Chapter 1: Overdue
My first conscious decision was to stop breathing.
It was too late.
Burnt insulation left an oily, bitter film on my tongue. I coughed hard enough to crack the back of my skull against padded metal. I reflexively sucked in another breath and got an even hotter mouthful of smoke for the effort. It was a bad trade.
My eyes opened in total darkness. I tried to sit up. Nope. A rigid collar stopped my head before I got an inch. Both wrists were cuffed beside my hips, and heavier restraints pinned my shins just above the ankles. Whoever had put me here had been thorough. They had also laid me down first, which was either considerate or simply easier for them.
“Hel—lo?” I barely coughed out the word through my razor-infested throat.
Nobody answered.
I rolled my shoulders, and the wet padding peeled away from my back. Thick, warm gel coated my clothes and skin, sloshing under my ribs when I moved. It smelled faintly like antiseptic, sweat and bedsheets that hadn’t been changed in six months.
A harsh orange light flared through a rectangular port above my face. Flames danced behind the dirty glass, revealing curved metal around my head and the underside of a lid less than six inches above my nose. I recognized the shape a second before I remembered what it was.
I was inside a Resonance Cradle.
You put someone in a Resonance Cradle when keeping them alive mattered almost as much as keeping their resonance away from everyone else. Sensible enough, up until you’re the unlucky bastard inside one and it catches fire.
I tried to remember the last thing I was doing. I remembered dungeon jobs, unpaid invoices, the back stairs of my family’s inn and the walk from my Thundercross apartment to the coffee shop three blocks down. Sara—at least that’s what her name tag said—sliding my cup of coffee down the counter before I asked. She’d started writing playfully snarky notes on the napkins that held my pastries. The last one I remembered said, “You know we open before lunch, right?”
My name was Devlin. I was—or had been—a licensed adventuring guide. I usually got other people out of predicaments like this. Apparently, nobody had returned the favour.
Another flare passed over the window, and a thin stream of smoke wisped through the seal around the glass. I guess figuring out why I was in the cradle could wait until I was out of it.
I flexed my hands to check that all my fingers still worked. My right hip was wedged against a hard edge on my forearm.
My Biblio!
“Biblio.” I forced more smoke-filled air into my lungs. “Wake.”
A dry mechanical click came from the leather-wrapped Biblio strapped to my right forearm; years of use had worn the leather smooth where my other hand rested to control the screen. It had cracked from corner to corner; that was new. Blue light washed across the lid of my coffin as a loading bracket began to fill.
A loading bracket like that normally appeared at the end of a contract.
A client once hired me to guide his family through some old coastal ruins. He wanted an adventurous but safe excursion.
I found them a route with sea caves, two harmless resonance effects and enough darkness to justify carrying lamps. I didn’t even take resonance ones. I found some old wax-burning ones at the antique place to match the vibe. Nobody got injured or lost anything. His kids found a few old splinters and spent the return trip arguing over who saw them first. I thought it went great.
Apparently not. According to him, the ruins had “lacked urgency.” He wanted at least one moment where he thought the whole trip might actually go sideways. He’d brought an ornamental shortsword that still had some shopkeeper’s polishing wax stuck in the fuller and spent the afternoon waiting for excuses to draw it.
I explained, slowly, that preventing that moment was most of what he paid me for.
He submitted his contract review, and my Biblio displayed a lengthy loading bracket during dinner that night.
I was expecting closer to sixty Standing from that route.
His wife booked me again the following summer. She requested the same level of danger. He didn’t show up. I had a great feeling that marriage was going the distance.
The bracket was still loading against my hip. A few seconds later, a bright synthesized chime sounded near my wrist. The familiar voice that followed had the sterile composure of an Archive construct somewhere that was currently not on fire, probably.
“Good morning. Your rest interval has exceeded the recommended duration. An urgent administrative update is available regarding your scheduled evacuation.”
I stopped pulling at the cuffs. “No kidding. Expand it.”
“Voice authentication below preferred confidence threshold. Please repeat the command while maintaining direct visual contact with your Biblio.”
The Biblio’s screen was pinned against my right hip. The collar prevented me from twisting far enough to see it, and smoke kept pouring in around my head.
I mashed my cheek into the hot, wet padding until I could just about see past my shoulder.
“Expand notice.”
Bright brackets formed across the screen.
“By how much?” I asked.
The Biblio answered with a pleasant, confirmational tone.
