Chapter 806: The Eyes

Alex was with Luna. Mingyue had seen him take her place before leaving Edonia; she could keep her attention on the floor breaking beneath these workers.

Vesa spoke through their connection.

"The site’s outer link is still active. The inner records are disappearing."

"Where are the controls?"

"Above the stairs, beyond the partition. The soldiers can see the light from the road."

Mingyue looked through the broken wall.

An older man and a younger operator were helping the injured woman across the landing. Behind them, the partition Vesa described had begun to bow outward.

She could reach it before the next collapse.

She could also see the floor beneath the woman’s feet separating from the stairwell.

Mingyue angled her sword toward the floor.

Ice caught the breaking edge and joined it to the stable part of the outer wall. The workers stumbled as the falling floor caught on the ice, then kept moving toward her.

The younger operator held a small record plate against his chest.

"Leave the equipment," she said.

"It’s the last local receipt. It shows who gave the order."

"Can you move with it?"

He nodded.

"Then move."

He pushed the plate into his coat and helped the technician carry the woman over the ice.

Mingyue waited until the soldier outside had the injured woman’s weight before shifting her support from the stairwell to the inner partition.

A red-white line burst through the gap.

She turned her sword and cut across the feeding formation. The light struck the frozen space around her blade instead of the people at the window.

The impact pulled at her wounded forearm. She shifted her weight to her right side and angled the cut upward, releasing the remaining force through the gap in the roof.

A section of the records room collapsed behind the partition.

Vesa’s voice sharpened.

"The external link has closed."

Mingyue looked toward the control station.

The light there was fading. Whatever information the equipment still held was burning with it.

The records behind the partition were gone. She could still feel the workers’ weight shifting off the floor she had held.

"Is anyone else inside?" she asked.

The younger operator pointed toward the upper station.

"Our supervisor."

A figure moved behind the damaged barrier. The man was trying to open an exit on the far side, but the frame had bent when the floor collapsed.

"Get down," Mingyue ordered.

He looked toward her voice.

She cut the wall above him before he could decide whether to obey. The top of the barrier broke free. She caught the falling pieces in the frozen space already holding the outer wall.

The supervisor ducked at last.

Mingyue drove her sword into the ice holding the broken wall, freeing her hands. She reached through the gap and pulled him from the station by the back of his coat.

He tried to keep a hand on the device he was carrying.

She took it from him before it could touch another control.

"You can explain that outside."

He stopped resisting when he saw how far the floor beneath him had fallen.

Mingyue carried him to the road, where Dorian’s soldiers took hold of him. She gave one the device and told them to keep the supervisor apart from the workers, then went back for her sword.

With the rooms empty, she no longer needed to preserve the path through them.

She sealed the remaining formation inside a layer of ice and cut its damaged feed away from the neighboring structures. The stored heat struck the boundary, spent itself and weakened.

Only after the pressure stopped rising did she let the unsupported part of the roof fall inward.

The soldiers kept people back until the debris settled.

Mingyue lowered her sword.

The operator was sitting beside the injured woman, coughing into a cloth. He looked up when she approached.

"Did he get away?"

"Who?"

"The Prince."

"Was he here?"

"No. Not today. We received him through the private channel."

Mingyue looked toward the remains of the upper station.

"Where did that channel end?"

"I don’t know the room. There was a staging connection in the equipment, but he controlled the departure beyond it. We couldn’t open it for him."

He drew the plate from inside his coat and held it out.

"This is what I could take."

Mingyue accepted it.

It contained local receipts and the last instructions delivered to the post. The image showed the same man from Kael’s archive ordering the site burned. Below it were the times Andrew had ended that call and the internal disposal sequence had begun.

Vesa checked the plate through their connection while Mingyue kept the device away from the operator’s hands.

"The receipt confirms the order and which local connection carried it," Vesa said. "That link is closed."

Mingyue looked at the people on the road.

The woman who could not walk was breathing through a clean cloth while a soldier supported her back. The technician had burned both hands on the hot stair rail. Another worker was telling Dorian’s people how many had been below.

They had everyone the group could identify as being in the lower room.

The supervisor stood apart under guard, refusing to look at them.

Mingyue would have liked to put Andrew in that place instead.

He had prepared the site for destruction and left his own staff inside. She had lost the upper records while keeping them alive. Whether those records could ever have led to his personal route, she did not know; the operator had never controlled it.

She contacted Alex.

"The post is contained. The workers are out. Andrew’s last order came through a remote channel. The site’s link is closed."

"Do we have anything to follow?"

"A local receipt. No open passage."

Alex was silent for a moment.

"We check what survived."

Mingyue looked at the plate again.

"Yes. Start with what the operator saw before the fire."

She told the soldier holding the supervisor’s device to take it to the security annex. The operator and the other workers would go there after their burns were treated, with a different guard from the one escorting their supervisor.

The operator had saved the trapped workers. She still needed to question him, and the others, about the work they had done for Andrew.

Behind her, smoke rose from the roof Andrew had ordered destroyed. The evidence from Kael’s archive was already in other buildings, beyond the fire he had chosen to leave for them.