The capital was six hours away by air.
The Eternal Brigade occupied two cargo transports. Their military identification signals were disabled, and their weapons remained secured for transit. From the outside, it looked as though a battered unit was being transferred to the rear.
Inside the first transport, forty mecha-maidens waited for orders. That morning they had not trusted their new commander. Now they were following him to storm one of the most heavily defended districts in Great Xia.
Fan Yuan stood at the tactical table. On the display, the Upper City glowed as a golden circle. Beyond it began the grey districts of the Lower City, where electricity was rationed after dark.
"Repeat what you said before take-off," Vierlia demanded.
"I said a great many interesting things."
"You ordered us to raze the Upper City to the ground."
"I did."
"Millions of people live there."
"I know."
"Then explain your plan."
Fan Yuan enlarged the map. The Murong clan's laboratory appeared in the centre of the residential district. Tunnels spread beneath it, connected to the power grid and the military barrier.
"We will not touch the homes. We will destroy the order that allows some people to dispose of other people's sources."
"That sounds prettier, but it still isn't a plan."
"You take the first group to the northern entrance and neutralise the garrison without killing anyone. Su Zhihu and the second group seal the underground lock. Nalan Qingxin opens the archive. I go after Chi Yuyan."
"And if the garrison refuses to surrender?"
"Offer them the chance twice."
"And then?"
"Then stop the ones who shoot. Not the ones who wear a uniform."
Vierlia studied him, trying to tell whether his old rage was speaking through him. Then she nodded.
Nalan Qingxin connected her personal terminal to the table. Entering the laboratory required three keys: the Murong family code, a military signature and the biometrics of a Nalan conglomerate representative.
"I have the biometrics," she said. "Vierlia can provide the military signature. We'll have to steal the Murong code."
"Already stolen," an unfamiliar woman said from a dark corner.
Forty fighters raised their weapons at once.
Nangong Ci stepped into the light. She wore no mecha-armour, only a grey cloak and a suppression bracelet with its lock cut through.
"How did you get aboard?" Su Zhihu asked.
"Your commander left the door open."
Every gaze shifted to Fan Yuan.
"I promised not to send her back to the laboratory," he said.
Vierlia rested a hand on the hilt of her blade.
"She abducted three people, attacked the academy and tried to obtain a weapon of mass destruction."
"All true," Nangong Ci agreed. "You can put me on trial after we get the people your laws ignored out of that basement."
She tossed an access crystal onto the table. It bore Murong Chengtian's signature.
"Chi Yuyan isn't the only one in that laboratory. There are twenty-seven children with anomalous sources. The eldest is sixteen. The youngest is nine."
Nalan Qingxin opened the file. A list of test subjects appeared before them. Each had an official result of F or E. A restricted column showed their true potential, ranging from A to SSS.
"Where did you get this?" she asked.
"I spent five years looking for the place where they held me. They moved the complex, but they didn't change their habits."
Fan Yuan added the children's wing to the map.
"The plan has changed. We get the children out first. Then Chi Yuyan and the archive."
"Why not the other way round?" Nangong Ci asked. "While you're saving strangers, Murong will have time to move your girl."
"That is precisely why they keep the children separate. They hope everyone will run to save only their own."
Nangong Ci smirked.
"We'll see how long you can keep that up."
In the laboratory, Chi Yuyan had lost all sense of day and night.
The lights never went out. Mechanical arms removed damaged plates, installed new ones and forced her source to accept unfamiliar circuits. If a module failed, they tore it out without full anaesthesia. The doctors called it compatibility testing.
For the first week, Chi Yuyan screamed. During the second, she counted seconds. By the third, she had learnt to retreat into her link with Fan Yuan, though the suppression field smothered it almost completely.
She remembered the training ground, the Dragon's Abyss's first charge and the words: "I see you. Not the letter above your head."
Those memories were enough to keep the laboratory from breaking her.
Murong Chengtian entered the room. The young chairman of the academy council looked older after his defeat, but he spoke with his former confidence.
