The silence was the worst part.

  Up in the Queen’s chamber, the air had been filled with the roar of dragons, the screech of dying insects, and the chaotic shouting of the Hammers. It was a symphony of violence that Riven understood. It was loud, it was messy, and it was alive.

  But here, past the blast doors, the facility was a tomb.

  Riven’s boots made soft, wet sounds on the pristine white tiles. The hallway stretched out before him, bathed in the sickly green glow of his night-vision HUD. It was exactly like the simulation he had practiced for the last seven days. The same sterile paneling, the same recessed lighting strips, but the simulation hadn’t included the slime.

  Thick, translucent resin coated the walls in patches, like cancerous growths. It dripped from the ceiling vents, pooling on the floor where it hardened into amber-like traps. It smelled of antiseptic and rotting meat, a combination that made bile rise in the back of Riven’s throat.

  Riven, Astrix’s voice whispered in his mind. It sounded thin, stretched like a rubber band pulled to its breaking point. The rock is thick. The connection… fading.

  “I’m here,” Riven whispered, checking his corners, his lance, now in baton shape at the ready. “I’m moving to Level 2. Wings Alpha and Beta.”

  Be… careful. The Ravagers… dangerous, watch… shadows.

  “I know.”

  Vex… is…

  The connection snapped.

  Riven stumbled a step, the sudden silence in his head hitting him like a physical blow. He was alone. Truly alone.

  He pressed his back against the cold wall, gripping his lance until his knuckles turned white. The image of Vex flashed behind his eyes, the way her armor had torn like wet paper, the black blood pooling on the resin, the way her eyes had rolled back into her head.

  My fault.

  The thought was a jagged stone in his gut. He had made the call. He had played the hero.

  If I hadn’t told us to split...

  He replayed the moment in his head. The second Queen emerging. The panic. His voice screaming. It sounded stupid now. Arrogant. If he had stayed in formation, Bastion could have taken the hit. Bastion was built for it. Raze was good at fighting, but he had a lot of fire, and Vex… Vex was soft.

  I tried to be clever, Riven thought, the self-hatred burning hotter than the acid in the hive. I tried to use my ‘invisibility’ like a superpower, and I got my partner gutted.

  “Focus,” Riven hissed through gritted teeth, forcing his legs to move. “Get the data. Save the squad.”

  He pushed off the wall and started to run.

  He knew this layout. For six days, Kaelen had forced them to run this maze until they could do it blindfolded. He knew that fifty meters ahead, the corridor branched. Left for Alpha, Right for Beta. He knew the maintenance vents were too small for a Warrior but perfect for smaller Scouts.

  He reached the junction.

  Click-clack.

  Riven froze. The sound came from the right. The rhythmic tapping of chitin on tile.

  He pressed himself into a recessed doorway, holding his breath. His heart hammered against his ribs, loud enough that he was sure the entire facility could hear it. He knew whatever it was he could take, he had practiced. But any delay, any fight, would mean that it would take him longer. And more he was delayed, the more in danger Vex was.

  A Warrior Ravager rounded the corner. It was massive, its four scythe-arms twitching as it tasted the air. It moved with a jerky, unnatural gait, its eyeless head sweeping back and forth.

  It paused directly in front of Riven.

  Riven didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. He stared at the monster, separated by three feet of air. He could see the coarse hairs on its legs. He could smell the musk of its pheromones.

  The Warrior hissed. Its mandibles clicked. It sensed something. But it didn’t lunge. It didn’t scream. It just stood there, confused, like a radio searching for a signal that wasn’t there.

  I really am invisible, Riven realized, the terror mixing with a strange sense of power. To the Resonance, I’m just a rock. A glitch.

  The Warrior hissed again, frustrated, and moved on, disappearing down the hallway toward where he had come.

  Riven exhaled, the air trembling in his lungs. He waited for the clicking to fade, then sprinted to the left.

  Wing Alpha.

  The door was locked. Riven didn’t bother with the keypad. He jammed a localized charge into the locking mechanism. A trick Tora had taught him on last week. It hissed against the lock with a fizz and the lock melted. He forced the doors open with a grunt of exertion.

