She led him down a dimly lit corridor that branched off from the main laboratory, her footsteps echoing softly against the cracked tile floor. At the corridor's end was a smaller chamber, sterile and harshly illuminated by pale fluorescent lights.
The air smelled faintly antiseptic, like a hospital ward. The room was dominated by an old, steel medical examination table, surrounded by an array of monitoring equipment whose screens flickered rhythmically, displaying flatlined vital signs.
A single body lay there, covered entirely by a crisp white sheet, starkly clinical. Only a pair of pale, bruised feet protruded from under the sheet, toes twisted grotesquely, clear evidence of violent suffering.
Elias hesitated in the doorway, apprehension twisting in his gut. "What is this, Lysandra?" he asked, his voice edged with tension.
Wordlessly, she stepped forward and drew back the sheet, exposing the corpse's face. Elias drew in a sharp breath. The young man before him was barely out of adolescence, no older than twenty, with emaciated features carved by hardship in Ironhaven's brutal Lower Districts.
His eyes were mercifully closed, sunken beneath dark circles of exhaustion. But what caught Elias's attention most vividly were the strange, crimson veins spreading from his neck downward, pulsing faintly under the waxy, almost translucent skin.
Lysandra spoke softly, clinically detached but unable to mask the tremor in her voice. "This is what happens when Pandora's bonding fails. His name was Tobias, a Shade dealer from the Dockside slums. He got his hands on a leaked sample from the Syndicate's test batch. Thought he'd stumbled onto something profitable. He had no idea."
Elias approached cautiously, driven by grim curiosity and a deeper compulsion he couldn't define. He reached out, hovering his hand just inches above Tobias's chest. Beneath the pale surface, the crimson veins looked alive like they were still pumping blood, shifting ever so slightly, like parasitic worms slithering beneath decaying flesh. It was grotesque, mesmerizing, and deeply unsettling.
"How did he die?" Elias asked quietly, eyes still locked on the horror before him.
Lysandra exhaled slowly, forcing steadiness into her voice. "Cellular rejection. Pandora tried rewriting his genetic code, but his body fought back violently. His organs began liquefying slowly, agonizingly from within. He suffered for hours. We tried everything we could to ease his pain, but..."
She swallowed, the clinical façade briefly slipping. "All he could do was scream. He begged us to make it stop, to silence the voices tearing apart his mind. He died raving about fragments of consciousness invading him, rebuilding him into something he could not become."
She gently returned the sheet, carefully covering Tobias's ruined body again, a small gesture of dignity for the dead that is offered too late.
"This," she continued, turning to face Elias directly, "is an acceptable loss according to Syndicate calculations. This will be the fate of at least sixty percent of the population if they deploy Pandora across Ironhaven or at least the Underground."
A heavy silence fell between them. Elias felt the weight of it settle onto his chest, squeezing tight like a vice. This wasn't a mere power play, it was mass slaughter, calculated cruelty on a scale rivaling even The Sundering. Thousands screaming in agony as they were burned alive, others didn't know what hit them and dying horribly for the Syndicate's twisted vision of perfection.
He clenched his fists, determination crystallizing within him like cold steel. "We need to move faster, Lysandra. We need the counter-agent ready now, not tomorrow. And we need exact deployment sites and schedules, concrete leads, not guesswork."
"I'm working as fast as I can," Lysandra snapped, exhaustion coloring her frustration. Dark rings shadowed her eyes, betraying sleepless nights and relentless pressure. "But I'm one woman with outdated tech and scant resources. We need more allies. We need Mirage."
Her words echoed bitterly. Mirage meant trusting outsiders, exposing himself to unknown risks. The Underground was a sprawling web of factions and ideals; alliances were as fragile as glass. Yet the scale of Pandora left him no choice. They needed strength in numbers, even if it meant breaking every rule he'd set for himself as Wraith.
Reluctantly, he conceded. "Tomorrow night, then. I'll meet Mirage. But I decide how much I reveal. And no one, not even Mirage, learns everything."
Lysandra seemed relieved, though tension lingered in her stance. "Fine. In the meantime, take this." She crossed the room back to her workstation, retrieving a slim device sleek, matte black, and deceptively innocuous.
"What is it?"
"A secure communicator. Completely untraceable, encrypted channels only you and I can access," she explained. "One button, press to activate. If you uncover anything about Pandora, anything at all, contact me immediately."
"And if you find breakthroughs on the counter-agent?" Elias pressed, examining the device critically before slipping it into a hidden pocket.
"I'll let you know right away." Lysandra hesitated, her expression darkening. "There's something else. Pandora's neural override it's not limited to new hosts."
"What do you mean?" Elias felt an icy dread pooling in his stomach.
She spoke slowly, deliberately. "The frequency patterns, the synaptic signatures Pandora creates, they align precisely with existing Dustborne physiology, especially yours."
Realization dawned coldly upon him. "You're saying I'm vulnerable. That my abilities "
"Make you uniquely susceptible," Lysandra finished grimly. "If the Syndicate captures you, even the slightest exposure could enslave your mind. Or worse, your body could violently reject the bonding like Tobias here. Either way, you lose."
