Caelora at night looked as if it had been washed by sea mist, the streetlights blurred into circles of pale yellow light. Kieran followed Adrian through two alleys, with Thalia walking ahead, her steps light as if she were not touching the ground.

  They stopped at a corner without any surveillance cameras.

  “Here.” Adrian said.

  Thalia didn’t look back, only gestured with her eyes towards the injection pen in Kieran’s hand: “Now.”

  Kieran stared at it, and after a few seconds, he pressed the tip of the pen against his arm. The sting was slight, and the moment the liquid was pushed in, he felt a crack open in his chest—his heartbeat suddenly became heavy and restless, cold sweat crawled up his spine, and the edges of his vision darkened slightly, as if he had just been pulled back from the brink of unconsciousness.

  This was not “recovery,” but “disguise”: packaging his blank period of disappearance as a reasonable physiological breakdown.

  His throat moved, and he gagged slightly.

  Thalia looked at him, her expression still clean and harmless, but her eyes seemed to be timing him. “Can you move?”

  Kieran nodded but didn’t speak. He was afraid that if he opened his mouth, there would be too much emotion in his voice—and emotions would leave traces.

  Adrian tossed him a cheap knit cap: “Put it on. You look like a poor soul who just got robbed, don’t waste it.”

  Kieran pulled the hat down to cover his brows and eyes. He silently counted his breaths in his mind, forcing himself back into the most familiar state: cold, steady, and all useless pity tucked away.

  Thalia took a step closer, her voice lowered to a whisper: “Remember—when you go back, the first thing you need to do is not steal the data, but make Sabrina believe that you’re ‘still useful.’ If she doesn’t believe you, you won’t even be able to touch the doorknob to the backtracking room.”

  Kieran looked up, his gaze briefly colliding with hers. He wanted to ask: What kind of ending do you really want? But he knew that even if he asked, there would be no answer.

  In the next moment, Thalia's breath seemed to be drawn away. She turned and walked into the shadows, her figure flickering under the broken streetlight, disappearing like a glitch in a video; Adrian also silently retreated, as if the entire alley contained only Kieran.

  He stood in place for three seconds, then began to walk.

  *

  The emergency entrance of Caelora Central Hospital was always crowded: drunk men, young people fighting, mothers crying while holding their children, elderly people pushing wheelchairs. Kieran slipped in through the side door's shadow, stumbling a couple of times to make himself appear more like someone who had lost blood or was overly frightened.

  He leaned against the wall, breathing heavily.

  A nurse noticed him: "Are you okay? Where are you hurt?"

  "I... don't know." Kieran made his voice hoarse, as if his throat had been choked, "I just... collapsed on the road..."

  He deliberately let his knees buckle halfway through, forcing the nurse and security to support him. He was all too familiar with this act—Dreadspire didn't teach performance; it taught how to make others complete the processes you wanted.

  As he was pushed into the observation area, a long-lost "background noise" suddenly echoed in his mind—not Sabrina's voice, but a series of extremely fine signals bouncing back, as if the device had just awakened from sleep, automatically reporting its location, heart rate, cortisol levels, and pain index.

  Kieran closed his eyes, feeling a weight in his heart instead.

  Dreadspire "saw" him again.

  Within two minutes, a message flooded his mind like ice water:

  ‘Kieran. Vale.’

  Sabrina.

  He did not respond immediately, waiting for the medical staff to move away and for his heartbeat to slow down a bit before replying in his mind:

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘You’ve gone off the grid.’ Sabrina's tone was terrifyingly calm, ‘Explain.’

  ‘I suddenly collapsed on the way back in the old port area, my limbs went numb, and I suspect I was drugged. I woke up on the roadside and was called an ambulance by a passerby.’ He recounted the script in the most ordinary and reasonable way, even adding details like "passerby," because the truth is often buried in the absence of details.

  Three seconds of silence.

  ‘Your location is in the hospital.’ Sabrina said, as if she could see every surveillance camera feed around him, ‘Who have you come into contact with?’

  ‘No one.’ Kieran replied succinctly, ‘I didn’t see the attacker.’

  Once again, there was a pause, as if the system was comparing his emotional curve, the consistency of his statements, the disconnection time of the device, and the waveform of the reconnection.

  “Your mission report is inconsistent with the on-site intelligence,” Sabrina said.

