# Chapter 16: A Dangerous Ally
The heavy doors of the Warden headquarters slid shut, sealing away the sterile white world and leaving them in the noisy, rain-washed night. Liraya shivered, pulling her thin blouse tighter around her. "They didn't even try to break us," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the city. "They just... wiped the slate clean. Us along with it."
"Because we're not the enemy," Konto said, his gaze fixed on the distant, glittering spires of the Magisterium Council building. "We're not even on the board. We're a piece they knocked off the table and forgot about." A profound sense of insignificance washed over him, colder than the interrogation room. He had pushed himself to the brink of death, and for what? To be dismissed as a minor inconvenience.
Before Liraya could reply, a figure detached from the deep shadows of a nearby archway. It was a man they both recognized, though neither had ever seen him in the light of the Upper Spires. Silas, the proprietor of the Night Market, moved with a liquid grace, his expensive, dark coat immaculate despite the damp. He stopped a few feet from them, a faint, knowing smile on his lips.
"An impressive performance, Analyst Liraya," Silas said, his voice a smooth, cultured baritone. "Invoking Article 7, Section 4. Bold. I almost believed you had a source myself." He gave a slight bow. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am your confidential source."
Konto's hand, which had been drifting toward the empty holster at his side, clenched into a fist. Every instinct screamed at him to be wary. Silas wasn't just a merchant; he was a spider at the center of the Undercity's web of secrets, a man who traded in information the way others traded in cred-sticks. His help always came with a price, and it was never paid in currency. The rain slicked the plaza around them, reflecting the neon signs of passing skycabs in shimmering, distorted pools on the granite. The air smelled of wet pavement and ozone from the city's power conduits.
Liraya recovered first, her analyst's mind kicking past the shock. "You? Why would you help us? You're neutral. You sell to the highest bidder."
"Ah, but the bidding has changed," Silas replied, his smile never quite reaching his eyes. He produced a small, silver data-chip from his coat pocket, holding it between two gloved fingers. It was no larger than his thumbnail, but it felt heavy with unspoken implications. "The Magisterium Council has decided to play a new game. A dangerous one. They are not merely erasing evidence; they are attempting to erase the very concept of a threat. This makes the market… unstable. I dislike instability."
Konto's gaze flickered from the chip to Silas's face. "What's on it?"
"A map. And a warning," Silas said simply. He didn't offer the chip to either of them, but held it suspended in the space between them. "The lab you so… enthusiastically demolished was a sacrificial pawn. A research outpost. The Council's digital erasure was thorough, but some things cannot be deleted. Only destroyed." He let the words hang in the air. "Project Somnus had a physical archive. A failsafe. A place where raw, unfiltered data was stored on crystalline matrices, immune to remote scrubbing."
Liraya's breath hitched. "A physical backup? Where?"
"That is the information on this chip," Silas said, his tone turning serious. "But the location is not the only thing you'll find. The archive is not just a library. It's a tomb. And it's guarded." He finally extended his hand, offering the chip to Konto. "My price is simple, Dreamwalker. A favor. To be named, at a time of my choosing. No questions asked."
Konto stared at the chip. It was a deal with a devil he knew. A debt to Silas was a leash around his neck, one that could be yanked at any moment. But the alternative was to run, to hide, to wait for the Council to decide they were no longer an insignificant loose end but a potential liability. He thought of Elara, lying in her sterile bed, her mind a silent battlefield. He couldn't run. He reached out and took the chip. The metal was cool and impossibly smooth against his skin.
"You have a deal," Konto said, his voice low and firm.
"Excellent," Silas beamed, as if they had just concluded a pleasant business transaction. He took a step back, already melting into the shadows from which he came. "A word of advice. The archive's security is not entirely technological. It was designed by the same minds who created the nightmare plague. They had a flair for the dramatic. And the lethal." With a final, cryptic nod, he was gone, swallowed by the night, leaving only the scent of expensive cologne and rain.
Konto and Liraya stood in silence for a long moment, the tiny chip a universe of possibility and peril in Konto's palm. The city's cacophony seemed to fade into a dull roar, the world narrowing to this single, dangerous object.
"We need a terminal," Liraya said, her voice regaining its pragmatic edge. "A secure one. Not my apartment, not your office. They'll be watching."
