The metallic slams of the blast doors echoed like a coffin lid snapping shut.
Silence rushed into the mountain hall, thick and heavy with the scent of ozone, dried blood, and high-caliber grease.
Kyle slowly lowered his rifle, peering into the gloom. "So. Beautiful view, zero out of five stars on TripAdvisor, and our hostess has a disturbing interest in genetic desecration. Anyone else feeling warm and fuzzy?"
"Shut up, Kyle," Echo muttered, resting the barrel of her street-sweeper against her shoulder. Her ruby eyes scanned the surrounding catwalks, where hundreds of armored riflemen stood frozen like gargoyles. "They aren't shooting."
"Because we're inventory," I said, my sovereign aura flickering around my boots in low, silver ripples.
The woman in the crimson spotlight stepped forward. Her suit was pristine white, stark against the rusted iron of the subterranean hub. A heavy golden medallion—the eye wrapped in seventeen rings—hung from her neck.
"Inventory is such a crude term, Tiara," she said smoothly, her voice amplified through invisible speakers. "We prefer specimens. I am Director Vance."
"Vance?" Echo sneered. "We already put Headmaster Vance in the ground in Paris."
"My brother was a bureaucrat playing with toys he barely understood," Director Vance replied coldly. "He managed the nursery. I manage the forge. He tried to train you. I intend to harvest you."
Lyra’s claws extended with a sharp clack. "Try it, lab coat."
Vance didn't even look at her. She pressed a palm to a console at her side.
HUMMM.
The floor beneath us vibrated. Across the vast subterranean chamber, massive glass cylinders illuminated one by one, stretching up into the shadowy ceiling.
Kyle gasped. "Oh, man..."
Inside the tanks, suspended in glowing green fluid, were bodies.
Dozens of them.
Every single one had my face.
Some were missing limbs; others were covered in grotesque, failed spatial runes that burned black into their skin. Iteration Three. Iteration Nine. Iteration Twelve. Seventeen failed attempts to forge the ultimate spatial assassin, preserved like grotesque trophies.
Echo’s jaw tightened, her knuckles turning white around her shotgun grip. "Seventeen..."
"Seventeen attempts to stabilize the Prime's soul-shard within a physical vessel," Vance explained, her voice tinged with fanatical awe. "The spatial affinity was always too destructive. It tore the host apart from the inside. Until you two."
She looked between me and Echo.
"You split the burden," Vance whispered. "One inherited the spatial authority. The other, the raw physical capability and thermal core. You aren't two different people, Tiaras. You are two halves of a shattered god."
"Is that supposed to make us feel special?" I asked, thermal energy condensing around my right palm until the air whistled. "Because all it does is make me want to burn this place to ash."
"You can't," Vance smiled. "Site N-01 isn't built on Colorado bedrock, Tiara. You're inside the heart of an ancient Gate. And the moment those blast doors closed, the Reclamation's suppression field went active."
My spatial senses instantly slammed into a brick wall.
The silver rifts at my wrists flickered and died. The air felt heavy, suffocating.
Kyle checked his sidearm display. "Uh, guys? My energy cells just flatlined. Tactical grid is dead."
"No powers," Echo said, a slow, terrifying grin spreading across her face as she pumped her street-sweeper with a metallic CRACK-CRACK. "No spatial rifts. No tactical grids."
She looked at me, her ruby eyes blazing with pure violence.
"Just good old-fashioned steel and gunpowder."
I drew my dual combat blades, the cold metal feeling reassuringly solid in my hands.
"Director Vance," I called out, stepping toward the catwalks as sixty armored soldiers raised their weapons in unison. "You wanted the First Assassin?"
Echo stepped up beside me, side-by-side, leveling her barrel straight at Vance's chest.
"Let us show you how she fights."