  Kieran felt a cold sweat on his back, but his tone remained unchanged: “I deployed successfully, but the target did not return to her seat. She and her mother are missing. They may have been taken by the cult.”

  “We have taken over,” Sabrina interrupted coldly, “the current issue is not the target, but you. Can you stand up?”

  Kieran looked at his hands. The numbness had faded, but there was still a slight tingling. He let his voice carry a hint of “vulnerability”—enough to make her believe he was damaged, but not enough for her to deem him a total loss:

  “I can.”

  “Leave the hospital,” Sabrina ordered, “to the number two safe point near where you originally lived. In ten minutes.”

  Kieran felt a sinking feeling in his heart. The safe point—meaning he wouldn’t be going home directly, but would have to undergo “takeover.” Dreadspire would first put him in a cage before deciding whether to repair or dispose of him.

  “Understood.”

  Connection lost.

  He pulled out the IV and walked out of the observation area while the nursing station was in disarray. No one stopped him—he looked like the kind of boy who would stubbornly escape from the hospital, a sight the medical staff had seen many times. Once outside, he walked quickly down the side alley, the effects of the injected medication still in his system, making his heart race, just right for the data of “having just been attacked.”

  The number two safe point was in the underground parking lot of an abandoned apartment building, the entrance blocked by construction fencing. Kieran pushed through the fence and entered; the parking lot was lit only by a single emergency light, casting a sickly yellow glow.

  As he stepped into the light circle, a figure emerged from behind a car pillar—not Sabrina, but two men in gray civilian clothes, with ordinary faces and black gloves on their hands.

  The "Reclaimers" of Dreadspire.

  One of them remained silent and directly took out a scanner, pressing it against Kieran's neck, while the other stared into his eyes, as if watching to see if he would try to escape. The scanner emitted a low-frequency hum that lasted for five seconds.

  "Come with us," the one who was watching said.

  Kieran did not resist. He only asked, "Where is Sabrina?"

  "You'll see her," the other replied, his tone as if treating a person like cargo.

  He was taken into an unmarked black van. The windows were tinted, and the outside city was reduced to a blurry gray shadow. After the vehicle started moving, Kieran quickly assessed in his mind: his current goal was not to escape—there was no way to escape; nor was it to fight—he would die.

  His goal was: to stay alive and return to the Rewind Room.

  Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes... the journey lengthened, and the bumps on the road began to decrease, as if entering a higher-grade road. Finally, the vehicle stopped, the door opened, and cold air rushed in.

  He was taken into a basement that looked like an ordinary office building, the corridor dark enough to swallow light, and familiar enough to make him feel nauseous—Dreadspire's branch node in Caelora.

  The door opened, and Sabrina was standing inside.

  Her blonde hair was neatly arranged, and her blue eyes were as cold as glass. She held a tablet in her hand, clearly having reviewed all his behavioral patterns and physiological curves from the past few days.

  "Sit," she said.

  Kieran sat down, his back straight. This was not out of respect, but defense—he needed to make himself appear as the usable weapon he still was.

  Sabrina approached, not immediately interrogating him, but instead reaching out to pinch his chin, lifting his face as if inspecting the wear of an item.

  “You were uncontactable for seven minutes and forty-three seconds,” she said. “The device was completely silent during that time. It wasn’t signal interference; it was a ‘stop.’”

  Kieran's heart skipped a beat, but his expression remained unchanged.

  “Tell me,” Sabrina released her grip, her voice soft yet more terrifying than a shout, “where were you during those seven minutes and forty-three seconds?”

  Kieran opened his mouth, his voice steady like the breath before a scalpel falls: “I don’t know. I only remember falling, and then waking up by the roadside.”

  Sabrina stared at him, for a long time, as if waiting for his emotional curve to betray him. Kieran could feel the device scanning his fear index—he let it rise a little, in line with human nature, but kept it from spiraling out of control.

  “When you lie, you slightly tighten your grip on your right molars,” Sabrina suddenly said.

  Kieran almost clenched his jaw, but he immediately relaxed, letting his lips part slightly, as if fatigued.

  Sabrina's gaze was unwavering: "Do you think I don't know about your little habits?"

  She turned around, placing the tablet on the table. The screen showed him bending down to pick up a crayon at the corner of the restaurant—his fingers paused, the crystal didn't fall; then there was a second time, when he tossed the crystal into the drink; next, the mother and daughter disappeared.

