The System panel would not disappear.
Behind Kane, a fragment of the titanic core was melting. Beneath the tower were people his fighters had not managed to evacuate. A faint red marker now hung over each of them.
One hundred and twenty points.
Eighty.
Three hundred for an officer with a combat beast.
The System no longer showed faces. Only reserves of energy that could be converted into strength.
I saw Cole by the western exit. A number appeared over him too.
Then Lily.
Then Leon.
Even the people who had come to save me had already been counted.
"That's the whole difference between us," Kane said. "I acknowledge the cost in advance. You call them friends first, but when fear sets in, you turn them into fuel all the same."
The basilisk's coils tightened around my chest. A confirmation button appeared on the panel.
"Accept human energy."
Styx hovered between Kane and me. Her wings beat unevenly. She could sense the blood in the square, the hunger of the broods and the promise of instant power.
I remembered the first man whose body she had entered. Along with the bodyguard's movements, his fear had come into me. The System called it a new skill. To it, someone else's life had always been nothing but a function.
"Close it," I said.
Styx looked at me.
"Not the fighters. The window."
I rejected the offer in my mind.
The panel appeared again.
"Refusal will result in the loss of bonded units."
"Close it."
"Probability of allied casualties exceeds seventy per cent."
"Close it."
The third time, the red numbers disappeared.
My strength did not return, my ribs still hurt, and the people below were no safer.
But they had faces again.
Kane sighed as though I had disappointed him in an examination.
"Then I'll pay for you."
He turned the golden band around the basilisk's neck.
The white lines in the square entered not the beasts, but the people bearing debt seals.
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