Chapter 208: The Walls Have Fallen.
The glass chamber stood completely empty. Not disturbed, not broken. Just empty in the unnaturally clean way of something deliberately removed rather than escaped.
Sherry drifted closer, shoulders tense, and exhaled softly. Her breath bloomed in a faint fog against the thick pane before slowly dissolving. "Someone beat us here."
"Yeah," I murmured, the word barely leaving my lips.
I started circling the perimeter, boots scraping lightly over the polished floor. My gaze flicked across every seam, every joint. No pry marks. No scuffs. Not even a fingerprint smudge out of place.
"Could she have slipped out herself?" Sherry asked, her fingers curling at her sides.
"No." My voice came out flat.
Then the print caught my eye. A faint palm, small and delicate, pressed flat against the outside glass. Almost invisible until the light hit it just right.
"Sherry." I halted.
She crossed to me fast. I said nothing, just let her gaze land on it.
Her eyes narrowed, tracing the small contours. A tiny furrow appeared between her brows. "That’s a girl’s hand. Hers?"
"Can’t say for sure." The specimen’s hand, or someone else’s. Two very different answers with two very different meanings.
"So what do we do?" Sherry asked. Before I could answer, she lifted her hand, fingers trembling just slightly, and pressed them into the ghostly outline.
She went perfectly still. Not the stillness of thought. The deeper stillness of someone connecting to something beyond herself.
The glass answered with a low, crystalline sigh. It softened, surface rippling like heated wax, shifting from solid to something between mist and living vapor. Tendrils curled outward, catching the harsh sub-level lights in faint, shimmering threads that danced across her cheeks.
"Sherry—"
"Material transmutation," she breathed, voice distant, almost floating. Her eyelids fluttered once. Then she stepped straight through.
I cursed under my breath, and followed. The vapor parted around me like cool silk brushing my skin, raising the fine hairs on my arms.
The air felt different in here, thicker and charged with a subtle pressure I couldn’t name. It carried the specific atmosphere of a space that had held something alive for days: a faint warmth still clinging to the walls, a lingering trace of breath and movement now gone.
"Material transmutation," I repeated, turning the words over as I scanned the enclosure. "One person in particular comes to mind."
Sherry rubbed her thumb across her fingertips, testing the lingering power. "She’s in the hospital. We can’t build a case on a hunch."
"Right." I nodded. *But it’s a start.* "We pull the CGI system records. Every registered ability user with material transmutation on file. Cross-reference."
"Smart," Sherry said.
We moved deeper into the chamber. Another thought settled heavily.
"What if the specimen had her own ability?" I said quietly, voice low. "What if this was hers?"
Sherry turned and looked at me. The image flashed through my mind: the girl whose eyes had tried to tell me something through the boot glass all the way from the Fallen City. Eyes that didn’t belong to a standard infected.
What if she’d been an ability user the whole time.
"How long do you have?" I asked, glancing back at the glass behind us.
Where we had entered had already solidified back into a solid wall, smooth and seamless as if it had never changed.
"A few minutes still," she said. The copied ability still running. "Maybe less."
"Then we need to move fast," I crossed to the far wall, boots echoing softly. "Because when it runs out, we’re sealed in."
Sherry gave a short, breathless laugh behind me, the sound edged with nerves. "Only a fool gets trapped in a glass box, Bram."
I reached the thick wall of glass. She joined me quickly, her shoulder brushing mine. She pressed her palm flat against the surface. The thick pane melted into swirling vapor once more, glowing faintly under the lights. We stepped through. Behind us, the glass solidified with a soft shimmer, as if it had never changed.
She looked at me. We had come down here with one job, and the chamber was empty. Bala was waiting upstairs, and I had nothing to give him.
"Bram." She stepped closer, her face soft in the dim glow. "You can’t change what’s already done."
"I know."
"So let’s walk away from this." Her tone gentled, but her eyes searched mine, pleading. "We’re not supposed to be tangled up with CGI anyway. Are we?"
"No," I said, swallowing.
"Then let’s go tell Bala the plan is dead. He’ll understand. Nobody’s asking us to save the world."
I looked at her. She was half right, and the half she was wrong about was the half I couldn’t explain to her. Not yet.
"You don’t get it," I said.
"No." Her voice cracked, raw. She jabbed a finger toward the chamber, hand shaking slightly. "You don’t." Her breath hitched. "I look at you and I see that girl still trapped in there. You see everything, Bram, but you’re not free."
"I’m free, Sherry." The words felt hollow even as I said them.
"You’re not." She stepped closer, eyes glistening, her free hand clenching and unclenching at her side. "You’re as much a captive of these walls as Bala is. So tell me—honestly. Why did you ever enter the walls in the first place?"
The question landed harder than she knew.
Not for the mission. Not for my father’s ghosts. I came because I was tired. Twenty years running the plains, and I just wanted to stop. I came looking for peace and found another reason to run.
She’s right. I’m still running.
"We can walk away," she whispered, voice softening as she searched my face. Her fingers found mine, squeezing. "The walls are huge. We could disappear. Build something real. A family. A life. Just us."
I looked at her. That was the dream I’d told my mother when I was a boy, sitting against the cold concrete of whatever building we were hiding in that night. A family. A normal life.
[Sherry Vayne carries your child.]
The notification appeared out of nowhere, quiet and certain, hovering in my vision like a blade.
Damn.
The awakening was going to consume every ability user inside these walls. Sherry was an ability user. And now, she was carrying my child—a secret wrapped inside a secret, and she didn’t even know it yet.
I swallowed hard, forcing my expression steady. "Okay. Let’s go tell Bala the plan is off."
We walked out of the sub-level together, the specimen’s whereabouts still a mystery, the camera in Sherry’s hand with nothing on it.
The elevator ride up was silent. I kept glancing at her profile, noting the way she worried her lower lip. The doors opened onto the command floor.
Mary Stam was rushing down the staircase as we stepped out, heels clanging sharply, eyes distant and unfocused. She didn’t even register we were there.
I kept Sherry’s hand and led her toward Bala’s office. The door stood open. I knocked once. Nothing.
I knocked again. We stepped inside. We both froze mid-step.
Doctor Reed lay crumpled beside his overturned wheelchair, blood spreading in a dark, glossy pool that still crept outward. Bala was slumped near his heavy oak desk, chest soaked crimson, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. The window behind him gaped open, night air stirring the curtains with a faint, cold whisper.
Sherry’s grip crushed my fingers. My other hand dropped instinctively toward my sidearm as the thick metallic scent of fresh blood hit us. My pulse hammered in my ears.
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