  "You've encountered a chameleon," Sabrina said, as if pronouncing a verdict.

  Kieran's throat felt dry: "I have my doubts."

  "It's not doubt, it's certainty," Sabrina replied coldly. "You're alive now because the other party let you off the hook. You're not the only one who slipped up—though I had hoped you would be the 'exception.'

  Kieran lowered his eyes, trying to appear as if his pride had been pricked: "I can track her down again."

  "No," Sabrina interrupted. "You're no longer the right person for that. Your current usefulness is something else."

  She raised her hand, and the recycler outside walked in, holding a familiar metal box—the intervention device for calibration.

  Kieran's fingertips were cold, but he did not retreat. He couldn't retreat.

  Sabrina walked behind him, her voice close to his ear, soft like a mother speaking to her child, but the content was like a knife:

  “You need to go back to the capital. The recall room. I want you to fully express that 'blank' segment you just had. Every frame, every heartbeat, every micro-expression.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  She paused for a moment and added the key point: "If you want to prove you can still be useful, then hand yourself over."

  Kieran closed his eyes, but Thalia's words floated in his mind: Don't hesitate in the backtracking room. If you hesitate, you die.

  He opened his eyes and said steadily, "I understand."

  Sabrina smiled, a faint smile: "Good. You've finally learned to behave."

  In the next second, the metal box opened, and that familiar sting pressed against the back of his neck again.

  Kieran did not struggle.

  Because this time, he was not going to be turned into an empty shell—he was going to make "it wake up."

  At the moment the metal box pressed against the back of his neck, Kieran's vision felt like it was being forcefully folded inward—sounds were pulled away, light was thinned out, and finally, only the echo of his own breathing remained.

  He knew the "calibration" was coming.

  But this time, he did not completely surrender himself as he had in the past. Before the sting pierced his nerves, he did one thing in his mind: he nailed the sensation of the black ring Thalia had given him, the temperature of the injection pen, and the phrase "the Trojan horse will wake up in the backtracking room" into the most inconspicuous corner.

  It's not about remembering with emotions, but about remembering with structure—cold and hard, like remembering the pathways of human arteries.

  The current surged in.

  The colors of the world faded again. It wasn't a sudden disappearance, but rather like someone gradually lowering the saturation until everything became "reasonable": fear flattened, guilt sealed away, even the heartbeat became a controllable curve.

  Sabrina's voice came from somewhere close, like a knock against a layer of glass.

  "You will return to Asterion," she said, "the train, the seat, the pickup, all will be arranged. You just need to do one thing: go back. Hand over those seven minutes and forty-three seconds to me."

  Kieran opened his eyes, his gaze steady as if he felt no pain.

  "Yes."

  Sabrina stepped in front of him, reaching out to adjust his collar, her movements like a mother brushing dust off her child—if the mother's fingertips were cold.

  "Kieran," she whispered, "I don't need you to be perfect. I just need you to be predictable. Do you understand?"

  "I understand."

  She stepped back half a step, looking at him as if to confirm whether a device had been recalibrated. "Then let's go."

  The night train once again took him away from Caelora.

  This time he did not feel dizzy. Adjusted, he was like a machine stripped of excess noise, able to clearly distinguish every detail: the rhythm of the wheels on the tracks, the sound of passengers flipping through books in the carriage, the low-frequency vibrations from the air conditioning vents.

  And he could also clearly discern another thing—the brain implant had been restored, and it felt "tighter" than ever.

  Like a collar pulled taut again.

  *

  In the morning, Asterion. The underground entrance, the dark corridor, the light-absorbing walls—everything swallowed him just like last time.

  The "Inverted Dreadspire" core of Dreadspire reappeared before his eyes: a deep well, hollow, a circular platform, a metal bridge without guardrails, and the central crystal column, interwoven with dark red and deep purple, pulsed slowly like a spinal cord inserted into the ground, as if the entire building was breathing in fear.

  He was taken to the retroactive room.

  The sound of the door closing was very soft, yet it felt like a coffin lid shutting.

  A metal chair awaited him. The contact needles behind him resembled insect legs, ready to drill into the back of his neck and temples. A circle of black screens on the wall reflected his own image when they turned off—pale, vacant, like a face stripped of emotion.

  Sabrina stood in front of the screen, holding the control panel.

  "Sit," she said.

  Kieran sat down.

