CHAPTER 7
Pain returned first.
It threaded up Kade's spine in needle-thin pulses, as if electricity were trying to stitch his nerves into a shape he didn't recognize. His eyelids felt heavier than stone, but when he pried them open, the world resolved into a cold, humming geometry.
A room.
White.
Cylindrical.
The walls curved, seamless, like the inside of a polished metal lung.
He lay strapped to a reclining exam chair—thick insulated restraints across his wrists, forearms, chest, and ankles. Electrodes webbed his temples, chest, ribs. A thick collar—different from his Block E one—sat snug around his neck, humming at a frequency his jaw bone could feel.
They'd brought him to the Maw.
He inhaled. The air tasted of sterile metal and something faintly sweet—anesthetic residue. His vision settled on the overhead fixture: a circular ring of micro-lights, all focusing downward in a cool halo.
He wasn't alone.
A tall, lean man in a long grey coat stood beside the console, back turned. His hands moved with slow precision across a digital panel. Every gesture deliberate. Every touch silent.
Then the man spoke, voice smooth and academic:
"You are awake earlier than projected. That is promising."
He turned.
Director Halima Arden.
Her coat caught the lights like liquid steel. She walked forward with the controlled grace of someone whose heartbeat never exceeded sixty beats per minute.
"Kade Vance," she said softly, "you've been more trouble in twenty hours than most inmates manage in a year."
Kade's mouth tasted of blood.
"You should update your security manuals, then."
Arden smiled without warmth.
"Trust me, I already have."
Her smile faded, replaced by a clinical focus.
"You accessed a registry I didn't intend anyone in this facility to see. You obtained data that should not exist outside Citadel black archives."
Kade forced his breathing into a slow, even cadence. "Where is Elias?"
Arden tilted her head.
"Which one?"
The question punched the breath out of him.
"My *brother*," Kade said through clenched teeth.
"Yes," Arden murmured thoughtfully. "But which version?"
Kade's pulse stuttered.
"What do you mean, version?"
Arden didn't answer immediately. She reached for a panel on the wall. It slid open with a whisper, revealing a transparent vertical cylinder. Inside it floated a thin black slab the size of a book, suspended by magnetic fields. The slab pulsed with faint, rhythmic light.
"This," she said, "is the Parallax Core."
Kade froze completely.
He expected a server. A drive. A device.
He did not expect a thing that looked alive.
Arden continued:
"Parallax was not simply an architecture. It was not just a code your mother helped design. It is a memory partition system that can *mirror human cognition*."
She moved her fingers across the slab. Tiny geometric patterns flickered under its surface—shapes that rearranged, overlapped, vanished.
"Your mother, Serena Vance—Scylla to Citadel—designed Parallax as a fail-safe. A way to protect data even if the host was compromised."
Kade swallowed hard.
"So my brother—"
"Your brother," Arden said gently, "was the first test subject."
Kade's breath stopped altogether.
Arden stepped closer.
"Elias did not simply know Parallax. He *stored* it. An entire architecture partitioned across neural clusters. He was the only map."
"And you cut it out of him," Kade spat.
Arden's eyes narrowed.
"No. That was the plan. But someone intervened."
"The empty truck," Kade murmured.
Arden nodded.
"Yes. Two years ago, the transport transporting Elias to our off-site facility arrived empty. The guards dead. The driver missing. The vehicle rerouted through unregistered gateways."
Kade's pulse pounded.
"So he escaped."
"No," Arden said quietly.
"He was extracted."
"By who?"
She looked at him. Really looked.
"Kade… did it not strike you as strange that *you* arrived here with no biometric history? No state records? No school registrations before age nine?"
Kade felt something twist behind his ribs.
"That has nothing to do with—"
"It has everything to do with this," Arden said.
"Your file didn't vanish. It never existed. Your mother deleted every record of both her sons long before she defected."
Kade stared at her as if she had slapped him.
"No," he whispered. "My mother died when I was eleven."
Arden folded her hands behind her back.
"Yes. The official record says that. But Scylla was never found. Only a burned house with partial remains. Teeth planted. DNA intentionally degraded."
"My mother loved us," Kade snarled. "She would never abandon—"
"She didn't abandon you," Arden said.
"She hid you."
Kade's chest tightened so hard he thought the restraints would snap.
"And now," Arden added, "you are going to tell me where she hid Parallax."
Kade laughed. The sound came out bitter.
"You think I know? I didn't even know she was connected to Citadel until you told me!"
Arden leaned down, eyes level with his.
"You're lying."
He met her stare with raw fury.
"I don't know anything."
Arden stood upright again.
"That's fine. The Maw was built for situations like this."
She pressed a button on the console.
A low vibration traveled through the restraints—like a purring animal preparing to bite.
"It won't hurt at first," Arden said.
"The collar will map your immediate cognitive responses. Then it will begin isolating memories with emotional elevation. Once those are identified, we apply controlled suppression. Your subconscious will surface what you consciously deny."
Kade's jaw locked.
"And if nothing surfaces?"
Arden shrugged softly.
"Then we dig deeper."
Before she could activate the sequence, the lights in the chamber flickered.
Once.
Twice.
A stutter.
Arden paused.
A soft alarm beeped, not shrill, but urgent.
She turned toward the console.
"What is that?" Kade demanded.
Arden tapped a holo-menu, eyes narrowing.
"Unexpected drone behavior," she murmured. "Vulture unit 19B has not returned to its nest cycle. Its tracking feed is offline."
Kade's heart leapt.
Dorian.
Arden pressed her lips together.
"Unfortunate timing."
