Chương 91: 90: Closed In

They landed deep within the west wing. The corridor here was older than the rest of the facility, its black stone walls cracked and half-collapsed, with faint veins of violet Apis pulsing beneath the floor like dying stars. The dim glow barely reached the broken pillars and scattered rubble, leaving most of the passage swallowed by shadow. The darkness clung to Korhess's skin, her antlers, and the ruined remains of her beautiful jacket. She heard Thornburgh before she saw him.

His ragged breathing echoed through the corridor, followed by claws scraping against stone and the wet, animal sounds of a body tearing itself apart from within. He stood beneath a fractured archway. He hadn't slept. Bloodshot eyes stared at her as his trembling body shifted endlessly between man and wolf, never settling into either. Seven years of hunting. Seven years of believing that killing the right person would bring his family back.

Seven years sustained by a lie that had become the only thing holding him together. And she had taken his trophy. Thornburgh's eyes narrowed.

"The white-haired girl..." His voice dropped to a whisper.

"How?" He stared at Korhess.

"I took her head." The words came slowly, as though speaking them aloud might force reality to make sense.

"I held it in my hands." His breathing grew uneven.

"How is she alive?" Korhess's expression softened ever so slightly.

"Ah... Butter?" A faint smile touched her lips.

"She hath ever been a creature most abundant in miracles." Only then did her gaze harden once more.

"I would counsel thee against questioning aught concerning that curious maiden. Such endeavours bear little fruit." Confusion flickered across his face, breaking through the hatred.

"Why?" The word came out as a growl, slurred around teeth too long for his mouth.

"Why would you... why would you betray... after everything they gave you... after everything they made you..." Korhess calmly brushed the dust from her jacket as though she had all the time in the world. Her spear wasn't in her hand. It would come when she needed it. It always did.

"Alas, thy declarations falleth upon deaf ears. Thou couldst never comprehend." She met his eyes.

"He who hath ne'er tasted the grapefruit proclaimeth it sour." Thornburgh's laugh was a wet, broken thing, half growl, half sob. His body still writhed as the wolf clawed its way higher and the man sank deeper beneath it.

"Grapefruit?" He took a step toward her, and the floor cracked beneath his weight.

"You think this is about fruit? About understanding?" His claws scraped along the walls, carving deep furrows through the stone.

"I spent seven years wearing their collar. Seven years as their hound, their blade, their convenient instrument of murder. And you..." His voice caught for the briefest moment.

"You were supposed to be a sister in that service." Korhess did not move. Her spear rested lightly in her hands, its blade of solidified absence humming softly in time with her heartbeat.

"Indeed, I was," she replied.

"Once did I bend mine knee beneath that blighted grove. Yet I remembered there were sweeter orchards beyond its barren boughs, and hungered no longer for the fruit of their favour." Thornburgh's face twisted. The wolf was winning now. His jaw lengthened, his teeth pushed farther from his gums, and his blood-red eyes no longer belonged to the father who had once read bedtime stories to a girl named Kiri.

"Hunger?" The word lingered in the air.

"You're talking to me about hunger? You, who never lost—" He stopped. His chest heaved. His claws dug into his own palms until blood streamed between his fingers, hissing against the cold stone.

"I had a daughter." His voice trembled.

"A child. Do they keep that in their records? Is there a file somewhere that says what they took from me? Or did it become another footnote in the paperwork they signed when they recruited me?" Korhess lowered her spear by the smallest measure.

"I know well what was taken from thee," she said quietly.

"And I know the poisoned fruit they did offer thee in its stead." Thornburgh laughed again, though it sounded closer to a howl.

"You know the shape of the wound, maybe. The date they cut it open. But you don't know the sound of her laugh. You don't know what it feels like when your little girl falls asleep against your chest." His body convulsed. When he spoke again, the man briefly surfaced through the wolf.

"Her laugh was like little bells. Not church bells... little ones hanging above a doorway. She'd laugh, and the whole house would ring with it." His voice broke.

"I'll never hear it again." Silence settled between them.

"I'll never hear it again because they took her. Because I wasn't strong enough to protect her. Because love..." He swallowed.

"Love was the leash they used to drag me into this abyss." Korhess's grip tightened around her spear.

