We hid in an abandoned boiler house beneath the dyers' quarter.
Cole shut the iron door, Lily spread out the pages we had saved, and I sat against the wall and tried to remember the journey from the Guild.
A whole hour was missing from my memory.
I knew I had run across the rooftops. I remembered the cold case containing the core and Lily's voice over the beacon. Between them lay a void filled with the final impulses of the creatures that had burned.
The System opened a detailed report only after the overload.
"Direct control circuit: one thousand units. Lost outside the city: eight thousand four hundred and twenty-seven."
The causes followed: fire, breakdown of the command chain, absence of the queen. In the final line, the System assessed the host's mental integrity. According to it, three quarters of me remained.
That explained how the swarm had grown to fifty thousand and why I had failed to hold it.
I had never controlled every mosquito individually. The nearest thousand creatures received precise instructions. The rest followed the captains, and the captains relayed simple impulses down the chain. On a battlefield with a single target, the system worked. When the queen entered the city and the broods came under attack from different directions at once, delays turned orders into confusion.
"Precise control range: three kilometres," Lily read from the panel. "Why didn't the System show you this before?"
"Because I never asked before."
I had liked the numbers as long as they kept rising. I had taken no interest in how the swarm worked while it was winning.
The convoy carrying the captured captains to the Guild laboratory was still on the map. If Kane obtained a living node, he could study its bond with Styx.
I rose.
"Gather the remaining broods. Attack the convoy from every side."
Styx flew up in front of my face.
The order did not go out.
I repeated it.
She beat her wings, and something new took shape in my mind with difficulty. Not an image. Not hunger. A word.
"No."
The boiler house went quiet.
"What did you say?"
Styx sent the same impulse again.
"No."
Three fire beasts and a vehicle bearing a suppression seal escorted the convoy. Recovering a handful of captains would mean sending almost the entire surviving swarm into a narrow street. Styx already sensed how the attack would end.
"They're your soldiers."
Irritation came from her. Then images of eggs, fire and the queen's empty place.
Not soldiers.
Her broods.
I had grown used to thinking of Styx as a weapon that became more intelligent with every evolution. But a weapon did not refuse. A weapon did not fear for those it created.
Cole slowly lowered his rifle.
"Looks like the decision's already been made."
I did not like that he was right.
I cancelled the muster. The captains withdrew into the old storm drains and received orders not to attack people unless directly threatened.
The System warned that some of the broods would remain outside my control. For the first time, I let power slip away even though I could still reclaim it through killing.
Meanwhile, Lily found a reference to the academy commission on one of the scorched pages. The collateral agreement had been registered through the academy records repository. That meant the academy had known of the Li family's claim to my egg even before the awakening ceremony.
"We can demand an open hearing," she said. "Under the charter, a dispute over a student's awakened beast is heard by the academy, not the city Guild."
"Kane controls half the faculty."
"But he can't close the central arena. The Truth Seal preserves everything that happens inside and sends the record to three archives at once."
Cole added a military report to the application. Lily signed a witness statement in her own name. Afterwards, her beacon informed her that she had been expelled from the academy pending the outcome of the investigation.
She read the notice and put the device away.
"I promised to keep quiet about the rhino, Rex. I didn't promise to help Kane steal your life."
The answer came an hour later.
The academy agreed to hold a hearing if I appeared voluntarily and without the swarm. The Li family demanded that Styx be transferred into their temporary custody at once.
The third message was personal.
Leon stood against the backdrop of the central arena. The Void Dragon lay at his feet, and a new family seal already gleamed around the beast's neck.
"Rex Wang," Leon said. "You stole my group's trophy, attacked the Guild and now you're hiding behind slum trash. Come to the arena. The Truth Seal will record our fight. If your mosquito defeats the Void Dragon, I'll surrender my claim to the core myself. If you lose, the Li family gets Styx."
He smiled the way he had at the gates.
"And this time you won't get away with a sneak attack."
I looked at Styx.
"Shall we go?"
She could have said "no" again.
Instead, six wings spread, and violet lightning ran between them.
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