The overhead speakers crackled—and a voice rolled through the chamber. Calm.
Controlled.
**"Director Arden, this is Command. There's an unauthorized breach in Sector Delta. Someone accessed the tertiary coolant hub."**
Arden stared at the ceiling, voice sharp.
"That's impossible. Delta is sealed during extraction protocols."
"It isn't sealed now."
Kade bit back a grin.
It was Dorian.
Of course it was him.
Arden muttered a curse he'd never imagine someone as composed as her using. Then she reached for a drawer, pulled out a thin needle-like injector, and slid it into the base of the collar around Kade's neck.
"Let's accelerate," she said coldly.
Kade tensed. "What is that?"
"A synaptic primer. It speeds up the memory response curve so we can bypass conscious resistance. Side effects include nausea, tremors, and—"
The room exploded.
Not literally.
But the *sound* did—like metal screaming.
The lights snapped to red. A shockwave rattled the chamber, scattering tools from shelves. Arden stumbled, catching the exam table to steady herself.
Kade's world shook. A high-pitched whine stabbed through his skull.
Over the intercom, chaos erupted.
"—pressure burst on Delta venting—"
"—containment breach—"
"—something is overriding the lock sequences—"
"—we have a runner!"
Arden hissed and activated the collar's override.
Kade screamed involuntarily as electricity scraped across his nervous system. The world blurred—white, red, then black smudges dancing across his vision.
The collar's hum rose to a dangerous pitch.
"Stop resisting," Arden snapped. "The more you fight, the more it burns."
Kade forced himself to breathe through the pain.
Because behind the agony, behind the static—
He felt something.
A pattern.
Not words.
Not images.
A rhythm.
A code-like cadence echoing at the base of his skull:
**4–2–6…
4–2–6…
4–2–6…**
His breathing pattern.
Elias' breathing pattern.
Something in the collar was reading him—mapping him.
And something in him was responding.
Kade focused.
The collar thrummed.
The lights flickered.
Arden dragged a cart toward him, slamming another tool tray open. "I won't let your brother's work die with you. Citadel will finish what Scylla started."
Kade forced his voice through clenched teeth.
"What did you… do to my brother?"
Arden paused.
"Nothing," she said. "But someone else did."
She turned to him fully.
"Elias survived extraction. He escaped. But he wasn't alone. He was taken by a rogue Citadel faction—one that still believes in Scylla's failsafe protocols. They call themselves the *Parallax Keepers*."
Kade blinked through the pain.
"What… do they want?"
Arden's jaw tightened.
"They want to rebuild Scylla's architecture. They want to unlock Parallax. And your brother—your poor, devoted brother—had half the keys in his head."
"Had?" Kade choked.
Arden hesitated—just long enough to answer without answering.
"Kade… Elias may not still be Elias."
The room blurred again.
A surge hit him so violently his vision went stark white.
And then—
The door to the chamber blew inward.
Metal dented inward like something massive slammed it from the outside.
Arden spun. "No—no—contain that corridor!"
Kade could barely hear over the ringing in his skull. But he recognized the silhouette that stepped through the smoke.
Tall.
Sharp-shouldered.
Moving with that precise, predatory stillness—
**Dorian.**
But his eyes—
His eyes were wrong.
They glowed faintly with a cold violet sheen.
Not artificial.
Not robotic.
Activated.
"Kade," he said softly, "close your eyes."
Kade obeyed instantly.
A metallic scream tore through the chamber—the sound of a vulture drone hitting something that wasn't supposed to be hit. He heard Arden shout, a hiss of static, the crackle of electricity—
Then silence.
When Kade opened his eyes, Dorian stood over him, one hand dripping with oil-black fluid from a shattered drone, the other reaching for his restraints.
Arden lay unconscious against the far console, breathing but still.
"Dorian—how did you—?"
Dorian didn't look at him.
"I said I'd get you out. Hold still."
He ripped the restraints loose as if they were zip ties, not industrial-grade alloy. Kade sat up, dizzy but conscious.
"Your eyes," Kade whispered. "What happened to you?"
Dorian paused.
Then answered, very quietly:
"I told you we needed your mind. But Citadel… they need my body."
Kade frowned. "What does that mean?"
Dorian met his gaze.
It was the closest thing to fear Kade had ever seen in him.
"I'm not here by accident," Dorian said. "I was assigned to be your handler. But I wasn't told why."
He looked at his trembling hand.
"Now I know."
Kade felt his stomach sink.
"What are you?"
Dorian swallowed.
"A contingency."
The lights above them flared again.
Red.
White.
Black.
"Extraction teams are coming," Dorian said.
"We have one chance to leave the Maw alive."
Kade tried to stand but nearly collapsed. Dorian grabbed him under the arm, lifting him with effortless strength.
"There's something you need to see," Dorian said, voice low. "Something they kept on Sublevel 10. Something tied to your mother. To Elias. To Parallax."
Kade steadied himself.
"What?"
Dorian's expression was grim.
"You're not the only Vance in Blackridge."
Kade's heart stopped.
"What the hell does that—"
Dorian cut him off sharply:
"**Move.**"
Alarms screamed.
Boots thundered.
The Maw awakened around them like a beast agitated in its sleep.
Kade staggered forward with Dorian supporting him.
And as they ran toward the sealed freight elevator leading deeper—*not upward*—Kade's mind repeated the phrase that had haunted him since the registry:
**Two entries.
One dead.
One unknown.**
And now—
A third.
Somewhere in Blackridge's forbidden underbelly—
Another Vance was waiting.
Alive.
Or something close to it.