"Your commander has been declared a war criminal," he said. "Even if he returns, he'll be shot."
Chi Yuyan opened her eyes.
"Then why do you ask where he is every day?"
"We need the key to his multiple synchronisation."
"So you're afraid."
Murong struck the panel. A fresh pulse of pain drove into Chi Yuyan's source.
"He is weaker than he thinks. All his power depends on people like you."
"Of course."
"What?"
"A commander's power always depends on those who trust him. The difference is that Fan Yuan understands that and you don't."
He increased the power. The golden dragon inside her groaned, but did not bow its head.
The Eternal Brigade entered the city through a freight corridor. At the first checkpoint, the guards demanded that they open the containers. Vierlia handed over a forged order for medical quarantine. The sergeant checked the signature and was about to let the transports through when a new order sounded in his earpiece.
An alert for Fan Yuan.
The sergeant reached for the alarm button. A golden thread stretched towards his hand. A single command to the system would have been enough to stop the movement.
"Suitable target for temporary subjugation."
Fan Yuan severed his link with the system.
"Do not touch his mind," Fan Yuan said. "Vierlia, he's yours."
The Empress of Wind stepped out of the transport in an officer's uniform and displayed a restricted badge.
"Sergeant, if you press that button, a frontline mecha brigade will enter this area. There will be a battle in a residential district. Do you want to answer for the consequences of an order whose origin you cannot verify?"
"I am required to detain a criminal."
"And I am required to protect civilians. Call your shift commander on a wired line. We will wait."
The commander turned out to be a graduate of the First Academy. He had seen the recording with Heihu and knew who had saved his daughter during the examination. The barrier rose because of an entirely human decision, not psychic coercion.
"This is slower," the system observed.
"But afterwards he won't have to prove that he pressed the button against his will," Fan Yuan replied.
At the northern entrance, the groups split up. Su Zhihu and twenty penal soldiers descended into a service tunnel. The others followed Vierlia. Nangong Ci led Fan Yuan and Nalan Qingxin through an old spillway.
The tunnel grew narrower and narrower. Faded markings from the first years of the war remained on the walls.
"They built a shelter here," Nangong Ci said. "Then they realised there was money to be made from test subjects."
"Who ran the experiments on you?"
"The current Murong's father. And the Nalan conglomerate supplied the equipment."
Nalan Qingxin stopped.
"My father?"
"Your family. I don't know whose signature was on the invoice."
"But you decided to abduct me."
"I decided that, for once, a rich man's daughter should know what it felt like to be a thing people bargained over."
"Now I do. Do you feel better?"
Nangong Ci did not answer.
Fan Yuan walked ahead and did not interfere. If he forced them to be quiet now, the hatred would not go away. It would only burst out later.
At the inner hatch, the Murong crystal accepted the code. Vierlia then transmitted the military signature. Only Nalan Qingxin's biometrics remained.
The terminal warned that use of the key would immediately be entered in the family register. The heiress would no longer be able to claim that she had been forced.
"Your family will disown you after this," Nangong Ci said.
"I know."
"The money, the house, the name. All of it will disappear."
Nalan Qingxin placed her palm against the scanner.
"If my name opens a door like this, I don't want it."
The locks disengaged.
The children's wing lay beyond.
Twenty-seven capsules stood in two rows. Children slept inside them, wires running into their spines. The central screen was counting down to the extraction of their sources.
Nangong Ci went still. For several seconds she was not an SSS-rank terrorist, but an eighteen-year-old girl seeing an operating table for the first time.
"Shut down the power," Fan Yuan ordered.
"They'll die. The capsules are keeping them breathing."
"Then we move them one at a time."
The system offered to activate mass restoration. To do so, the children had to be registered as units of the legion. Fan Yuan rejected the condition.
"They're unconscious," he said. "They cannot consent."
"Without registration, probability of survival is reduced."
"Give me the medical protocol without a contract."
"Insufficient authority."
Fan Yuan clenched his teeth. Once again, the ancient power placed authority above aid.
