Stavros was building a place for rare mages. The Zantini Institute. He wanted to help fix what had been lost in the Third Layer and create a think tank for the future. His offer was generous, but I felt unease at this man with the soulless eyes. Nothing like my Priyasha’s warm, honest, fiery gaze—a woman who lived in the sun and loved the salt of the ocean.
But Mussolgranz touched Priyasha’s dead hand and I could see her soul—the inner fire of reds and yellows and deep earthy golden browns that always swirled around her—hover above her cold lips. That light of life had gone out the moment she had breathed her last—taking all the wonder of life and my future with her. And here was a man, telling me he could bring her back.
And I said yes. Always, yes.
I broke away with a heaving gasp.
“Ren,” Axer said sharply, both he and Con were holding me up as the story world dissipated.
“He promised Kinsky he would return Priyasha. His love. Her name was Priyasha. She died.” Paint spewed from beneath my fingernails, sizzling on their cloaks where I gripped them. “He lied. He lied.”
“Who?” Axer brought my gaze up to his, making me focus, even as he spread a palm above the sizzling patches on their cloaks.
“Stavros. Mussolgranz.” I had heard the latter’s name before. In the Ganymede Circus art store. The snobbish magicist woman had said that it was the only kind of Kinsky she would purchase—one made under the direction of Mussolgranz when at the Zantini Institute.
Axer sat back on his heels, mouth going grim. “The Zantini Institute started as a think tank for rare mages. Oler Mussolgranz ran it.”
“It started as a think tank, then turned into what?”
“The Institute became part of the Department when Stavros became Prestige. Renamed the Chamber, it was a laboratory and research base just as the Institute had been. They were always making great strides,” he said. “But their methods were...questionable.”
“What, that’s...is there no one with imagination there?”
Axer frowned, then touched my neck, fingers lightly brushing my skin. “Ah. Translator. Basement, Department, Chamber—all those names are far more complicated in their original language.” He smiled. “I like your translation better. Better to make them simple. Simple can be defeated.”
He leaned back. “Mussolgranz died with Kinsky, and the Chamber died with him. Stavros survived...” He twisted his hand. “And the Basement was born.”
I looked at the path ahead of us. “Time to see it first-hand.”
Chapter Twenty-one: Genesis Omega
We caught up with the Bandits through our comms at the edge of Verrange after traversing three more natural paths through roots, streams, and rock veins.
“Bailey has been working overtime,” Olivia said, giving a short report. “She was remarkably prepared for the event. Her reporter recorded some excellent footage. Thousands of the Awakening mages and their families, as well as a surprisingly large number of the tech personnel on site, are adamantly claiming that you three saved Crelussa. The Department can’t close the reports fast enough.”
“Er, right. Yay!”
“Ren.”
“Yes?” And my lambasting was going to happen in 3...2...
“I’m glad you got Bailey on your side,” she said quietly.
I softened, aching. “I miss you, too.”
Neither of us said anything for a few moments as I exchanged remote hugs with everyone—made all the easier by the connections that had been so freshly used.
With shadow cloaks engaged, Axer, Constantine, and I navigated to an underground secret entrance beneath the nondescript toy company in Verrange. Dagfinn had deduced and located it while comparing on-file schematics and accountable magic space. There was a lot of unaccounted space beneath the office building once Dagfinn put magic tracers—all illegal—into play.
“Approaching the gate,” Saf said, tracking us.
The gate was a ten by ten magical barrier, connecting to the tunnel. In its center was a circling stream of patterns that began moving faster and interlocking the more I stared.
I looked at Axer and Constantine. Both shook their heads.
“That's why this lock design is used. I can see only the barest pattern, and that's only from having been so tightly connected to you,” Axer said.
“Found enough intel to get you through the five blocks after this first one,” Dagfinn said. “But it's only you, 01, who can access this gate without a key.”
The elaborate patterns shifted, zinged and circled, then parted on an answer that I knew. I knew this pattern—had solved it before. “Got it.” I let the answer bleed through the comms so that Dagfinn could work up a skeleton key that I could imbue with the magic for if there was ever a next time.
I inhaled calmly and touched the locking mechanism on my cuff.
Axer stayed my fingers and smiled. “We can remain hidden a bit longer. I’ve got this one.” He held up a sphere that I knew intimately—a puzzle box of the same design that I had solved last term—and inserted it into the pattern. It engaged the lock, combining the two sides to form a whole that was then turned.
The barrier dropped.
I blinked at it, then looked at him. He raised a brow. “I told you that practice was for saving the world.”
All those puzzles he had given me to solve had sharpened me. I had recognized the patterns when Ori had first started training me.
“I did, like, sixty of those for you,” I said slowly.
“And now we have sixty ways to proceed without you doing any more,” he said with a smooth grin, slipping inside.
“We need to get those,” I heard Loudon whisper.
“Dammit, Ren,” Olivia said.
Axer raised the barrier when we were on the other side and pulled out the key.
“Activating remote trace on the tunnel gates. I can get you clearance through the next five,” Dagfinn said. “03, sending you the path.”
It had been implicitly understood by everyone that Axer oversaw anything that might involve reconnaissance and fighting.
Which was good, because as we made our way through the twisting corridors it allowed me
to connect all the talk about Stavros and the Basement, the Chamber, the Institute, the little bits and pieces in Crelussa, Helen, the vats, and the timing.
“Liv, I need to know what Genesis Omega is.”
She inhaled sharply through the comms.
“When Helen jettisoned the units, you suspected something.” When she didn't respond, I said, “Liv?”
“Yes. I know.” She seemed to be trying to get herself together. I sent a reassuring squeeze her way.
I heard her swallow. Heard the deathly silence in the rest of the comms.
“Tell me,” I said softly.
“Yes.” Her voice became certain. “Genesis Omega was a series of population control measures given under the guise of puzzles and tests that Great Grandfather made all the Vanator children do. Phillip and my mother included. Ways to rewrite the political system from within.”
“Population control, like, you can only have one child?”
“Like a culling,” she said bluntly, and I could feel the emotions ripple through the others as the chill ran through me.