Chapter 41: The Wrong Side of Varen

Varen had six intake stations.

Nate arrived through the one with bars on the windows.

The transport stopped beneath a concrete canopy enclosed on three sides by reinforced glass. Armed officers checked the vehicle before the rear doors opened.

"Out."

Lieutenant Harven stepped aside.

Nate collected his bag and followed the other passengers onto the platform.

There were fourteen of them.

Three soldiers.

Two wounded men.

Eight people wearing grey intake bands.

The last passenger had his wrists locked together.

Nate looked at Graveshare around his right forearm.

Nobody had bothered restraining him.

He wasn’t sure whether to take that as trust.

Harven was already walking.

Nate followed.

Varen did not look like the capital.

The buildings were heavier, built from pale stone and dark reinforced panels, with enclosed bridges running between them several floors above the streets. Military transports shared lanes with ambulances and cargo vehicles carrying sealed containers marked with warnings Nate did not recognize.

People moved everywhere.

Soldiers.

Researchers.

Awakened.

A group crossed one of the bridges overhead in clean white uniforms.

One of them wore a narrow gold strip over the shoulder.

Nate watched until the group disappeared into another building.

Harven noticed.

"Talent intake."

"The Exchange?"

"Part of it."

Nate looked toward the bridge.

"Ethan Ward and Mara Venn came through here yesterday."

Harven checked the terminal in his hand.

"Not this station."

Nate had expected that.

Still, hearing it made the difference feel more physical.

Harven pointed toward a corridor ahead.

A black line ran above the entrance.

MILITARY TRANSFER

PENAL INTAKE

RESTRICTED ASSETS

Nate stopped beneath it.

"Which one am I?"

Harven looked at Graveshare.

"Today? Restricted asset."

Then he continued walking.

Nate followed him inside.

His third Node was still empty.

Twelve days of thinking had not made the choice any easier.

That was enough time to imagine dozens of Skills he might want and no way to guarantee that any of them would ever be rejected in front of him.

Varen was supposed to improve the odds.

If he could reach the right part of it.

"Can I access the Talent Centre while I’m here?"

Harven did not slow.

"Your transfer is for armament verification."

"That wasn’t my question."

"No."

Nate looked toward the next security door.

"Can that change?"

Harven finally glanced back.

"Get through intake first."

Not a refusal.

Nate remembered that.

They entered a medical wing three buildings later.

The room waiting for him contained a scanning frame, two wall displays and little else.

A man in a dark medical coat stood beside the controls.

Grey touched his hair at the temples.

Nate felt the man’s Circuit when they came within several metres of him.

Third Circuit.

At the Royal Field Academy, that kind of presence had belonged to instructors whose arrival changed the mood of an entire room.

The examiner barely looked up from Nate’s file.

"Calder."

"Yes."

"Sel Varo. Put your bag against the wall and step into the frame."

No introduction beyond that.

Nate obeyed.

Varo looked at Graveshare.

"First Mourning occurred twelve days ago?"

"Yes."

"Any activation since?"

"One supervised Mourning Edge test."

"Duration?"

"Four seconds."

"Reserve before activation?"

Nate focused on Graveshare.

A faint display appeared.

STORED ENERGY: 8%

"Eight percent now."

Varo looked up.

"Now?"

"Ten after Malvern."

"So four seconds cost two."

"Approximately."

Varo entered the number.

"Any other change?"

"No."

"Has the reserve recovered at all on its own?"

"No."

That interested him more than Nate expected.

Varo attached two contacts near Nate’s shoulder, then activated the scanner.

"Open your Circuit normally."

Nate did.

Light passed across the frame.

His familiar circulation appeared on the nearest display.

Core.

Nodes.

Pathways.

First Circuit.

Nothing unusual.

Then the scan reached Graveshare.

A second reading appeared beside Nate’s own.

Varo stopped touching the controls.

Harven stood near the door without comment.

Nate watched the examiner enlarge the image.

"Something wrong?"

"No."

Varo ran the scan again.

The result stayed the same.

"Your Core remains within First Circuit parameters."

Nate waited.

"Your pathways do too."

"And Graveshare?"

Varo separated the armament reading from Nate’s circulation.

The distinction became obvious once he did.

One system belonged to Nate.