Nalan Qingxin was already breaking into the panel. Vierlia summoned medical transports. The penal soldiers carried the capsules out in their arms. One by one, they saved every child without signing a single contract with the system.
The alarm went off as they carried out the last girl.
Murong Chengtian had learnt of the incursion.
Steel partitions crashed down between the sectors. Automated guns extended from the walls, while an order came over the internal communications to destroy the archive and every test subject. The laboratory's management did not intend to save even its own staff.
"There is your stability," Nangong Ci said. "The moment the secret threatened to get out, they decided to destroy the people along with the documents."
She tore off the suppression bracelet and activated her mecha-form. Black plates closed over her body, and her damaged SSS-rank source released a scarlet wave. Fan Yuan saw dozens of fractures. One more full transformation might be her last.
"You'll take the children," he said.
"I know the way to Chi Yuyan."
"Which is why you'll come back after the evacuation."
"Afraid I'll steal your glory?"
"Afraid you'll decide to die again instead of answering for what you've done."
Nangong Ci struck the first turret and cleared a path for the medical team.
"Don't expect to get rid of me that easily, little brother."
Fan Yuan and Nalan Qingxin ran towards the archive sector. Three levels of security still lay between them and Chi Yuyan. The golden network linked the brigade's fighters, but the underground shielding disrupted the signal. Fan Yuan saw only isolated glimpses: Su Zhihu holding the lock, Vierlia demanding that the garrison lay down its weapons, one of the penal soldiers lying wounded, and the children already being brought to the surface.
Every new stream bore down on his source.
The system offered a solution.
"Activate absolute command. Full control over all compatible mecha-forms within a radius of ten kilometres."
He could end the battle in seconds. The laboratory guards would turn their weapons on their own superiors, and no door would withstand them. But after the battle, dozens of women would come to themselves with no knowledge of what had been done with their hands.
"Reject," Fan Yuan said.
"Risk of casualties will increase by forty-seven per cent."
"Send an open request to everyone. Anyone willing to join the network can confirm it themselves."
A golden pulse swept through the laboratory.
"Commander Fan Yuan requests temporary synchronisation to evacuate the test subjects. Confirmation is voluntary."
The forty fighters of the Eternal Brigade responded first.
Then Vierlia.
Su Zhihu.
Three laboratory guards lowered their weapons and confirmed the link as well. One transmitted the ventilation plans. The second opened the medical stores. The third reported where Chi Yuyan was being held.
Fewer people joined the voluntary network than absolute command would have seized. But every one of them did so of their own free will.
Fan Yuan led them through the eastern corridor.
Murong Chengtian was waiting in the operating theatre. He had encased himself in experimental armour assembled from the test subjects' modules. An artificial dragon claw taken from Chi Yuyan's source moved on his right shoulder. Behind him, doctors were preparing a capsule for evacuation.
"You're too late," he said. "In a few more hours, her source will belong to the clan for good."
Fan Yuan saw Chi Yuyan behind the glass.
Her hair had turned grey at the temples. Her golden armour had been stripped away plate by plate, and metal clamps held her source fast. But the link between them had not disappeared.
"I'm here," he told her without words.
Her fingers twitched.
Murong attacked. The artificial claw ripped through the operating table and hurled a copy of dragon fire at them. Fan Yuan shielded Nalan Qingxin with his field, but without a mecha-form the blow flung him into the wall.
"Your mistake is giving power to paupers," Murong said. "We gather the best in a single body."
"And you still don't understand how it works."
Fan Yuan touched the unfamiliar claw with True Sight. The module had been grafted to an incompatible source and held only because the pain signals were being forcibly suppressed. He sent Chi Yuyan a brief request.
"May I return what is yours?"
The answer came at once.
The golden thread drew taut. The claw tore itself from Murong's armour and smashed through the glass of the capsule. Chi Yuyan caught the module in her own hand. Dragon armour began to form around her, though the clamps still bit into her source.
"Don't get up," Fan Yuan said. "I'll remove the restraints."