"Nay," she said, her voice carrying the quiet certainty of ancient trees.

"Thou wert never weak. Thou wert beloved." Her mismatched eyes held his without judgment.

"They beheld the fairest tree within thy grove... and from its living branches wrought thy prison." Thornburgh's eyes blazed, shifting from amber to pale blue in the darkness.

"And what would you know of cages? You, who wrapped your horns in silk and called it fashion? Who wore their shoes, ate their food, climbed their ladders because they offered you a view you could never reach alone?" He stepped closer until his breath washed over her, hot with blood, iron and something far older.

"You think the world beyond these walls will welcome you? You think humans will see antlers and hooves and invite you to their table?" His hand shot forward, closing around her spear. Korhess made no attempt to pull away.

"You'll spend the rest of your life running," Thornburgh said quietly.

"The Syndicate will hunt you. The factions will hunt you. Humans will hunt you. There's no sanctuary they can't reach, no door they can't break down, no hand that won't eventually close around a blade." His grip tightened.

"The Syndicate gave you purpose. Power. A reason to wake each morning. And you threw it away for what? A girl who unraveled your mind? A brother who showed you impossible things? A few moments pretending you belonged somewhere else?" Korhess regarded him with quiet pity.

"Nay," she said softly.

"There is grass beneath the sun. Mine own tail doth stir when joy finds me. There are hands that have cupped my face and found no monster there." A faint smile touched her lips.

"There is a maiden who brake mine heart open... and deemed what she found within worthy of cherishing." She drew her spear free.

"I know not whether the world shall receive me. Perchance I shall flee until mine final breath. Perchance the hunters shall one day find me." Her mismatched eyes met his.

"Yet I would sooner wander every forest beneath Heaven than dwell one hour longer in a grove that taught me to despise mine own roots." Thornburgh fell silent. For a fleeting moment, the wolf receded, and she saw only the grieving father beneath. Korhess's voice softened still further.

"There is no haven awaiting me... for I have yet to plant it." She rested a hand against her chest.

"But with these hands, these hooves, and this heart that yet refuseth to cease its wanting, I shall grow one." Her gaze never wavered.

"And though it take forty years... or a hundred... the grove denied unto me, I shall cultivate with mine own hands." She raised her spear. Its blade caught the faint violet light, shining like a lone star between them.

"And thou, Thornburgh... thou who didst cherish a daughter whose laughter rang like bells... thou who loved so deeply they forged thy love into chains... thou couldst yet plant anew. A life born of thine own choosing." Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. For a moment, the wolf faltered.

"I can't," he whispered.

"I can't go back. I can't..." His voice broke.

"I killed her. I killed your companion. I held her head in my hands... and I smiled, Korhess. I smiled because I thought it would bring my daughter back. I thought it would make me whole." His breathing hitched.

"There's nothing left now. Nothing but the hunt. Nothing but the hunger..."

"Nothing but the lie," Korhess replied gently.

"The selfsame lie they whispered unto me. That we are naught save what they fashioned. That no new seed may ever take root." She stepped forward, her spear steady, her heart steadier still.

"I shall depart this place. I shall find the maiden who brake me open, and stand beside her until all whom she seeketh are delivered. Thereafter, I shall seek a meadow beneath the sun, feast upon sweet grass until mine belly is full, let mine tail sway as joy commandeth, and rejoice." She settled into her stance, her spear humming softly in her hands.

"I grieve that thou canst not choose likewise." Her gaze hardened.

"But I shall not permit thy hunger to become mine." Thornburgh screamed. The sound belonged to no man. It was the cry of something that had starved for seven long years, only to behold a feast forever beyond it s reach. The wolf surged forward, swallowing what remained of the father. He lunged. Korhess met him. — The corridor felt like a wound that refused to close. Katherine drew slow, steady breaths as the Nonagon pulsed against her hip like a second heartbeat.

Her eyes never left the darkness where Korhess had vanished, where Thornburgh's claws had closed around her throat before dragging her into the abyss.

"Clock—""Don't." His voice was scraped raw. Violet eyes remained fixed on the same darkness while his hands curled into fists, Gloom straining to return as the Hexagon's revoker finally began to lose its grip.

