In the streets of Skyfall City, people fell beside their own beasts.
Household pets, training beasts, military predators: all received the same external command to eliminate the nearest source of resistance. For most of them, that source was their master.
In the dye district, a crushing lizard smashed through a workshop wall, while flying beasts dropped patrolmen near the academy. At the military garrison, bonded predators turned on the soldiers.
Kane had activated only part of the Crown, but the city had already begun to tear itself apart.
"Shut down the channel!" Lily shouted.
"Without the central core, the key cannot reach the city," Mira replied. "We need to connect it to the distributor at the top."
Kane was retreating towards the lift. The basilisk covered him with its rings.
I wanted to send Styx after him.
The voluntary contract had no command for that.
"Shall we stop him?"
"The people first," she answered.
She gave me back the choice I had made in the burning dye works.
Leon came up from the lower laboratory with the Void Dragon. The collar still hung around the beast's neck, but its golden lines had gone dark. The dragon could leave. He stayed.
"I will contain the impulse inside the tower," Leon said. "But the city channel is already active."
Cole called his men and gave the order to evacuate. Command declared him an impostor. The soldiers at the other end replied that they would keep listening as long as he kept getting civilians out.
Lily sent the first batch of contracts over an open channel. Along with them went a diagram of the external channel and a warning: do not try to restrain a beast by force, break the physical collars and get out of reach.
We could not give the people a single command. We had to explain what was happening and hope they acted in time.
Styx rose above the hall. The wounded captain answered her, followed by three more nodes in the city.
She sent not a command to attack, but an image: a white line around a neck, someone else's pain, the need to gnaw through the chain.
Part of the swarm moved towards the bonded beasts, but several broods refused and withdrew from the signal. Before, I would have called it a loss of control. Now we had no time to argue with their choice.
Kane reached the upper distributor.
The Crown's second impulse began to build. It would be stronger than the first: the external channel would force the beasts to attack and give Kane direct control over every one of them.
Styx settled on my shoulder.
The System no longer called her mine.
But she was here.
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