"You took too long," she whispered. "Let me do at least one thing myself."
She tore off the first clamp.
The second burst apart with a piece of armour.
At the third, Chi Yuyan screamed, but the golden dragon spread its wings. The operating theatre vanished in white light.
Murong Chengtian tried to run. Nalan Qingxin locked the door with her family code.
"You don't understand whose side you've taken," he said. "Your father signed the same contracts."
"Then you can answer for them together."
She struck him with the handle of an emergency tool. The heir of the old clan fell unconscious.
Fan Yuan caught Chi Yuyan before her mecha-form fell apart.
"I knew you would come," she repeated.
"And I knew you wouldn't wait quietly for help."
"We were both right."
She closed her eyes. Her source was mutilated, but alive.
Meanwhile, the archive had begun erasing its data. Nalan Qingxin connected her terminal and discovered that the laboratory held more than experimental records. All energy accounting for the capital passed through its servers.
Every night, the Upper City's barrier received additional power from the Lower City. Officially, the losses were blamed on the polluted environment and weak sources. In reality, the system was quietly drawing energy from tens of thousands of awakened.
That explained the seizures, the premature failure of mecha-forms and the unexplained deaths.
At the centre of the diagram stood a node labelled 'Abyss'.
The Abyss was not a portable weapon at all, but the heart of Great Xia's defence network. Normally it took a little energy at a time from other people's sources. But at full power it could drain every mecha-maiden in the country within minutes and pour the energy it collected into a single strike.
"That is why Nangong Ci was hunting for it," Fan Yuan realised. "With a node like that, you could extinguish the Upper City or burn the Starfront."
"And that is why the families will never allow the archive to be opened," Nalan Qingxin said.
Forty seconds remained before deletion.
It was impossible to copy the entire archive. Nalan Qingxin chose another course. She connected it to the city's public alert system.
"What are you doing?"
"Making sure my family cannot call this a forgery."
"There will be no going back after the broadcast."
"That ended when I opened the door."
Surgical logs appeared on every screen in the Upper and Lower Cities. The children's names. The doctors' signatures. Payments from the clans. A graph of the energy drained from the lower districts over the years.
Nalan Qingxin went live.
She identified herself as the senior heiress of the conglomerate and confirmed that the documents were genuine. Then she renounced her right to inherit and demanded an independent investigation.
For the first few seconds, she read from a prepared statement. Then the name of a girl from one of the capsules appeared on the screen, and her voice faltered.
"I grew up in a home where I was told that my family's wealth had been earned through hard work," Nalan Qingxin said. "That is only half true. We did work hard. But we worked in a world where thousands of people had been denied any chance of earning the same reward from the start. I used water, air and medicine paid for with their sources. I did not know the details because it suited me not to ask."
The conglomerate's board of directors sent an order to end the broadcast. Her father called on a secure line. Nalan Qingxin saw his name and did not answer.
"I am not asking you to believe me because of my family name. Quite the opposite. Check every document and every signature, including those of my family. If this information is false, I will answer for the panic. If it is true, those who turned people into fuel will answer for it."
She sent the archive to hundreds of independent repositories at once. It could no longer be erased.
In the Lower City, people watched the broadcast in late-night canteens and street workshops. A worker named Guo Wei found his wife on the list. For seven years, her death had been blamed on a weak source. Now beside her name stood the number of the module extracted from her and the price for which it had been sold to the army.
Guo Wei picked up a hammer and went to the checkpoint. His son stopped him at the door.
"Mum wanted me to attend the academy," the boy said. "If you kill a guard now, what will change?"
Guo Wei did not put down the hammer. But he used it to tear away the metal sign that read 'Entry Forbidden to Lower City Residents'. Others followed his example.
In the Upper City, a female doctor recognised the name of the drug she prescribed to patients whose sources were failing. It did not treat the cause. It concealed the traces of energy harvested at night. She opened the medical archive and handed tens of thousands of case files to investigators.
The truth did not divide people neatly by district. It divided those who wanted to know from those who preferred the old silence.
