"Zoran Vane was a collateral casualty," Marcus replied, the name falling like a stone. "He was a mistake. A weak point in the integrity of the operation. I raised him to be strong, to be ruthless, to understand that the only truth is power and the only clean act is renewal through fire. And what did he do when I needed him to execute the final phase of the plan? He hesitated. He felt sympathy for the Dwellers. He was useless. He was meant to be the perfect infiltration, the Trojan Horse—my blood, married into the Imperial family—but he failed to cut the last thread of sentiment."
Marcus spat the word sympathy like it was a foul taste.
"He was a failure," Marcus concluded with frightening finality. "A project that didn't meet specifications. A failure must be discarded, Kian. He chose sentiment over mission. I sacrificed my own blood to prove that my resolve is absolute. I will not have my new order compromised by the lingering weakness of the old world."
The steam was now screaming from the vents, rolling across the room in scalding white clouds. The temperature was spiking rapidly.
"I am the necessary end," Marcus continued, allowing his gaze to settle on Theodora. "And the child..."
He let the silence build, emphasizing the sound of the steam.
"The heir complicates things beautifully. This is not just about seizing Aethel, Kian. It's about demonstrating that all life, even the most revered—the sacred Imperial Line—is contingent on my choice."
Marcus began to lift himself into a secondary escape route in the ceiling, the door already beginning its closing sequence.
"Theodora has been administered a powerful, but temporary, paralytic agent, Kian. It will wear off. As for the child of Zoran..." Marcus’s voice was the coldest sound in the rising heat.
"Maybe I want the child. A pure bloodline, raised free of the System's sickness, to rule my new order. Or perhaps I will kill them both later, and you can watch the last sliver of the royal line—the one thing Zoran wanted most—bleed out in this miserable hole. I haven't decided yet. And that, Kian, is the point. I decide."
With a soft, final KLANG, the hatch sealed, silencing Marcus’s voice. The hiss of the steam became a deafening shriek. The airlock door’s indicators turned to flashing, furious red. The temperature was spiking toward lethal.
"Ronan! Gareth! He's sealed the main door and the ceiling!" Kian roared, shielding Theodora’s body with his own. "Ronan, thermal cutter on the main entrance lock! Gareth, rig the high explosive charge on the floor grate to vent the pressure outwards! Now! We are not dying in this hole!"
Ronan didn't hesitate. He was already pulling the compact plasma torch from his combat vest. "Cutting through the main hinge point, Your Majesty! This hull is rated for deep space, it'll take fifty seconds minimum!"
"Gareth, the pressure is spiking too fast!" Kian yelled, pulling his own body armor off to cushion Theodora from the floor's intense heat. "Use the weakest section of the grate! We need a clean breach that doesn't collapse the whole deck!"
Gareth, a specialist in unconventional demolitions, nodded grimly. He slapped a thin, flexible sheet of plastique onto the grate, setting the timer to a hair-raising twenty seconds. He worked with the frantic calm of a professional under impossible pressure. "Hold your breath, Your Majesty! This will vent the pressure directly into the adjacent service crawlspace!"
The pipe room was now a furnace. The steam, no longer a cloud but a choking, scalding mist, burned Kian’s exposed skin and filled his lungs with burning air. He looked at Theodora's pale, serene face, fighting the instinct to panic. The image of the unborn Vane heir—Marcus's grandson—made Marcus's cruelty concrete and inescapable. The fact that the entire Imperial House had been infiltrated by a powerful rival through a staged marriage was the ultimate political humiliation.
My father was right about peace, but Marcus was right about his weakness, Kian thought, the realization a bitter pill. His father's compassion had created the security flaw, and Marcus had exploited that flaw with surgical precision. The Emperor hadn't just been murdered; he had been sacrificed to save the System from his own good intentions. Zoran Vane's existence, marriage, and death were all engineered to destabilize Kian's reign.
"Ten seconds!" Gareth shouted over the shriek of the steam.
Ronan, his face shielded by a visor, held the plasma cutter steady, the beam turning the high-density alloys into molten sludge. The smell of burning metal and ozone was overpowering. Kian kept his eyes fixed on the timer, counting down to the blast. Marcus's voice echoed in his mind: I will not have my new order compromised by the lingering weakness of the old world.
My mother... the Fae World...
Kian felt the crushing weight of that secret—a weakness that Marcus, the cold calculating machine, was ready to exploit. His pursuit of the exiled Empress had been an act of familial devotion, but in the context of Marcus's total surveillance, it was merely another data point proving Kian's 'sentimentality.' He now understood Zoran's true purpose: he was meant to secure the throne for Marcus, only to fail at the final test.
"Five!"
Kian threw himself completely over Theodora, bracing for the explosive decompression. Ronan backed away from the cutting point, shielding his face.
BLAM!
The charge detonated with a sharp, controlled crack. The floor grate buckled and blew downward, followed immediately by a monstrous, roaring SUCK as the superheated steam and pressurized air were violently drawn through the breach. The immediate drop in temperature was startling, a sudden, blessed relief that allowed Kian to gasp for air.
"Pressure stabilized!" Gareth shouted, wiping the sweat and condensation from his face. "But Ronan, that door won't open. The cutting didn't work."
Ronan pointed at the melted hinge. "It’s fused. The internal locking mechanisms are designed to seal under this heat. We need to find another way out."
Kian looked up at the ceiling hatch, now a solid, impenetrable sheet of metal. They were still trapped, but they had bought themselves maybe three minutes before the pressure system would recalculate and start the next, fatal cycle. He looked at Theodora, the symbol of Marcus's ultimate political weapon.
"We go through the floor," Kian decided, his voice raspy but firm. "Gareth, use the cutter to widen that vent. We're following that service crawlspace. Ronan, you stay here. If anyone comes through that main door, you buy us enough time to get Theodora out."
They had survived the calculation, but the next phase of Marcus's deadly game was just beginning. Kian knew Marcus would not tolerate a variable escaping his control.