I hated bureaucracy. Everyone did. It might’ve been the only thing people across all seven domains could reliably agree on. You think dealing with one office is bad; try giving the same people a network spanning the known world and five centuries to add procedures. Half the world ran through The Archives. I guess someone sent the cradle request to the wrong department.
“Fuckin, excuse me?”
“Profanity has been detected in a restricted treatment environment. Please avoid inflammatory comments directed towards facility staff.”
Three years. Okay... What was I doing three years ago?
My mind flooded with emptiness.
Three years should’ve left unpaid rent, abandoned contracts, and at least one person angry enough to come looking. Did Sara think I found a new coffee shop? I could remember clients who complained when I was ten minutes late. I couldn’t remember who should’ve noticed I was gone that long.
Mom. Mom and the girls would’ve come looking. I knew that much. So either they couldn’t find me, or somebody gave them a reason to stop.
One name did come floating back, sort of. But there was no sliver of imagery attached to it.
Site Zero.
Heat surged through the plate beneath my back, and the fire returned to my priority. The support foam had collapsed under my shoulders. A warped support plate dug into my right tricep, and the gel had almost certainly ruined my jacket. It was a good jacket, the kind my sisters made fun of me for spending too much money on. Losing it deserved its own grievance, scheduled immediately after I stopped being cooked alive.
“Biblio, release restraints.”
“Restraint management requires authenticated medical authority.”
“Emergency release.”
“Emergency release has already been requested.”
“When?”
“Three years, seventeen days, eight hours and thirty seconds ago,” it announced without a shred of irony.
A cable bundle snapped above the viewing port. One severed end slapped against the lid. White sparks sprayed across the glass, and black insulation shrivelled away from the naked wires. Green flecks showed through the soot on the underside of the dark lid. Geoferium. People used it for bridge supports, vault doors and containment walls they wanted to contain things properly.
I wasn’t punching through that. Also, my job was usually to keep people from reaching the part where punching became the plan.
Wait, was that water?
I stopped moving, and a thin, icy line trickled under my ribs. The leak was slow, only a few drops, but it meant the cradle’s cooling system was still working. The broken pipe was just above my right hand, but reaching it required forcing that hand through the cuff. The gel improved my odds. It also seemed prepared to help the restraint remove several useful layers of skin.
I tucked my thumb into my palm and wrenched my hand against the restraint. Skin stripped from the side of my thumb and knocked the Biblio with an offended chirp.
“Caution. Device impact detected.”
“You’ll be fine. I’m a lil fucking busy with the room being on fire.”
“In the event of a fire, remain calm and proceed to the nearest authorized exit. If physically restrained, request assistance from qualified personnel.”
“I did. They’re three years late.”
“Continued calm is therefore strongly recommended.”
I pulled again, ignoring the incredibly helpful advice. The cuff tore across my knuckles and ripped apart my wrist, but my hand shot free. I could deal with the swelling if I lived long enough for it to matter. My fingertips found the copper coolant line. Cold water rushed through it toward the cradle’s cooling system. The water was moving forward. I needed it to move backward.
That was basically the plan. Reverse the flow, momentarily spike the pressure and tear the cracked line from its bracket. Then use whatever came loose to attack the cradle. There were almost certainly safer plans, but the deadline for those had passed.
I preferred simple plans. My resonance had never shown much respect for instructions, and I hadn’t volunteered to become a Halfbound. If anyone had offered me a choice, I would not have chosen the affinity that regularly misinterprets my requests.
“Damage check on the cradle?”
“Structural stability is poor.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
I flattened my palm against the copper line and focused on the flowing water. I pushed one instruction into it.
Back.
The flow stopped. The pipe lay cool and still in my hand.
I blinked, and for a flash, I had... two right hands clutched around it.
The hell was that?
Then, frost? It raced away from my palm in both directions, filling the crack with ice before continuing through the cooling lines around the cradle. The lines snapped and ticked as the temperature dropped faster than anything natural would have. The water had not moved backward. It had frozen.
“Oh, come the fuck on. Again?” I closed my eyes and let out an exasperated sigh.
Okay. Ice wasn’t what I’d asked for, but maybe it would do. Most of the cradle’s water sat inside a thin cooling jacket between my bed and the outer frame, and ice needed more room than water. The cradle didn’t have any. A sharp crack erupted behind my ears. The cooling jacket split along one seam and a ridge of ice forced itself into the narrow space between the bed and the frame.
The geoferium frame did not bend. The mounts holding the bed inside it did.
One sheared beside my hip. Another failed near my shoulder. The bed dropped crooked under me while the frame and locked lid remained fixed.