  At the moment the contact needle touched his skin, a slight tension spread through his muscles—not fear, but an instinctive aversion. The next second, that aversion was suppressed by a calibrated calmness, like being pushed underwater.

  The screen lit up.

  The scene returned to that alley: he fell, paralyzed, unable to move, and then Thalia and Adrian stepped out of the shadows—

  Kieran's breathing remained unchanged, but he silently counted in his mind: the activation point for the Trojan horse should be right here. When the recapitulation chamber synchronized his brain signals with the energy flow of the crystal column, the "spell mark" would use the energy flow to complete a one-time replication.

  He felt a very subtle, almost imperceptible "sliding."

  As if someone gently traced their fingertip over the outer shell of the device in his brain.

  It was not an alarm, nor was it pain, but a sense of system-level delay: the playback continued smoothly, but he "knew" that some background process had begun to operate.

  Thalia's voice echoed in the recapitulation scene—"Tell me, do you want to live, or die."

  Sabrina's finger paused on the control panel, as if she had caught some node. "Slow down. Here."

  The screen is divided into frames. Each frame is magnified, pulling out even the faint energy creases in the air.

  Sabrina's gaze grew colder: "They stopped the device."

  Kieran remained silent.

  Sabrina turned to look at him, her voice low but sharp as a needle: "You said you didn't know what happened in those seven minutes and forty-three seconds. So now, do you remember?"

  Kieran looked at Thalia's face on the screen—her nine-year-old face appeared more like a layer of fake skin under the light of the recall room. The calibration made him no longer want to vomit, but it still made him want to look away.

  "I was controlled," he said, "she could block the device. I couldn't resist."

  Sabrina's lips twitched slightly, as if she were smiling or gritting her teeth. "Of course you couldn't resist. You weren't designed to resist."

  She pressed another button.

  The screen in the recall room suddenly went black for a moment. The next second, the crystal column in the center of the deep well glowed brighter, and the low-frequency hum throughout the room became more pronounced, as if someone had turned up the volume of fear.

  "I'm going to go deeper into the recall," Sabrina said, "you'll be uncomfortable, but you'll hold on. It's not your first time."

  Kieran's Adam's apple bobbed, but he nodded: "Yes."

  The contact needle sent a deeper sting—not an electric shock, but some kind of "pull." His vision suddenly overlapped: the walls of the alley intertwined with the black screen of the recall room, Thalia's voice overlapping with Sabrina's.

  In that overlapping moment, Kieran felt the brain implant "wake up" more thoroughly.

  It wasn't Dreadspire that awakened it.

  It was Thalia's curse mark, like a parasite, opening its mouth in the energy torrent of the crystal column, swallowing the first bite of data.

  Kieran knew that from this second on, time had turned into a double countdown:

  On one side, he had to complete the recall without revealing any flaws and leave the recall room; on the other side, if Dreadspire noticed the data being "taken out," he would be directly dismantled in this inverted Dreadspire.

  Sabrina suddenly leaned down, close to his ear, her voice low like a whisper: "Kieran, your heart rate is very stable right now."

  She paused for a moment, like a bloodhound sniffing.

  "Stable enough not to seem like someone who has been controlled by the enemy. Are you... hiding something?"

  Kieran's heart didn't race, but his spine instantly went cold.

  He didn't answer, only allowing his gaze to remain vacant, as if being dragged into a deeper, unfocused state by the recollection.

  Sabrina stared at him for half a second, then straightened up.

  “Continue,” she said.

  Kieran felt the dizziness of being pulled, and the “sliding” in his brain became clearer— the curse mark was completing its replication, like stealing the bones of Dreadspire piece by piece.

  He couldn't let Sabrina look at him for another second.

  He had to hold on until the end, and then—using that phase-shifting ring, spit out from the throat of Dreadspire in the shortest time possible.

  Sabrina stood behind him, not saying anything more.

  The low-frequency hum in the recall room felt like an invisible pressure, pressing against his eardrum, against his bones. Kieran's vision was pulled deep, the walls of the alley, the flickering streetlight, Thalia's nine-year-old face—all magnified to an unreasonable clarity, as if every pixel could be used for conviction.

  He didn't allow himself to “think.”

  He only allowed himself to “see.”

  To see the frames being cut open, to see the twitching of his fingers as he fell, to see Thalia leaning close to whisper in his ear, the almost imperceptible chill in the air—that was her method of “putting him to sleep” with the device. Sabrina was operating beside him, the images drilling deeper, as if trying to pull out the deepest nerve fibers in his brain to dry them out.