"The Night Market," Konto said, the decision immediate. "Silas wouldn't send us somewhere we couldn't access. And if anyone has a terminal that's off the grid, it's there." He pocketed the chip, the weight of it a constant reminder of the bargain he'd just struck. "But we don't go in as clients. We go in as targets."
The journey to the Undercity was a blur of motion and paranoia. They avoided the main transit tubes, taking a series of grimy, unmarked service elevators and maintenance ladders that descended through the city's layered guts. The air grew warmer, thicker, filled with the smell of frying synth-protein, illicit chemical fumes, and the press of too many bodies in too small a space. The polished chrome of the Spires gave way to rusted iron and flickering neon holograms that glitched and stuttered, painting the damp streets in shades of electric blue and feverish red.
Konto's head was a constant, dull throb. The Somnolent Corruption was a cold sliver of ice lodged in his soul, and every use of his power, every moment of stress, made it feel a little larger. He leaned on the damp brick wall of an alley, catching his breath, the world swimming at the edges of his vision. Liraya was a steady presence at his side, her hand hovering near his back, ready to offer support he would never ask for.
"You should have let me handle the negotiation," she said quietly, her eyes scanning the alley's mouth. "A favor from Silas is more dangerous than a Warden's blaster."
"He respects power," Konto rasped, pushing himself upright. "He sees me as a weapon. You're just a… politician." He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth, but he was too tired, too raw, to retract them.
To his surprise, Liraya didn't flinch. "Good. Let him keep thinking that. It gives us an advantage." She looked at him, her expression unreadable in the chaotic neon light. "How are you holding up? Truly?"
"Like my brain is trying to leak out of my ears," he admitted, a sliver of his usual cynicism returning. "But I'll hold it together. Long enough to see what's on that chip."
The entrance to the Night Market was never in the same place twice. Tonight, it was behind the rusted shell of a defunct mag-lev station, a shimmering distortion in the air that hummed with low-level Aspect energy. As they stepped through, the world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of sound and color. The market was a sprawling, chaotic cavern, a temporary reality that existed only in the hours between midnight and dawn. Stalls were crammed together under a canopy of glowing dream-essences, their vendors a mix of grizzled cyborgs, hooded mages, and chittering non-humanoids from the city's fringes. The air was thick with the scent of spiced incense, burning copper, and the sweet, cloying perfume of distilled nightmares sold as recreational drugs.
They moved through the throng, keeping their heads down. Konto's reputation here was a mixed bag. He was known, but not always welcome. He'd stolen information from vendors, exposed con artists, and generally made a nuisance of himself over the years. But he was also a customer. In the Night Market, that was a currency all its own.
Liraya, on the other hand, was a ghost. Her fine clothes and noble bearing made her stand out, a diamond in a pile of broken glass. She drew stares, whispers. Konto pulled her closer, his hand on her arm. "Stick close. Don't make eye contact. And for the love of the Spire, don't buy anything."
He led them toward a quieter corner of the market, where a hunched-over figure with four cybernetic arms managed a stall of scavenged tech. The sign above it read "Edi's Data & Repair." This was their best bet. Edi was a genius with anything that could compute, and he had a pathological hatred for the Magisterium Council, which had shut down his legitimate research years ago.
Edi didn't look up as they approached, his four arms flying across a complex-looking motherboard, soldering connections with microscopic precision. "If it's a cracked retinal display, I'm busy. If it's a data recovery, I'm really busy. If it's a Warden tracking bug, I'm already calling the enforcers."
"We need a secure terminal, Edi," Konto said, his voice low. "Off the grid. Untraceable. And we need it now."
One of Edi's cybernetic arms paused, a single optical sensor swiveling to focus on Konto. "Konto. The city's most inconvenient psychic. What kind of trouble are you dragging through my door tonight?" The sensor flicked over to Liraya. "And you brought a Spires-dweller. Classy."
"She's with me," Konto said, placing the silver chip on the counter. "We need to access this. And we need to be sure no one knows we did."
Edi's remaining three arms stopped working. He slowly straightened up, his true form revealed to be a small, wiry man buried under a mountain of augmentations. He picked up the chip with a delicate pair of tweezers, holding it up to the light. "This is high-grade Council hardware. Military encryption. Where did you get this?"