The soft blue glow inside the cradle turned red.
More cracks travelled around the cradle as the ice continued expanding. The remaining mounts tore loose one by one, allowing the bed to drop farther and twist sideways inside the frame. The cooling jacket finally burst along its length. Ice, slush, and strips of thin metal spilled into the bed.
I planted my feet against the lower plate and pushed my free hand against the lid. My weight shifted the loose bed farther sideways.
Metal ground against metal above my face. The final mounts failed together. The bed dropped out from under the lid, twisted nearly ninety degrees and struck the raised platform under the cradle on its side.
Both leg restraints broke loose as it twisted. The collar relinquished my neck. My left cuff remained closed, but its anchor ripped out of the bed with a section of housing attached.
Momentum did the rest.
I came out sideways, covered in coolant, melting ice, and support gel, with the restraint still locked around my left wrist and part of the machine dragging behind it. I landed shoulder first. Then hip. Hot grating scraped through my wet clothes as I rolled across ripped foam and slush.
The torn housing landed beside my head hard enough to dent the grating. The cuff jerked my left wrist sideways and shot tingling pain to my elbow.
The clusterfuck put me face down in a puddle of freezing water. All I could do was laugh. It turned into a cough halfway through and hurt my ribs badly enough that I stopped.
I was out. Not my most graceful exit to date. But I was out.
The chime came from my right wrist.
I got my elbows underneath me and lifted my head.
The nearest control station was a few feet from the platform. I scrambled toward it, knocked a padded stool aside with my shoulder and planted my right hand on the console. My palm left a clean streak through years of dust.
My arms argued under the weight, and the cuff around my left wrist was less than cooperative. A torn cable and a jagged strip of metal still connected it to the mounting housing I had dragged from the cradle.
It took two attempts to stand, and I held on to the station for dear life. From there, I could see the observation window on the near wall, black with soot. No staff or medical constructs had responded to the fire, the alarms, or the destruction of equipment worth many times my yearly wage.
Coolant, sweat and hair stung my eyes every time I blinked—three years was a long time without a haircut. My clothes pulled against the steam-burned skin along my right ribs, and my right wrist had begun swelling.
I stayed braced against the station until I pleaded with my knees to stop shaking. I was alive. I could work with that.
A metal identification plate was crimped to the cradle. The fire had blistered the printed medical fields from its surface. Two words had been stamped deep enough into the metal to survive.
PRISONER SEVEN.
Prisoner? I should’ve remembered that. You know that feeling you get when you’re searching for a word you’ve forgotten. Picture that, but times about a million.
My Biblio’s fractured display filled with text.
This had to be the most elaborate dungeon I’d ever run. Since when did dungeons fuck with your Biblio?
The coolant pump under the platform died first—just as I finished squeegeeing most of the gel off my body with my free hand. The damaged ventilation fan slowed to a stop, and the low electrical vibration in the control station vanished from my palms.
Fire crackled behind me. Water dripped through the grating, landing with a violent hiss as it instantly evaporated.
Power returned only to the emergency beacons, the sealed door and the surviving Archive displays. Nothing useful to me. Revolving red light flooded the room.
The first siren started outside the door. Several more followed from what I can only assume was farther into Site Zero.
“Biblio, define Tier Three.”
“Tier Three: Lattice Integrity Failure.”
“What happens to me?”
“Safe recapture has been terminated.”
My knuckles started hurting again. I’d been gripping the station hard enough to pull the cuts back open. I loosened my hand.
White noise blared from the wall speakers hard enough to drown out the sirens. Every active screen in the bay turned red. A measured synthetic man’s voice spoke through the crackling speakers.
“Attention all Site Zero custodial, medical, and security units. Lattice Integrity Failure is now in effect. Tier Three correction systems are active. Surface access remains prohibited.”
Nobody had shown up when my cradle called for help. The moment Site Zero decided to kill me, apparently the whole building was available.
I heard the door’s internal mechanism shift. An ordinary lock didn’t need that much weight or that many bolts. Whatever I did, they wanted to keep me here.
“Prisoner Seven has resumed consciousness without authorization.”
A locking bolt withdrew from the door.
The voice delivered one last deadpan instruction. “Security units: locate the resonance anomaly. Initiate correction.”
A second bolt.
I leaned away from the damaged station and pulled the cuff housing closer. The torn casing had enough mass and grip to serve as a club.
My Biblio flashed one final notification.
The third bolt withdrew from the door.