The other sat around his forearm with its own energy signature.

The two met at a narrow interface near his right arm.

"Independent reservoir," Varo said.

"That’s what they told me after Malvern."

"They were right."

Varo enlarged the connection point.

"Open your Circuit slightly."

Nate did.

The interface sharpened.

"Now draw from Graveshare."

"How much?"

"Very little."

Nate allowed a thread through.

The reserve responded immediately.

Energy crossed from Graveshare into the route beneath his shoulder.

Varo raised one hand.

"Stop."

Nate closed the connection.

The reading separated again.

Varo studied the result.

"The armament stores the energy."

"Yes."

"You regulate the release through your Circuit."

"Yes."

"And your pathways remain the bottleneck."

Nate nodded.

Varo looked at him.

"Good."

That sounded more like confirmation than praise.

He checked another graph.

"Can your Core refill the armament?"

"No."

"Have you tried?"

"Under supervision."

"And?"

"Nothing."

Varo removed one of the contacts.

"So the reserve and your own recovery are separate."

"Seems that way."

"That’s important."

Nate looked toward Graveshare.

"I noticed."

Varo ignored that.

"Any external charging since Malvern?"

"No."

"Any exposure to dense ambient energy?"

"Not that I know of."

Varo sent a document to Nate’s terminal.

IMPERIAL ARMAMENT VERIFICATION

EXTERNAL ENERGETIC EXPOSURE

FIELD OBSERVATION REQUIRED

The final line read:

SITE: VAREN COLOSSUS

Nate looked up.

"What’s the Colossus?"

Harven’s expression changed for the first time since the border.

Not surprise exactly.

Varo looked at him.

"He hasn’t seen it?"

"Transport came through western intake."

Varo seemed to accept that.

He returned to the scanner.

"The Authority wants to know whether Graveshare can interact with external energy sources."

"Because it’s almost empty."

"Because we don’t know what counts as a valid source."

Nate looked at the document again.

"And the Colossus gives you one?"

"It gives us several things."

"Useful answer."

Varo glanced at him.

"You’re not cleared for the useful one."

Harven almost smiled.

Almost.

Nate decided not to ask.

Varo continued.

"The important part is simple. Your Core is not feeding Graveshare. We want to know whether something else can."

"So you send me into the Colossus."

"We observe you near the Colossus."

"Difference?"

"Several medical personnel."

Nate looked at Harven.

"He talks like this all day?"

"You’re still here, so apparently it works."

Varo removed the remaining contact.

"Mourning Edge remains restricted until the first test."

"Fine."

"If Graveshare begins drawing energy without your permission, you close your Circuit immediately."

Nate frowned.

"Can it do that?"

"If I knew, we wouldn’t need the test."

That was fair.

Varo tapped Nate’s pathway reading.

"One more thing."

Nate waited.

"The armament has a reserve. You don’t."

Nate looked at him.

Varo continued.

"Your output is still First Circuit. Eight percent in Graveshare doesn’t change that. Eighty percent wouldn’t either."

"I know."

"Remember it when you feel better than you should."

Nate frowned.

"What does that mean?"

"You’ll understand after your first exposure."

Varo had already turned toward Harven.

"He’s cleared for restricted field observation."

Harven signed the transfer.

The examination was over.

Outside, Nate looked at the document again.

"You’re not going to explain the Colossus either?"

Harven took the lead toward another lift.

"You’ll see it."

They entered.

The doors closed.

Nate expected to go down toward field housing.

The lift rose.

The numbers climbed past twenty floors.

Then the rear wall turned transparent.

Varen opened beneath him.

Nate stepped closer to the glass.

The intake district had hidden most of the city behind concrete and narrow streets.

From above, Varen seemed to keep expanding every time he found its edge.

Rail lines crossed entire districts.

Research complexes sat beside military compounds larger than the Royal Field Academy.

Elevated roads carried sealed transports toward the eastern side of the city.

Awakened moved along the bridges in groups.

Nate could feel Circuits even through the lift wall when they passed close enough.

First Circuit barely drew his attention.

A Second walked beneath them in an officer’s uniform.

Another crossed the opposite bridge.

Then Nate felt a Third Circuit presence somewhere inside a nearby tower.

Nobody around it reacted.

He looked at Harven.

