In the lower laboratory, Leon found the Void Dragon suspended between four seals.
The beast was conscious. The golden collar had been connected to the Crown's tubes, and every breath he took widened the black vortex at the centre of the apparatus.
Leon pressed his family signet ring to the panel. It offered to restore his rights as master.
Before, he would have confirmed without reading.
Now he removed the ring and approached the dragon without protection.
"I can open the seals," Leon said. "But the choice is yours."
The dragon raised his head. The old channel remained between them, full of pain and commands. Leon did not try to force another demand through it. He waited.
The beast touched his brow to Leon's palm.
In the control centre, Lily copied the contracts while Mira searched for the cage's local node. The guards were already breaking through the outer door.
"The transfer will take four minutes," Lily said.
"We have one."
Mira opened her personal section of the archive. It held an imprint of her dead beast, the last sensations carried through their bond before it broke. The data served as the model for a forced disconnection.
"If I erase the model, the system will lose its way of distinguishing a severed bond from a voluntary release," she explained. "The queen's cage will open for a few seconds."
"That is all you have left of him."
"No. I still have what he taught me."
Mira pressed delete.
In the upper hall, the white lines on the cage went dark.
Cole tore free of the weakened ring and fired at the egg collectors. The glass burst. Blood gushed across the floor.
Kane gave the basilisk a direct command to kill me.
The beast lunged, but a wave of void force swept through the entire hall from below. Leon and the dragon had destroyed one of the Crown's supports. The floor tilted, and the basilisk struck the edge of the cage.
I reached the panel.
Lily had the consent key three floors below. Without it, the system offered a familiar path.
"Queen suppressed. Forced restoration of bond available. Confirm host's right to subordinate unit."
One confirmation would have returned Styx, the System and what remained of the swarm to me. She would obey commands without hesitation again.
Kane saw the text.
"Press it, Rex. Or I will close the cage."
Styx lay behind the glass. Her pain reached me through the weakened channel, but the system did not ask the question for me.
I smashed the panel.
"What are you doing?" Cole shouted.
"Looking for another door."
A small channel for a calibration captain remained in the cage wall. The wounded mosquito had reached the hall through the ventilation ducts and settled beside me.
I held him up to the glass.
The captain touched the inner surface. Styx answered from the other side.
Two weak impulses met without Kane's system between them.
The cage registered a bond between beasts that it did not know how to name.
Open in the reader