They tried to cut off the broadcast. Vierlia seized the military garrison's relay and retransmitted the signal. The head of the First Academy opened the school's frequencies. After seeing the data, Huangfu ordered the army communications service not to interfere.
For the first time, the people of the Lower City had proof that their weakness was not natural.
People took to the streets.
Some demanded trials. Others threw stones at the checkpoints. Shops and shelters closed in the Upper City. The old nobility immediately declared the broadcast an attack by the resistance.
Murong Chengtian regained consciousness and laughed.
"You think the truth changes anything? The riots will begin within the hour. The army will impose a state of emergency. The people themselves will beg us to restore order."
"Only if we let you choose the only two options," Fan Yuan replied.
He contacted the brigade.
"No one enters the residential districts. Protect the hospitals, water stations and transport. Stop anyone who attacks civilians, regardless of uniform or origin."
"Even people from the Lower City?" one of the penal soldiers asked.
"Especially anyone who decides that another person's crime gives them permission to become a criminal."
Su Zhihu led half the unit towards the bridges. Vierlia organised a corridor for the children's evacuation. Nangong Ci returned from the medical transport and demanded a weapon.
"My people will raise the Lower City," she said. "We can take the capital now."
"And who will run the water and power stations in the morning?"
"We'll find someone."
"All your plans begin like that: kill first, then find someone to deal with the consequences."
Nangong Ci seized him by the collar.
"You've shown people that their strength has been drained for decades. Do you think they'll quietly go home?"
"No. That is why you're going on air."
"And what am I supposed to say?"
"The truth. What they did to you. What you did. And why revenge did not bring your parents back."
She released him.
"You want to turn me into a convenient, repentant villain?"
"I want people to hear something other than a slogan. I want them to hear where your revenge truly led."
Nangong Ci looked at the screen, where the crowd was already pressing against a police cordon. Then she saw the stretcher carrying the nine-year-old girl from the capsule.
She went on air.
Nangong Ci did not ask for forgiveness. She spoke about the laboratory, her parents, and how after her escape she had sold weapons, abducted people and called it liberation. She admitted that Heihu had stolen under her banner because she considered anyone hostile to the Upper City useful.
"If you kill a child today because of his father's family name," she concluded, "tomorrow someone will build a new laboratory for your enemies. Do not set this cycle running for another fifty years."
The crowd did not disappear. One speech could not dissolve their anger. But the shooting stopped at the checkpoints.
Fan Yuan carried Chi Yuyan to the surface. For the first time that night, the searchlights came on above the city. The Upper City's golden light and the Lower City's scattered grey lights met upon the bridges.
A field medic tried to move Chi Yuyan into a medical transport, but her source disrupted the equipment. The laboratory modules had left unfamiliar signals inside her, and her source interpreted every medical scan as another attempt to cut it open.
"Let me," Fan Yuan said.
He did not enter her source. First he placed his palm beside her and waited.
Chi Yuyan opened her eyes a fraction.
"Why aren't you healing me?"
"You have to allow the link."
"You never asked before."
"I was wrong before."
She looked at him for a long time, then nodded.
The golden energy touched only the damaged channels. Fan Yuan felt how easy it would be to seize control of her body and force her source to accept the treatment. Instead, he showed Chi Yuyan every action and left her free to stop him at any moment.
The treatment took four times as long.
When it was over, she still could not rise, but the trembling had stopped.
"Slow," Chi Yuyan whispered.
"The system has already complained."
"It can get used to it."
As they learnt to trust each other again, someone began activating the Abyss deep underground.
The system announced that the rescue task was complete. The reward was a map granting full access to the Abyss.
At the same moment, the ancient mechanism awoke beneath the ground.
Murong Chengtian smiled through split lips.
"Too late. The council has already begun activation."
On the tactical display, lines from every source in the city stretched towards the central tower. One by one, the mecha-maidens in the streets fell to their knees.
Chi Yuyan opened her eyes.
"Fan Yuan… it's taking us."
The black ring of the Abyss opened above the Upper City.
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