"I know." Butter wasn't watching the darkness. Her pink eyes swept the corridor instead, ears twitching as she listened for something the others couldn't hear. The revoker's thrum was fading with the Talon's retreat, yet the air still felt wrong. The trap hadn't finished closing. She bounced lightly on the balls of her feet, warming herself up like a boxer before the bell. Her shoulders rolled. Her prosthetic flexed.

"Honeycakes," she said calmly, never taking her eyes off the hall ahead, "when they come, be careful. Better yet... stay behind me."

"Sugarbear, I can fight. Their revokers don't work on me." Katherine's voice cracked despite herself. Butter finally looked at her. There was no teasing in her expression, only the quiet honesty of someone who had already noticed what the Nonagon was turning Katherine into.

"You can," she agreed softly.

"Just... not yet. Wait until I tell you. Promise me." Katherine wanted to argue. She wanted to remind Butter she had already died once today, that she was no longer the frightened girl who had wandered into this nightmare wearing someone else's dress. Instead, she looked at Butter's face. She was impossibly beautiful.

"…Okay."

"Good." Butter turned back toward the corridor.

"Let's get it. Look alive, brother." Clock smirked faintly.

"I always am." The two of them bumped fists. The world exploded into motion. Figures poured from every direction. Side passages. Ceiling hatches. Blind corners swallowed by shadow. Steppers in grey and crimson rushed forward with white lenses already locked onto their targets, while Operatives in feather-scaled armour advanced in perfect formation, shields unfolding as weapons charged with Apis. An ambush. Perfectly timed. The Hexagon had predicted this too.

Butter blurred toward the nearest Stepper, her prosthetic leg already arcing toward the man's skull with enough force to ignite the air. Clock moved with her. He sprang from a pillar in a tight flip, Chang Quan flowing seamlessly into Liuhebafa, every movement joining the next until his body became a single uninterrupted current. His hands traced killing strikes meant to collapse lungs, shatter ribs and stop hearts. Butter's kick landed. Clock's palm struck. Both enemies dissolved into shimmering blue light.

"Holograms," Clock realised. The corridor was empty. The gravity mine wasn't. It materialised beneath them as its Apis camouflage failed, already humming at full power. Thrum. The floor seemed to rise. Butter slammed into the stone before she could blink. Clock crashed down beside her, driven to one knee as impossible weight folded his spine and crushed the air from his lungs. Butter tried to step. The bullets had already arrived. Apis rounds carved through every angle her Moth Step could possibly occupy.

No prediction could track the technique itself, so the Hexagon simply flooded every conceivable destination with gunfire. She twisted between them. One round sheared the floppy ear from her rabbit-eared beanie. Another tore across her cheekbone, peeling flesh from bone. A third exploded through her left shoulder, destroying the joint and leaving the arm hanging uselessly at her side. She hit the floor hard. Gravity intensified again. Even Butter couldn't simply endure it.

Her body began vibrating at impossible speed, bleeding away as much force as she physically could without tearing herself apart. Two needle bombs streaked toward Katherine. They passed above Butter and Clock, their detonators primed for contact. She remembered. Touching them meant death.

"Poof." The word became law. The bombs disappeared in twin flashes of cobalt. Three Enforcers materialised farther down the corridor at the exact same instant. Two reacted. One didn't. KRAKKK. Both bombs erupted inside his back, drilling through his spine before detonating out the front of his chest in an explosion that left a hole the size of a basketball. Two Steppers burst into existence beside Katherine, blue mist still clinging to their bodies.

One swung a shimmering axe while the other drove a jagged sickle toward her ribs. Ellipsis. The world inverted into white outlines. Katherine slipped through the frozen flow of motion and emerged behind them before colour returned.

"Boom." Invisible force detonated from a single word. The man disappeared down the corridor like a cannonball. The woman vanished, reappeared beside Katherine, and swung for her head. CLANG. The Nonagon invalidated the weapon's Apis enhancement. Understatement reduced the remaining impact to something merely humanly survivable, while Herculean made Katherine's body more than capable of enduring it. The axe rebounded from her skull. Pain flared. She barely noticed. THOOM.

