Inside the carriage, cold-white magelights hummed above, casting pale halos across brushed steel walls and dancing ward-etchings. The Dominion's sigil glared from each corner, not just a reminder of authority, but a warning, carved deep into the metal like an old curse.
Lamia Grafford stood with arms crossed, boots planted wide apart on the floor. Her eyes followed the red glyph symbols that scrolled across the panel screen, glowing softly with directional runes. Her jaw was clenched, still, attentive. The kind of silence honed by years of walking into places where rules did not translate to safety, they equaled danger.
Gary Goldberg stood next to her, leaning against the wall, hands buried in his long coat pockets. His usual half-lazy posture had sharpened just a little. He chewed the inside of his cheek as the elevator ticked downward.
"This really a magitech storage site?" he asked, voice low.
"Technically," Lamia murmured, "everything is, if you don't ask questions."
Gary made a sound between a laugh and a scoff.
But they weren't alone.
The third figure in the elevator was frozen in place by the control panel, her spine rigid, chin slightly up, as if challenging the air to demand why she was present.
She wore a long, ink-dark coat, sleeveless despite the cold weather. It was stitched with old Dominion script that had faded near the edges. Though the elevator was dim, obscured by round-tinted glasses.She had a silver blonde fall of hair, tight and sharp as a knife's edge, drawn back into a crown, but not for show, rather prudence. There was a heavy satchel at her belt. It wasn't military-issued, but was thick with odd shapes within the material.
Her name, she'd said, was Dr. Ekra Chang.
Her voice was clipped, too precise. The kind of Dominion accent you get when you are raised inside laboratories instead of homes.
They hadn't been told much about her, only that she was the "assigned specialist for the site." No rank. No title beyond Doctor. Just that.
Gary had tried once, earlier, to lighten the tension with a half-grin. "So, Doc… You one of the ghost-chasers, or just used to walking in sealed tombs?"
She'd turned to him, unmoved. "I worked here. Until three days ago."
Now, she stood silent again, eyes forward, hands clasped behind her back, not touching anything and reacting. Not even breathing too deeply.
Like someone who knew what lay below and hadn't yet decided whether to warn them or let them find out the hard way.
The elevator finally jerked to a stop.
Lamia did not usually carry weapons. Blood was her weapon, mostly hers, but it could be someone else's blood too. But when they went on official missions, Gary forced her to carry her gun provided to her. It made them appear more professional and maybe serious.
Her hand hovered near her side, not quite on her gun, but close enough.
Because whatever they were entering.It wasn't going to have the feel of a storage closet. And the woman with them? She already looked like someone who'd already buried half of herself in the walls they were heading toward.
The elevator's doors hissed open, and a breath of stale, recycled air rolled inward, cold, sterile, just a little too clean. Like something was trying to hide the scent of long-dried blood.
What lay beyond wasn't a warehouse or a storeroom. It was a hallway of silence. It was long and broad, clinically illuminated by rows of flickering magelamps. The walls were alloy, dull and too clean, the kind of sterile that resulted in being overwashed to conceal what had seeped in.
Two Dominion guards stood in wait. Helmets sealed. Silent.
No salutes. No words.
Ekra Chang stepped forward first.
The manner in which she moved, not fast, not hesitant, sent an odd ripple through the silence. She didn't pause at the guards. Didn't look at them. Her boots clicked with an unnatural evenness against the stone. Like she had walked this place too many times.
Lamia shot a sideways look at Gary, who gave a barely perceptible shrug.
They followed.
Gary slowed behind her. "Smells like bleach and… copper."
"Too much of both," Lamia murmured.
On their way, they passed three sealed doors. One had dried blood around its lower hinge. The fourth opened after a double-hand scan from the guards.
The main incident chamber wasn't that big.
It was cold, not from temperature, but from emptiness.
The lights overhead flickered a beat too slow. Every shadow stretched too far.
It had been partially cleaned. More like, scrubbed. As if someone wanted it to look like nothing had happened, just another equipment accident, just another system rupture. But the Dominion could never hide everything.
Three bodies were covered in black Dominion wraps on the floor. Two guards. One researcher. Tags hung from each toe, details typed in Dominion script, cause of death, time of extraction, assumed breach hour.
Everything was too neat, too placed.
Dr. Chang barely glanced at them.
Lamia crouched near the smear of blood across the far corner, the one trailing beneath a console. Removing her glove, she pressed two fingers lightly to the floor.
The blood wasn't fresh. But it wasn't dry either.
She closed her eyes, inhaled. Her blood-sense rippled outward, a soft static in her chest.
Blood had a voice.
And this one whispered too many names.
"There were five people bleeding here," she said.
Gary looked up. "I count three tags."
"The floor counts more." Lamia stood. Her jaw flexed. "Two blood traces were wiped. One recently. The other is almost… not human."
Gary exhaled slowly, looking at her in confusion.
"No wonder they didn't send the full council. They don't want this talked about." Gary glanced over at the sentries and then said,
"What do you think might be the test subject?"
Ekra's voice cut in, cold and flat. "There were no test subjects logged here. Only magitech prototypes."
Lamia looked at her. "That right?"
Elira didn't blink. "Officially, yes."
Gary snorted. "And unofficially?"
"I wouldn't know," Ekra said, turning from them and walking deeper into the corridor. "I was only cleared to observe resonance patterns. Not the origin of the pulses."
Lamia exchanged a look with Gary, then followed after Chang.
The door led into the vault chambers.
The deeper they went, the stranger the facility became. What began as stone-lined tunnels soon twisted into something clinical, cold. Inhuman. There were vaults that looked too much like containment vaults and Lamia got a feeling that they not for storage, but for confinement.
Rows of magitech pods lined the walls like silver coffins. Some stood tall, humming softly behind dark glass. Others were shattered, their contents long gone. Tubes fed into the ceiling like veins, the dull purple glow of recycled aether pulsing through them.
They weren't labeled.
Not as weapons. Not even as machinery.
Only the sigils etched into their metallic shells whispered truth, containment runes. Not designed for stability. Not to house something inert. These were bindings. Wards. Cages. These were ancient symbols used in arcane prisons and classified weaponry.
Gary stood still in the middle of the chamber, mouth slightly open. "I've never seen a design like this. Not even in the restricted Citadel files."
"These are either ancient," Lamia said, "or illegal."
They looked towards Dr. Ekra for answers. She hesitated.
"They wouldn't store them there," she murmured, her voice soft but steady. "They're not prototypes. These are something else. Which is....obviously above your clearance."
Lamia's eyes narrowed as she turned toward her. "Right. But what can you tell about them? We obviously need to investigate." Anything, she wanted to get anything out of her.
"I've seen their blueprints," Ekra replied, stepping slowly between the rows. Her fingers hovered near one of the sealed pods but didn't touch. "Only on black-sheet orders. We weren't supposed to question their application."
She paused before one pod, its glass fogged over from within.
"I logged resonance spikes from this one. Three times. They told me it was a faulty rune."
She stepped toward the nearest shattered pod.
Curved glass shards littered the floor. The damage was from within, not from outside, something had burst free.
"And what did you think it was?" Gary asked carefully, reading her facial expressions.
She looked at Gary, her eyes carried doubt, that none of them understood. "If they said it was a faulty rune....then it was." She averted her gaze.
Lamia noticed something at the base of one of the broken pods. A human shoe. Not big but small. A child's shoe?