The personal threat struck Elias deeply, adding an uncomfortable layer of fear he'd never anticipated. His greatest strength, his powers derived from Dust, had become his greatest weakness. One slip, one moment of recklessness, and he could become the Syndicate's deadliest weapon or another lifeless husk on a laboratory table.
"I'll be cautious," he promised, his voice rigid, masking the vulnerability her words exposed.
"More than cautious," Lysandra insisted firmly. "Survival isn't enough anymore. We must outthink them every step. And watch Mirage, she's charismatic, driven, but ruthless. Her methods are dangerously close to those she claims to despise."
Elias nodded grimly. "Fire with fire. The Underground risks becoming as dangerous as the Syndicate itself."
She looked at him meaningfully. "Exactly. Don't lose yourself in this fight, Elias. Remember what you stand for. What separates you from them."
Elias was silent, absorbing the enormity of the warning. As Wraith, he'd carefully crafted boundaries: no innocents harmed, no unnecessary violence, surgical precision. But now Pandora threatened to erase every line he'd drawn.
He turned toward the exit. "I have a shift at Syndicate Tower tomorrow. Maintaining my cover identity is crucial. They might slip up, say something useful."
"You're still going back there, even now?"
"Especially now," Elias said sharply. "My eyes and ears inside are more important than ever. We have limited chances. One slip-up from them is all we need."
Lysandra finally nodded, acknowledging the strategy despite the risk. "Be careful, Elias."
"I always am," he replied quietly. Pausing at the threshold, he glanced back at her exhausted, determined face. "Tomorrow night. Send me coordinates."
"I will," she confirmed softly. "And Wraith, thank you. Trusting me with this means more than you know."
Her gratitude unsettled him deeply. Trust was a relic from his past, shattered by betrayal and tragedy. Yet here he stood, relying on someone who'd already betrayed him once, risking everything on fragile alliances.
"Save your thanks until Pandora's stopped," he said. "Nothing else matters now."
Stepping into the shadowed halls of the abandoned library, Elias vanished swiftly, leaving Lysandra alone with the echoes of their grim conversation.
Dawn crept over Ironhaven like a reluctant confession, the first light of morning diluted by layers of industrial haze that hung low between the fractured skyscrapers. The sunrise bled dull amber through cracks in the smog, painting the city in bruised colors, sickly yellows, rust‑red streaks before fading into the steely gray that passed for daylight here.
Sirens pulsed in the far distance, their mournful wail weaving through the metallic hush of ventilation fans, rattling pipework, and the occasional cough of an awakening tram line.
Elias moved along a deserted skybridge, boots whispering over cracked plexiglass panels that offered vertigo‑inducing glimpses of the canyons below: alleyways littered with rusted scaffolds, neon signs that flickered like dying fireflies, and huddled shapes already bartering for their first hit of Shade.
Every smell, the tang of hot ozone from power relays, the sour reek of overflowing waste vents, seemed magnified by the sluggish wind, as if the city itself were exhaling its corruption at the rising sun.
Yet none of it clung to him as fiercely as the image of Tobias. Whenever Elias blinked, he saw those crimson veins pulsing beneath translucent skin, heard the phantom echo of screams that had shredded the boy's throat hours before death brought silence.
A single corpse, but also a prophecy. Multiply that agony by tens of thousands with Pandora's promised future: Ironhaven remade as a charnel house of failed experiments.
He stopped beside a maintenance hatch and leaned over the guardrail, letting the city's grit‑laden breeze graze his cheek like sandpaper. Once, the Wraith had been content with vengeance surgical strikes, terror in the eyes of Syndicate captains, the satisfaction of evening old scores.
But vengeance now felt pitifully small, a candle held against the wildfire of what was coming. Tobias's body had redrawn the battlefield in Elias's mind: lines of retribution replaced by concentric circles of responsibility, all radiating outward from him like ripples from a stone dropped into black water.
Protector, leader, savior. The words tasted unfamiliar too grand, almost blasphemous to a man who knew how fragile his own flesh had become, how close the abyss of Dust sickness waited. Could a ghost shoulder the weight of living souls? Could a weapon learn to shield instead of strike? The questions throbbed in his chest louder than his heartbeat.
Below, vendors rolled open corrugated shutters, their sputtering holosigns promising synthetic coffee and counterfeit tech to workers bound for factory shifts. On a rooftop two levels down, a pair of children kicked a ragged sphere of tape and scrap plastic, their laughter startlingly bright against the drab skyline.
Life was ordinary, stubborn life persisted, oblivious to the countdown Elias could almost hear ticking beneath the hum of power lines.
A final gust rattled loose sheet‑metal cladding behind him; it clanged like a distant gong, jolting him from the spiral of thought. Resolve settled over him, cold and crystalline. There would be no more nights spent haunting the Syndicate's periphery, only days and hours carved out for action, alliances, and maybe sacrifices.
***
Any kind of engagement is appreciated.