Mira found a recording of the station's final day.
A woman in a laboratory coat appeared on the screen. Her face was tired, her hair gathered in haste. I did not remember my mother: after her death, all I had were a few stories told by other people and a photograph Brutus had once burnt for amusement.
Now she stood before a recording crystal, holding the grey egg.
"If the archive has opened, the queen has awakened. Do not call her a weapon: she hears before she can answer."
My mother placed her palm on the shell. A faint red light came from within.
"We do not know who will become her host. The egg rejects assigned blood and chooses a compatible sample for itself."
My father's voice came from beyond the door. He said the Guild was approaching the station. My mother looked towards him, then back at the recording crystal.
"If she has chosen our son, do not tell him we left her to him as an inheritance. A living creature cannot be bequeathed."
The recording cut off.
I stared at the blank screen for a long time.
In the dead end, I had decided that my blood had activated the System by accident. Now I knew Styx could have rejected it. The System had forced the egg awake only because I was dying; the queen herself had confirmed compatibility.
"Why did the System call me a player and her a starter unit?"
Mira opened a layer of code preserved in the shell.
"The System was written by people from the Guild. Your parents stole the control core and embedded it in the egg so the queen could grow faster than her pursuers. They changed the restrictions, but they had no time to change the language. To the Guild, there are only masters, units, resources and property."
Styx rose from the cage and hovered in front of the screen.
"Do you remember her?" I asked.
I felt warmth surrounding a motionless body. The rhythm of someone else's heart through the shell. A voice impossible to understand, but possible to recognise.
Styx remembered my mother.
Then the bond cast up another memory: darkness, years without movement, footsteps nearby, the awakening ceremony and my blood. A day had passed for me between the ceremony and the dead end. For her, the wait had lasted almost her entire life.
After that, her fear of Kane's cage needed no explanation.
We checked the System log. Every ability had two lines: its official name and its hidden purpose.
Armour penetration had not been created to kill. It allowed the queen to pass through the shell of control seals. Division was meant to distribute the bond among multiple independent nodes. Puppet Parasite could seize muscles, but its original function was to reach the neural circuit and remove someone else's command.
"So Styx can free beasts?" Lily asked.
"If she learns to distinguish the bond from the individual," Mira replied. "Right now she enters everything at once. That is why Rex received the bodyguard's memories."
Mira placed a laboratory mouse with a basic control seal on the table. Styx touched its neck and immediately flew back. Through the bond I felt the animal's brief fear, the smell of its cage and the urge to hide.
"Every living brain leaves a trace," Mira continued. "Animal imprints are simple. Human ones come with memories, shame and someone else's will. Kill people for points, and one day you will no longer know whose hatred is making the decision."
I remembered Brutus. Then the bodyguard, whose wife I had never seen with my own eyes.
"The System awards points for a human."
"It measures biological energy. No one built morality into it."
"Convenient."
"For a weapon, yes. For a living creature, no."
Styx settled on my palm. I felt her hunger, her wariness and a new desire I did not recognise at once.
She was waiting for an answer.
"I won't use the parasite to take complete control of a human," I said.
"Never?" Lily asked.
The word caught in my throat. In a world where Kane could order our deaths with a single ring, promising never to use our strongest weapon sounded stupid.
I amended it:
"I won't erase someone else's will. Even Kane will answer in his own words."
Styx folded her wings.
Mira opened a map of the space beneath the station. Lines extended far beyond the laboratory and connected to the city's bond archives.
"This station was built over an ancient swarm nest. It transmitted signals without a single queen, through distributed nodes. The Li family used its design for the Guild's second circuit."
At the centre of the map was a chamber labelled the Crown of the Bond.
Activating it required three elements: a thunder core as the power source, a void beast as the conduit and a free queen to stabilise the multitude of bonds.
Kane already had the core fragment and controlled the Void Dragon's collar. All he lacked was Styx.
"What is in the central chamber?"
"The primary archive and the consent key. With it, the second circuit can be disabled throughout Skyfall City."
Cole checked his weapon.
"Then we take the key before Kane does."
Mira looked at the dead sensors on the outer perimeter.
"He is already here."
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