  At the deepest overlap of the screen—when Thalia said "Question Three"—Kieran felt a brief "jolt" in his brain implant.

  It wasn't a malfunction; it was a kind of extremely short "redirection." It was as if the data stream was quietly rerouted, sliding from the output of his brain implant into the energy flow of the retroactive chamber's crystal column, then caught, copied, and sealed by that invisible spell.

  The Trojan horse is feeding.

  Kieran felt no joy, only a clearer coldness: its operation signified Thalia's success, and it meant he had stepped into the most sensitive nerve of Dreadspire. As long as Sabrina detected any rhythm that "did not belong to her," she would immediately turn the retroactive chamber into an execution ground.

  "Stop," Sabrina suddenly said.

  The screen froze on a close-up: Thalia's fingertips hovered above the nape of Kieran's neck, precisely where the implant's external projection was located. This frame was magnified to the extreme, even the pores of the skin were clear.

  Sabrina's voice was close to the back of his head, low like a blade scraping: "She touched the implant, but you did not show any rejection response. Generally, when someone is touched at the implant site by an enemy, the device automatically reports a 'contact alert.'

  Kieran let himself breathe a beat slower, his voice flat: "I was numb at the time, and nerve conduction was suppressed. The device was also turned off by her."

  "Turned off," Sabrina gently repeated, as if savoring the taste of the word. Her fingertips glided over the control panel, pulling up the device records from the time he was missing—a straight line of zeros.

  Too clean.

  Clean as if someone deliberately smoothed out the traces.

  Sabrina suddenly raised her hand, pressing two fingers against a point near his temple. The pressure was not strong, but it made Kieran's muscles instinctively tense up—this was the "positioning" gesture he was most familiar with from his training: she was checking for any slight twitches, any pupil dilation, and whether he exhibited the habit of grinding his teeth when lying.

  “Kieran.” The way she called his name was like summoning a knife, “If you’ve been rewritten by the enemy, don’t expect to fool me.”

  Kieran didn’t look at her, only at Thalia’s hand on the screen. He kept his voice calibrated to sound emotionless yet credible:

  “I haven’t been rewritten. I’ve been attacked, shielded, and released. That’s it.”

  Sabrina stared at him, as if waiting for his heart rate to betray him.

  Kieran could feel that “sliding” still continuing—the Trojan horse hadn’t finished yet. The longer it took, the more dangerous it became, but he couldn’t rush it or appear anxious. The only thing he could do was to completely become a part of the recall room, making the system think he was just a passive vessel.

  Sabrina finally released her hand and said coldly, “Continue deeper.”

  The contact needle pressed down again, and the low-frequency hum of the recall room suddenly intensified. Kieran’s vision felt like it was being torn apart; the image of the alley was no longer just a visual but began to evoke sensations—the cold of the asphalt, the sting of muscles as numbness faded, and the unnaturally clean scent when Thalia leaned close to his ear.

  He almost trembled uncontrollably.

  Not out of fear, but because the bodily memories were too real.

  Sabrina observed coldly from the side: "Hold on. The more you resist, the easier it is to leave evidence of your passive interference."

  Kieran did not respond. He focused his attention on a smaller area—his right ring finger. The ring was hidden inside his clothing, pressed against his skin. He used that sensation to remind himself: you need to get out. You can only rely on those ten minutes to escape.

  Just as he was about to be dragged to the deepest point by the retrogression, the "sliding" in his mind suddenly stopped.

  It was a light moment, like finishing a swallow.

  The Trojan horse had completed its replication.

  Kieran's first reaction was not to breathe a sigh of relief, but to adopt a colder vigilance: completion meant the most sensitive moment had passed, and only two things remained—remaining undetected and leaving the retrogression room.

  Sabrina's fingers paused on the control panel, as if she sensed a change in rhythm. She did not point it out immediately, but her tone became lighter and more dangerous: "Just now... there was a moment when you were very quiet."

  Kieran let his gaze unfocus, as if being dragged into a deep retrogression had blurred his mind: "Retrogression overload. Normal reaction."

  Sabrina did not believe him, nor did she call him out. Instead, she pressed the "exit" program. The hum of the retrogression room began to decrease, and the screen dimmed in increments, like pulling a person back from a deep well.