Her fist buried itself in the Stepper's stomach, folding the woman around the blow before launching her across the hall. Even as she flew, the Stepper slapped explosive charges onto Katherine's face. The blasts erupted harmlessly a heartbeat later. BOOM. BOOM. Irrelevant. All they did was make her eyes water. Clock was already moving again. Chan Si Jin. Silk-Reeling Energy. The principle was older than the Syndicate itself, older than kingdoms, older than history recorded in ink.

It taught that force need not be resisted. Water flowed around stone because it understood that yielding could become victory. Clock became that current. His spine coiled. His shoulders followed. His hips traced spirals so precise they guided the crushing gravity around him instead of through him. Pressure that should have pulverised him flowed past like a river dividing around an ancient boulder. He inhaled. He was still moving.

He aligned every fibre of his body with the bomb's pull, allowing its force to circulate through him without ever finding purchase. A disruptor teleported onto his back. Triangular. Green. Humming. Its prongs punched through skin and muscle before embedding themselves against the vertebrae rewired to carry Gloom. Clock grunted. His entire body seized. Disruption cascaded through his nervous system, turning muscle to stone and lungs to paper. His heartbeat stumbled. His fingers refused to answer him.

Butter was pinned. Clock was paralysed. More Steppers closed in. Two broke formation, blades already descending toward the helpless twins. Katherine screamed. The Nonagon answered. A pulse surged through her body before thought could catch it. Cobalt light burst from the satchel in waves, swallowing the corridor in impossible radiance. Reality...... stuttered. The Steppers glitched mid-strike, their blades drifting a fraction from the paths they had occupied only an instant before.

Butter's blood hung suspended like crimson stars. Clock's body remained locked in silent agony, every muscle frozen between one heartbeat and the next. Something had begun rewriting the scene. Again. The Steppers failed first. Their white lenses flickered, fractured, and died. HUDs that had fed them flawless trajectories and predictive firing solutions collapsed into static. One raised his rifle, only for the targeting reticule to lock onto his own squad. The rangefinder spat out impossible distances.

Threat warnings flashed across the walls, the floor, and empty air where nothing existed. Beside him, an Operative convulsed, clawing at her helmet as her Apis prism erupted with corrupted light. Her HUD flooded her mind with visions of her own death from a thousand impossible futures. Every path ended in failure. Every heartbeat promised another way to die. The Apis cores screamed. Katherine felt it through her teeth, her bones, through the impossible structures the Nonagon had woven into her body.

The cores struggled to stabilise, desperately searching for the state they had occupied only moments before. The Nonagon refused to let them remember. It dismantled each core first, reducing intricate metaphysical structures into raw Apis before drawing the energy into itself, as effortlessly as cracking open a coconut before drinking the water inside. An Operative collapsed ten metres away. Her collar sparked wildly, feathered armour smoking as the prism in her chest faded into lifeless crystal.

She still breathed, trembling against the stone, fingers searching desperately for something solid to cling to. The Nonagon wasn't stopping at the core. It had already begun feeding on her dreams. Another pulse rippled through the corridor. The disruptor embedded in Clock's spine shattered into glittering fragments. Green light winked out as the pieces drifted away. Clock looked up. His violet eyes found Katherine's. His lips moved. She couldn't hear him. Chaos swallowed the corridor.

Steppers dropped to their knees, clutching their heads as dead HUDs poured static through their helmets. Operatives froze mid-motion, shields half-formed, projectiles hanging motionless around them like fruit suspended from invisible branches. A flawless ambush had collapsed in the space of a heartbeat. Butter stood first. Her left arm hung limp, the shoulder mangled beyond recognition, blood pouring from exposed muscle and shattered bone. A crimson line ran down her cheek.

She swayed once before planting her right hand against the floor. Her fingers dug into the stone. She rose. The prosthetic leg whirred as its mechanisms recalibrated, compensating for the damage and forcing perfect balance back into her stance. She planted her feet wide just as a Stepper lunged with a butcher knife. Butter's right arm drifted through a slow Taijiquan circle. The air moved with it. A silent crescent carved across the corridor. SKRRRKK. Half the Stepper simply... ceased to exist.