  The server room was untouched. Blue lights hummed in the darkness.

  Riven ran to the central console, jacking his gauntlet into the port.

  DOWNLOADING…

  The bar crept across his HUD. 20%... 40%...

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  Riven paced the room, his eyes glued to the door. Every shadow looked like a claw. Every hum of the machinery sounded like a hiss.

  “Comms check,” Riven whispered, tapping his helmet. He expected static. During the sims after the first day, the comms had never worked, but Riven checked anyway.

  “Sergeant?”

  “Holt?” The Sergeant’s voice crackled in his ear, loud and startlingly clear. “Holt! Good to hear you are alive. How do you have a signal?”

  “I don’t know,” Riven admitted, watching the download bar tick to 80%. “Maybe the facility is shielded differently than how the Captain had in the sims. Or maybe I’m just lucky.”

  “What’s your status?” Phillean barked. He sounded breathless, like he was wrestling a bear.

  “Package Alpha secure,” Riven said. “Moving to Beta. How is she? Tell me the truth, Sergeant.”

  There was a pause on the line.

  “She’s stable, barely,” Phillean grunted. “The nanites from the DAIR suit have formed over the artery, but she’s lost a lot of fluids. Her pulse is weak. Kaelo is bagging her now to make transport easy, so don’t freak out when you get to surface. Tora is awake, more than a few broken bones and swearing at anyone who comes near her, so she’ll live. But Astrix is losing it.”

  “What is she doing?”

  “She’s clawing the resin,” Phillean said. “She’s pacing. She keeps growling at the tunnel. Noxin is having to physically body-block her from running after you. She thinks you’re dead.”

  “Tell her I’m not,” Riven said, his voice cracking. “Tell her I’m getting the data. Tell her it’s my fault Vex is hurt, so I’m going to fix it.”

  “Stop with the martyr act, Holt,” Phillean snapped. “Just do the job. And hurry up. The Protectors line is getting closer. I can hear the swarm outside is getting louder.”

  DOWNLOAD COMPLETE.

  Riven yanked the drive and ran.

  He crossed the junction, ignoring the urge to check behind him. He hit Wing Beta. Same drill. Melt the lock. Force the door. Jack in.

  DOWNLOADING…

  Skreee!

  The vent above the console exploded.

  Riven threw himself backward as a Scout Ravager dropped from the ceiling, its talons slashing the air where his head had been a microsecond before.

  The creature landed on the console, shrieking. It was smaller than the first one he had encountered, but still had the same visciouness. It was looking at him with its multifaceted eyes.

  It leaped.

  Riven swung his lance in baton mode. The heavy metal connected with the creature’s skull with a sickening crunch. The Scout was knocked out of the air, crashing into a server rack. Sparks showered the room.

  It scrambled up, hissing, green blood dripping from its mandibles.

  “Shut up,” Riven snarled, unleashing all his pent-up self-loathing into the strike.

  He flicked his wrist. The baton expanded into the lance. He thrust forward, driving the energy-tipped blade through the creature’s chest and pinning it to the server rack.

  The Scout twitched and died.

  DOWNLOAD COMPLETE.

  Riven grabbed the second drive. He was breathing hard now, the adrenaline warring with the fatigue. Two drives down. One to go.

  “Phillean,” Riven whispered. “Two packages secure. Moving to Gamma. Gamma is on Level 4. I might lose signal again.”

  “Copy that. Be fast. The Seekers are trying to clearing a lane, but it’s slow going. We don’t have all day.”

  Riven hit the elevator call button. The doors slid open. He stepped in and punched the button for Level 4.

  The lift descended.

  The air pressure changed. Riven’s ears popped. He watched the floor numbers tick down on his HUD. Level 3... Level 4.

  The doors opened.

  The atmosphere down here was different. The air was colder, drier. The Hive resin that had coated the upper levels was gone, replaced by pristine, sterile white hallways. But there was something else. A hum. A low-frequency vibration that rattled his teeth.

  It felt like the ship’s engine room.

  “Wing Gamma,” Riven whispered over the comms. “End of the hall. Main Lab.”