  Kieran was drenched in cold sweat, but he did not let his shoulders rise and fall.

  At the moment the contact needle was released, he felt as if he had just been pulled out of icy water, his nerve endings tingling. The colors of the world gradually returned a bit—not the restoration of emotions, but the restoration of a sense of reality: the coldness of the metal chair, the dryness of the air, and the faint scent of perfume on Sabrina.

  Sabrina walked up to him, looking down from a height: "There are no signs of 'cooperation' in your memories, but you have a clean feeling of being 'handled.' Do you know what that means?"

  Kieran raised his eyes, his voice steady: "It means the enemy is strong."

  "No." Sabrina's tone grew colder, "It means you are too easily touched."

  She reached out, as if to grab his chin again.

  Now is the time.

  Kieran, just before her fingers made contact with his face, suddenly raised his hand to grasp his right ring finger—an action that seemed like a reflexive tension, but in reality, the pad of his finger had already pressed down on the extremely thin line inside the ring.

  Activate.

  He felt no light and heard no sound. It was just a sense of "presence" being pulled away, a feeling of weightlessness—like his body suddenly lost a few grams, as if he stood in place but was no longer entirely at this coordinate.

  Sabrina's hand paused in mid-air, her brow slightly furrowing.

  She sensed something unusual, but her gaze couldn't grasp "him." She wasn't blind; her eyes lost the ability to locate and identify a target in that moment.

  "What—" A crack appeared in her voice for the first time.

  Kieran stood up.

  His movements were quick, but they didn’t resemble a flight; instead, it felt like a rehearsed retreat: stepping sideways from the chair, avoiding the straight path to the door, and walking along the edge of the backtracking room against the wall—because he remembered the surveillance angles here and where the sensor blind spots were.

  At the moment he pushed the door open, two guards outside the corridor turned their heads simultaneously, as if they “sensed” the door opening, but their gazes merely skimmed past the door crack, never truly landing on him.

  Phase masking is not invisibility. It is “not being locked on.”

  Kieran mentally counted: one, two, three… He only had ten minutes, but the first thirty seconds were the only truly safe ones. The Dreadspire system would detect a “location blank” within thirty seconds and then lock down all entrances and exits on the floor.

  He sprinted toward the nearest metal bridge, his footsteps making almost no echo on the bridge surface. Below was a deep well, with dark red crystal columns pulsating in the center, as if breathing towards him. The distance between each platform was enough to kill an ordinary person—but he was not an ordinary person. His body had been trained, and his escape route had been rehearsed.

  He dashed into a maintenance passage—one he remembered from his last visit. He didn’t look back, as turning around would let fear find a crack.

  Finally, a piercing alarm sounded behind him, as if the entire Dreadspire had been pierced through the eardrum.

  “Backtracking room lost target!”

  “Lock down the floor!”

  “Block the circular bridge!”

  Dreadspire began to tighten its grip.

  Kieran's lungs felt as if they were sliced open by the cold wind. At the end of the corridor, he saw an emergency maintenance shaft leading down. Without hesitation, he climbed in and slid down two levels, landing with a jolt to his knees, the pain sharp, but he did not stop.

  Only one timer remained in his mind: ten minutes—nine minutes—eight minutes...

  The phase shielding would end. When it did, if he was still inside Dreadspire, he would be dead.

  He ran along the narrow path of the maintenance level and finally saw a door marked "Abandoned Cooling Pipeline." The lock was an old mechanical clasp. With a flick of his fingers, he skillfully twisted it with force, the metal emitting a brief mournful cry as the door was pried open.

  Inside was a darker, colder pipeline corridor, the air thick with moisture and the smell of rust. This path was not under main surveillance—because it was deemed too "unworthy."

  Kieran rushed in and pulled the door shut behind him.

  He gasped for breath, leaning against the cold pipeline, briefly closing his eyes.

  Then he did the first thing in his mind—not calling for help, but confirming:

  The Trojan horse has been activated. The data has been copied. Thalia should have received it by now.

  But he hasn't left Dreadspire yet.

  He looked up at the end of the pipeline corridor, where a faint breeze flowed, as if leading to the surface. If he walked a little further, he might find the exhaust shaft and an exit to the streets of the capital.

  He lowered his gaze to his right ring finger.

  The ring was still there, but it had begun to warm slightly—an indication of the countdown.

  He had less than seven minutes left.

  He stood up and ran deeper into the darkness.