaze slowly dropped toward the cylinder beneath the seat.
A rare trace of caution entered his posture.
On the surveillance feeds, Lucian and Columbina had already entered the elevator and begun descending.
Columbina remained half a step behind him, but she was placing slightly less weight on her left foot than her right.
The tiny wound still hurt.
What dreadful luck.
Diluc was imprisoned on the seventh underground level.
That was where Lucian and The Damselette were heading.
Unfortunately, the rioting prisoners had discovered the elevator controls.
In their desperation to escape, inmates on nearly every floor had pressed both the up and down buttons.
The elevator stopped at the first underground level.
Its doors opened.
A mass of prisoners crowded the corridor outside.
They had been shouting, shoving, and fighting for a place near the entrance.
The instant they saw Columbina, every one of them recoiled.
A Harbinger.
Some stumbled backward so quickly that they crashed into the people behind them.
The packed corridor rippled with panic.
Lucian looked at the crowd and clicked his tongue.
At this rate, the elevator would stop on every floor.
If he had to fight his way through the prison level by level, rescuing Diluc would take all day.
Was this enormous facility truly built with only one elevator?
“Move aside,” Lucian called.
His voice rolled across the entire floor.
“If you want to escape, wait for the next ride.”
The prisoners stared at him.
The order was outrageous.
This unknown young man had just told a mob in the middle of a prison break to queue politely for the next elevator.
Lucian’s eyes narrowed.
“Line up.”
The pressure radiating from him settled over the corridor.
Without understanding why, the prisoners obeyed.
Men who had been clawing over one another seconds earlier stepped back, formed orderly rows, and cleared the elevator entrance.
Even the most violent among them lowered their heads and avoided his gaze.
The doors slid shut again.
As the elevator resumed its descent toward the seventh underground level, Lucian calmly sucked on his lollipop.
Behind him, an entire floor of escaped prisoners remained standing in line.
🕷️ End of Chapter
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