  All he got in return was a buzz of no reply.

  He moved forward. But slower. Although it was cleaner here, something felt off. The silence here felt heavy, oppressive. It felt like walking into a church where something unholy was being worshipped.

  He passed rooms filled with stasis tanks. He stopped at one, wiping the condensation from the glass.

  Inside floated the severed arm of a Warrior, but it wasn’t just biology. Hydraulic pistons had been surgically grafted into the chitin. Bundles of fiber-optic cables replaced the tendons.

  “What were they doing down here?” Riven muttered, revulsion curling in his stomach.

  He passed another tank. A brain, swollen and purple, pulsed in a jar of yellow fluid. Electrodes were jammed into the lobes, sparking rhythmically.

  He reached the end of the hall. The blast doors for the Main Lab were massive, easily twice the size of the others. They were reinforced with heavy locking bars.

  Riven prepped his last breaching charge, but stopped.

  The control panel was active. And the door was unlocked.

  The light was green.

  Riven frowned. He lowered his lance, rifle mode engaged, keeping it tight to his shoulder. He reached out and pressed the panel.

  The massive doors groaned. Hydraulics hissed, ancient and tired. The metal parted slowly, revealing the chamber beyond.

  Riven stepped inside.

  This wasn’t a server room.

  It was a cavernous observation theater. The floor sloped downward, lined with rows of empty computer terminals, all facing a massive, reinforced glass wall that stretched from floor to ceiling. The glass was angled inward, looking down into a containment pit below.

  The lights were dim, red emergency strobes pulsing in a slow, hypnotic rhythm.

  Riven kept his eyes low, focused on the terminals. Mission first. He had to get the data. He had to get Vex home. Whatever was in the pit could wait.

  He spotted the main interface terminal in the center of the front row. He rushed to it, his boots silent despite the steel floor. He jammed his gauntlet into the port.

  DOWNLOADING…

  The progress bar appeared. It was slower this time.

  10%...

  Riven tapped his fingers on the console, his eyes darting around the room, scanning for threats. No bugs. No sentries. Just that hum.

  50%...

  He wiped sweat from his brow. The hum was getting louder. It was vibrating in his chest. It felt like not unlike the pressure of the Queen, but almost… cleaner.

  90%...

  DOWNLOAD COMPLETE.

  Riven yanked the drive. “Got it,” he whispered. “Time to go.”

  He turned to leave. He took one step toward the exit.

  Then he looked through the glass.

  Riven froze. His breath caught in his throat. The rifle slipped from his numb fingers and clattered to the floor, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the silence, but he didn’t hear it.

  He walked slowly to the window, drawn by a horror he couldn’t name. He pressed his hand against the cold reinforced glass and looked down into the pit.

  It was a containment cell. And in the center, suspended by heavy durasteel chains, was a dragon.

  It wasn’t a Kinetic. It wasn’t like Astrix or Raze. Its scales were the color of starlight. A shifting, iridescent pearl that seemed to hold a light of its own, even in the gloom. It was massive, easily an Elder, larger than any dragon Riven had ever seen.

  But it was broken.

  Thick, black cables were drilled directly into its skull, pulsing with a sick, violet light. Pumps were attached to its chest, cycling a dark fluid in and out of its body. Its wings were pinned to the floor by heavy magnetic clamps.

  It looked dead. Its head hung low, chin resting on the metal grate of the floor. Despite their color the scales were dull, the light seemingly fading out of them.

  “What in the Resonance is this,” Riven breathed as he stared at the creature. It was like looking at a god, chained and turned into a battery.

  Then, movement caught his eye.

  Below, in the pit, the massive head shifted. The chains rattled, a mournful, heavy sound that reverberated through the glass.

  The Elder Radiant lifted its head. It turned slowly, painfully, toward the observation window.

  It turned toward Riven.

  Its eyes opened.

  They weren’t the silver of Astrix or the gold of Captain Kaelen. They were voids. Deep, swirling vortices of purple energy that seemed to suck the light out of the room.

  The dragon didn’t roar. It didn’t struggle against the chains. It simply looked right at him. Right into his eyes.