"Third Circuits are common here?"

"No."

Nate waited.

Harven added, "They’re common enough that people still have work to do when one walks past."

That answered the question better.

The lift continued upward.

Nate watched Varen slide beneath him.

"What is this city actually for?"

Harven considered the question.

"Everything the Empire doesn’t want spread across twenty smaller sites."

"Talent programs."

"Some."

"Circuit research."

"Some."

"Military development."

"Some."

Nate looked at him.

"You could have just said yes."

"That would imply the list was finished."

The lift stopped.

Cold air entered when the doors opened.

They had reached an exterior platform connecting two towers.

Harven stepped out.

Nate followed.

The eastern horizon was visible from here.

He stopped after three steps.

At first, he thought the pale curve in the distance was part of a mountain range.

Then he noticed buildings at its base.

Not small structures.

Full industrial towers.

The pale ridge rose above them anyway.

Its surface was too smooth in some places and fractured in others, with dark seams running through material that looked almost like stone from this distance.

Another ridge stood farther away.

Then another.

All curving in the same direction.

Nate moved toward the railing.

The scale rearranged itself.

They were not mountains.

They were ribs.

One of them rose high enough that cloud clung to its upper edge.

Between the bones stretched a dark expanse kilometres wide.

Sections had collapsed inward, forming valleys crossed by roads, extraction cranes and fortified platforms.

A rail line entered through an opening cut directly into the black material.

It did not emerge again anywhere Nate could see.

Far beyond the ribs, something pale climbed through the haze in a broken line.

Vertebrae.

The body continued beyond Varen’s eastern districts until distance swallowed it.

Nate had seen Wasteland creatures large enough to tear apart vehicles.

He had seen drawings of old monsters that required military units to kill.

Those comparisons were useless here.

"What was it?"

Harven stood beside him.

"Nobody alive knows."

"You call it the Colossus."

"We needed to call it something."

Nate stared at the structures built across the corpse.

"How long has it been there?"

"Longer than Varen."

"And people built the city beside it."

"People built the city because of it."

That made Nate look at him.

Harven pointed toward the distant extraction towers.

"Materials. Research. Energy. Things I don’t have clearance to explain to you."

"People go inside."

"Every day."

Nate looked at the rail disappearing between the ribs.

"How many come back?"

Harven’s gaze shifted toward him.

"Enough."

Nate didn’t like the answer.

His terminal vibrated.

A new assignment had appeared.

COLOSSUS FIELD COMMAND

ATTACHMENT STATUS: RESTRICTED

ARMAMENT VERIFICATION DETAIL

Below that:

ENTRY CLEARANCE PENDING

Harven started toward the next building.

"Your housing is across..."

A siren sounded.

One long note rolled across Varen.

Harven stopped.

Nate looked toward the city below.

People on the exposed walkways had stopped too.

A second tone followed.

Some moved toward marked shelters.

Others simply turned east.

Harven did the same.

"What is it?" Nate asked.

"Wait."

The Colossus remained motionless.

Then something lit beneath the nearest rib.

A pale thread appeared deep inside the bone.

It travelled upward.

Slowly at first.

Then faster.

The light reached the top of the rib and passed into the next.

Nate gripped the railing.

Lines appeared through the dark tissue between them.

Too organised to be fire.

Too deep to be machinery.

For several seconds, the corpse looked less like something dead and more like an enormous Circuit seen through skin.

Warning lights flashed across the extraction sites.

Far below, several reinforced gates began closing.

The platform vibrated beneath Nate’s boots.

His own Circuit reacted.

Not painfully.

It tightened.

A pressure from outside touched the edge of the route without entering.

Nate instinctively closed it completely.

Then Graveshare warmed.

He looked down.

The six Mourning Marks remained dark.

The reserve display appeared instead.

STORED ENERGY: 8%

The number flickered.

8%

Then:

8%

No increase.

But the armament was reacting to something.

Harven saw him staring.

His hand went immediately to his terminal.

"Don’t open your Circuit."

"I haven’t."

"What is happening?"

Harven was already calling someone.

"The Colossus pulsed."

Nate looked back toward the dead thing outside Varen.

The light was fading.

Graveshare remained warm.

Its reserve had not changed.

That bothered Nate more than if it had.