NO EXIT!
Aaron saw it the second they came through. One chamber. Four walls. Nowhere to go. And five figures coming through right behind them.
*Great*, he thought. *Genuinely great.
***
CRACK.
First one hit Dain before anyone finished turning around. Not a test. Just a decision.
Dain hit the floor and the sound was bad.
"DAIN!"
He got up. Hands shaking. Hit it back.
It didn't even look at him.
Voss drove fire straight into the nearest chest. Full blast. The kind that left scorch marks on stone walls.
The figure walked through it.
Like weather. Like a Tuesday.
Grabbed Voss by the arm and THREW him and Voss hit the wall and dropped and sat there with his mouth open making a sound that was trying to be words.
"VOSS!" Hess.
"I'm— yeah— I'm—" Voss said to nobody in particular.
Jai was already cutting. Wind blades whistling sharp through the cold air, dark fluid running from real cuts. Marcus straight in, force driving point blank into the nearest chest.
The figure grabbed his arm.
SLAM.
Marcus hit the ground. Rolled. His left arm came up wrong. Got up anyway.
"Marcus your ARM—" Nara.
"I know!"
"You KNOW and you're still going."
Cough. Cough. Cough.
"NARA."
She went back in.
*He knows he can't win this*, Aaron thought from the back wall. *They all know. They're going in anyway.*
One of them turned toward Aaron.
Two steps. Hit him once across the chest.
BANG.
Aaron's back met the wall and every bit of air left his body at once and his vision went white at the edges and he slid down and sat there with his ears ringing.
Then it walked away.
Back to the others. Like he wasn't worth finishing.
Aaron sat on the floor and watched it go and thought *it hit me and left. It just left. Why did it leave.*
Four minutes later.
Marcus on one knee. Face bloody. Left arm completely wrong now. Breathing in short bursts.
Nara on her feet but both hands pressed hard to her side, jaw tight, not letting herself make a sound about it.
Hess still swinging. Crying and swinging. Lightning crackling off both fists and not stopping for anything.
Jai down on one hand with blood running into his eye.
Dain flat on his back going *okay. okay. I'm okay. I'm okay* to the ceiling.
Sera crouched over Crane with shaking hands and a face Aaron had never seen on Sera before.
The figures stood in the center.
Still.
Just breathing.
Marcus looked at Aaron.
"Why." His voice was rough, blood in it somewhere. "It hit you and walked away. All of them did."
"Yeah."
"That's not an answer."
"I know."
"Aaron." His jaw tightened. "WHY."
Aaron looked at the figures. At the dark stones in their chests. Pulsing slow. Same rhythm as the breathing. Like the stone was the actual heart and everything else was just built around it.
Then the back of the chamber.
Three standing separate from the rest. Bigger. Hadn't moved once the whole fight. Just watched everything with those unfinished faces.
Stones in their heads.
Not chests. Heads.
*They ran the whole thing from back there*, he thought. *Without moving once.*
"They're hunting awakeners," Aaron said. "Ranked. Classed. People the system can read." He stood up slowly. "I'm null. I'm nothing to them. They can't see me."
Marcus stared at him.
"So you're going to walk over there."
"Yeah."
"With the things that just broke my arm."
"They won't touch me."
"Aaron."
Tap.Tap. Tap.
"Marcus." Aaron looked at him. "You can't stand up properly right now."
Marcus said nothing.
Aaron walked toward the center figures.
They didn't look at him.
Didn't track him.
He walked right between them. The wet sliding sound of their skin was louder up close, a low rhythmic slither that made the hair on his arms stand up. Their stones pulsed, sending something through the floor he could feel in the soles of his boots. Not vibration exactly. More like a heartbeat that wasn't his.
He kept walking.
*I have never been this aware of being alive in my entire life.*
He stopped in front of the three in the back.
Up close they were older. The carvings on every wall pointing at their heads specifically. Just their heads.
Middle one tallest. Left one had an old break healed into its shoulder. Right one was the smallest of the three.
Still taller than anyone Aaron had ever stood next to.
But smallest of these three.
He looked at the stone in its head.
"Aaron what are you doing." Nara. Low and tight.
"Thinking."
"Can you think faster please."
"I'm working on it."
"Aaron there are three massive things right in front of you—"
"I know Nara."
"And you're just STANDING there."
"I KNOW."
He reached up.
Closed his hand around the stone.
Warm. Genuinely warm. The kind of warm that had been running since before Aaron was born. Before his parents. Before the first portal ever cracked open on earth. It pulsed once against his palm like it knew his hand was there.
*Stone is the signal*, he thought. *Stone is the whole thing.*
He pulled.
It tore free with a sound like something that had never been separated being separated for the first time and the figure's head snapped toward Aaron and its mouth opened and...
BOOOOOOOOM.
Not just sound. Something that went under sound and hit the chest and the back teeth and the inside of the skull all at once. Dust dropped from the ceiling in sheets. The walls shook and for one second Aaron genuinely thought the whole structure was going to come down and bury all of them in the dark.
It didn't.
Dain sat straight up off the floor.
"WHAT WAS—"
Crane's eyes opened.
"What– –" Confused. Bloody. Just woken up. "What is that SOUND KABOOM!
The scream kept going. Louder. Rawer. Something old and wrong and enormous pouring out of one mouth and filling the entire chamber and going into the stone itself.
"AARON!" Marcus trying to get up. "AARON GET AWAY FROM IT."
Clungggg.
Aaron looked down at his hand.
Stone sitting in his palm. Still warm. Still pulsing.
His gut said one word.
He closed his fist.
CRACK.
The pulse stopped.
The energy hit him. Not fire. Not light. Something with no name yet, pouring up his arm and through his chest and settling into every part of him like it had always known exactly where it was going. The hollow space inside him, the quiet empty place where a rank and a class should have been, was suddenly and violently full.
Aaron stood there.
Blinked.
The scream stopped.
The figure turned toward him.
Just that one. Not the other two. Not the rest of the chamber.
The one with the empty space in its head where the stone used to be. Its face finally finished the expression it had been frozen in.
It started moving.
"AARON RUN!" Nara.
"GET OUT OF THERE!" Hess.
Aaron looked at it coming toward him.
Felt the thing sitting in his chest that hadn't been there ten seconds ago.
*Null*, he thought.
Then quieter, almost to himself:
*Was.*
And in moment a Blue screen flickered in front of Aaron face and there a voice camed along.