"A friend," Konto lied smoothly.
Edi snorted, a sound like static. "You don't have friends. You have creditors and people who haven't tried to kill you yet. This will cost you."
"I'm good for it."
"You're not," Edi countered. "But the Council is. And anything that pisses them off is worth a discount." He gestured to a curtained-off area in the back of his stall. "Terminal's in there. Five minutes. After that, I wipe the cache and melt the primary drive. Standard procedure."
Liraya gave Konto a questioning look, but he just nodded. They ducked behind the heavy curtain. The space was cramped, filled with the smell of hot electronics and ozone. A single terminal glowed on a desk, its screen a stark, minimalist interface. Konto slid into the chair, his fingers hovering over the console. He took a deep breath, the pain in his head flaring. He inserted the chip.
The screen flickered, then resolved into a simple text file. No encryption, no password. Just a message.
*To the Dreamwalker and the Analyst. You have been deemed expendable. The laboratory you destroyed was a minor asset, its loss calculated and accepted. The true heart of Project Somnus beats elsewhere. The data you seek, the proof you need, is stored in a place the Council believes is forgotten.*
Below the text was a set of coordinates and a schematic. It was a map of the city's old, decommissioned aqueduct system, a network of tunnels and cisterns that hadn't been used in over a century. The location was deep beneath the Undercity, in a sector marked on all official maps as geologically unstable.
"The archive is down there," Liraya breathed, leaning over his shoulder. "In the old waterworks."
Konto scrolled down. There was more.
*Be warned. The archive is protected by a 'Dream-Warden,' a prototype security system. It does not run on code. It runs on fear. It will manifest your deepest anxieties, your worst failures. It will turn your own mind against you. To enter, you must not fight it. You must surrender to it.*
The message ended with a single, chilling line.
*Trust no one. Not even the Arch-Mage.*
Konto stared at the final words. They hung in the air, a poison dart aimed at the heart of their assumptions. Moros, the benevolent leader of Aethelburg, the Arch-Mage who had seemingly offered them a path to justice. The warning was absolute, a seed of doubt planted with surgical precision.
Liraya's face was pale in the terminal's glow. "Moros? Why would Silas warn us about him? He's the one who sanctioned the investigation in the first place."
"Is he?" Konto countered, his mind racing. "Or was that just another move on the board? A way to make us think we had an ally?" He thought back to their audience with the Arch-Mage, his calm demeanor, his reassuring words. Had it all been an act? A performance to keep them docile, to point them in the wrong direction while the real plan unfolded?
The five minutes were up. The terminal screen went black. Edi's voice crackled through a hidden speaker. "Time's up. Get out."
They emerged from the back of the stall, the sounds of the Night Market washing over them once more. The chip was gone, wiped clean by Edi's security protocols. But the information was now burned into their minds. A new target. A new, terrifying obstacle. And a new, insidious layer of paranoia.
They walked away from Edi's stall, back into the flowing river of the market crowd. Neither of them spoke for a long time. The warning about Moros had changed everything. It fractured the already fragile ground they were standing on.
"So what now?" Liraya finally asked, her voice tight. "Do we believe him? Silas?"
"We believe the part about the archive," Konto said, his gaze sweeping the market, seeing every shadow as a potential threat. "The rest… we treat it as a possibility. A dangerous one." He stopped, turning to face her. The chaos of the market swirled around them, a vortex of light and sound. "If Moros is involved, then this isn't just about a conspiracy within the Council. It's about the Council itself. It's about the man who runs this city."
Liraya's eyes met his, her own fear and determination mirrored in their depths. The easy path was gone. The path of working within the system, of trusting in authority, had proven to be a lie. All they had left was each other, and a dangerous lead in a place where nightmares were made real.
"Then we go to the waterworks," she said, her voice hard as steel. "We get that archive. And we find out the truth."
Konto nodded, a grim sense of purpose settling over him. The exhaustion was still there, the pain a constant companion, but it was pushed back by the cold fire of necessity. They were no longer just pawns. They were players in a game they hadn't known existed, armed with a warning from a dangerous ally and a target that lay in the city's forgotten heart. The game had just begun.