The compromised Apis within his armour could no longer manifest its metaphysical protections. Cadenza required no Gloom once those defences were gone. Compressed air sheared through flesh, armour, and bone with the precision of a particle collider, leaving the remains to collapse before a weapon could even clear his belt. Clock was already moving. He launched into a tight flip, rotated once through the air, and landed heel-first on another Stepper's neck. Crunch. The man's body collapsed instantly.

Clock stepped away without looking back and came to Butter's side, his eyes lingering on the invisible wake still hanging in the air where her strike had passed.

"... That technique," he said.

"The air." Butter shrugged, flexing the fingers of her good hand.

"Something I came up with while fighting the wolf." A grin spread across her bloodstained face.

"Turns out you don't always need magic to give somebody a really bad day." Clock finally realised. The wolf. They had come here to kill Thornburgh, and in the chaos they'd forgotten him completely. Before he could move, his legs buckled. Pain exploded through his spine. His vertebrae ground back into alignment with sickening cracks, every breath scraping his throat like broken glass. His hands trembled uncontrollably, but he stayed on his feet. Katherine reached him before he could take another breath.

She threw her arms around him, burying her face against his chest as her whole body shook. Words spilled from her in a frantic blur - English, French, apologies, prayers - impossible to separate as her fingers twisted into his shirt like she could hold him together through sheer determination.

"You're fine," she kept repeating, her voice breaking.

"You're fine... you're fine. Tell me you're fine, Clock." His arms slowly wrapped around her despite the pain. They were still shaking, his spine still screamed, but he held her anyway.

"I'm fine," he said, his voice rough but steady.

"You saved us." The third Apis flow collapsed. A high whine that had echoed through the facility since before Katherine was born - since before the Syndicate learned to harvest dreams, since the first stolen thought had been crystallised into power - suddenly died. Silence. Across the corridor, armour dimmed. The Steppers had reached the same conclusion simultaneously. Their corrupted HUDs still screamed beneath the Nonagon's influence, flooding them with impossible trajectories and visions of their own deaths.

Three seconds had been enough. They would rather fight blind. Rather fight slow. Rather fight as ordinary humans...... than let that thing into their minds again. One by one, they shut down their Apis cores. Masks hissed open. Helmets came off. They staggered upright, gasping for air as though surfacing from deep water.... One by one, then all at once, the helmets struck the floor with the clatter of hollow things. Bloodshot eyes stared back at them.

Burst veins spread across exhausted sclera while blood trickled from ears, noses and the corners of their mouths. The Nonagon had drowned them in nightmares. Three seconds outside had become subjective minutes inside their own minds. It hadn't broken them. It had only made them angry. The first Stepper stepped forward. He had black hair, brown eyes, scarred pale skin and tear tracks still glistening beneath the blood running from his nose.

When he spoke, his voice was low and steady, worn smooth by years of suffering.

"You think nightmares can stop us?" He rolled his neck, the crack echoing through the corridor.

"The Magpie Serum gives us nightmares every night. We dream about our deaths. Our failures. Everyone we've lost... and everyone we'll lose." A faint smile touched his lips.

"Then we wake up." His shoulders settled.

"We train. We fight. We remember." The smile widened just enough to become unsettling.

"So what're a few more seconds of dying?" Behind him, the others were already moving. Their suits were lifeless. Their Apis cores had gone dark. Their HUDs were gone. None of it mattered. Their bodies were still weapons. One tore a length of steel from his disabled rifle and weighed it like a club. Another cracked her knuckles. A third spat blood across the polished stone before settling into a fighting stance. Butter didn't wait.

Her bandages tightened around her ruined shoulder as she burst forward, becoming a pink-and-black blur.

"Be cautious!" one of the Steppers barked.

"Even without magic, she's still strong enough to throw tanks around like softballs!" They met her charge as a single organism, hidden wrist sheaths snapping open as polished steel blades slid into waiting hands. They were monomolecular steel, forged for the one purpose that never went out of fashion. Butter slipped through the first slash, caught a Stepper by the throat with her good hand and lifted him clean off the ground. She hurled him into his squadmates. The impact sounded like a car crash.

Bodies scattered across the corridor as the airborne Stepper ploughed through them, armour buckling and bones cracking beneath the force before they crashed into a pillar hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling. Butter bounced lightly on her feet, her rabbit ears flopping.

"Now this feels fair."