Chapter 62 - Laws of Another Plane

The restaurant sat down cross-street five in the Second District, well clear of the clamor from the machine shops in the Boilermakers' Village.

It was called The Canal Roaster, a dark masonry manor lined with long, polished timber tables and tall windows shielded behind wrought-iron grates that overlooked the coal barges plying the middle canal.

The air in the room was thick with the scent of roasted marbled meat sizzling over dry ironwood embers and wild rosemary.

Dante, Maria, and Nicole secured a corner booth walled off behind timber partitions that provided fair insulation against the ears of neighboring patrons.

At the center of the table rested a cast-iron platter loaded with six pounds of sliced roast peccary shank, flanked by a bowl of ash-potato mash whipped with churned butter and baskets of hot malt bread.

Maria was already on her third cut of meat, chewing with her customary steady cadence, while Nicole ate in quiet contemplation, slicing her portions into neat morsels with the tip of her table knife.

The huntress in the black-scaled coat still bore a lingering flush at the base of her pointed ears from their exchange in the upstairs hallway, actively avoiding Maria's gaze whenever the Sentinel let out an unprompted chuckle.

Dante ate with unhurried precision, using his fork with his uninjured right hand.

Under the timber table, Maria's heavy boot landed a firm kick against Dante's left shin.

The tap was nowhere near enough to trip [Liquid Lead Stance], but it set Dante's water flagon rattling against the cloth runner.

Dante lifted his gray eyes from his plate, fixing the six-foot-three girl with an arched eyebrow in silent inquiry.

Maria said nothing aloud.

She merely narrowed her brown eyes, gave a subtle tilt of her chin toward Nicole, who remained focused on her mashed potatoes, and triggered the interface link.

[Binding Channel: Private (Dante / Maria)]

The script populated the lower margin of Dante's retina.

[Maria: We need to tell her, Dante.]

Dante chewed a cut of pork, drafting his mental reply with the rapid speed of thirty-four Intelligence.

[Dante: Tell her what, precisely?]

[Maria: About Earth, bighead. She carries the key to our front gate in her pocket. She sleeps in the bedroom right next to yours. If we need to drop into the Acacias penthouse to take a proper shower or pick up real soap and groceries, what does she think happened? That we evaporated in the middle of our workshop floor?]

[Dante: The operational security risk is incalculable, Maria. The second a native denizen of this continent learns I hold unhindered transit between both planes, the bounty on our heads outstrips the treasury of the Council of Forges. If that leak breaks, the Legion garrisons our townhouse within thirty minutes.]

[Maria: Nicole isn't a Legion stool pigeon. Her mother was murdered over that vault, and she spent four years choking down canal sludge without singing to a single soul. She trusted us to safeguard that brass box in her room without cracking the seal. We owe her that much if we expect this fireteam to actually work.]

Dante rested his silverware against the rim of his plate, taking his water glass in his right hand.

He looked across at Nicole.

Her dark hair was pulled back into a low ponytail bound with a leather cord, leaving her two rounded horn buds in full view. She ate methodically, but her four amber slit-pupils kept up their sharp, vigilant sweep every time a runner passed the wooden partition.

Maria's reasoning carried undeniable operational weight.

If they maintained total secrecy regarding Planar Transit inside their own household, their domestic dynamic would unravel within two weeks. They couldn't deploy an emergency rift in the workshop without locking the girl out, and if the Military Citadel tightened its net over the Third District, they would be forced to choose between abandoning Nicole to an interrogation cell or exposing the portal during a crisis.

Moreover, there was the matter of real estate on Earth.

To plant their secondary dimensional anchor at the point matching the Capital, in the far reaches of Acre, Dante would have to take a commercial flight across the human world, sign deed contracts using Brazilian identification, and build a reinforced masonry structure along an unpaved rural road.

He couldn't vanish for four days without an accounting to a partner sharing the front door key.

[Dante: There is her psychological response to consider. To anyone born in this realm, the concept of crossing the planar threshold alive is a physical impossibility. Souls descend only when their mortal husk perishes on Earth. She may conclude we are some manner of synthetic aberration.]

[Maria: She already thinks you're a synthetic aberration because of that brass ring and your lunatic calculations. One more freakish detail won't tilt the scales. Let me open the subject.]

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Dante closed the link with a blink, picking his metal fork back up.

Nicole froze her knife over the cast-iron plate that very second.

The huntress slowly lifted her head, her amber eyes darting between Dante's composed expression and Maria's deadpan grin.

"You two are doing that thing again," Nicole murmured, her tone a mix of irritation and sharp suspicion.

Maria swallowed a heavy bite of malt bread with a wash of dark ale. "Doing what, girl?"

"That silent conference," Nicole pointed the tip of her table knife between them. "You sit there staring at your plates looking completely blank, then trade glances like you just coordinated a bank heist. You have an active telepathic party link running, don't you?"

Dante gave a dry scoff through his nose, carving off another piece of meat.

"We have a private interface channel," Dante answered plainly. "It is a standard function of our soul matrix established from our first tier of bonding."

"And what were you whispering behind your eyelids that required so much privacy?" Nicole asked, folding her arms over her scaled coat. "If this is about room rent or the weekly meat ration, say it to my face. I have the hundred and eighty scrip counted out in my satchel."

Maria set her elbows on the timber table, leaning her six-foot-three frame forward until her face was two handspans from Nicole's.

"This isn't about rent scrip, Nicole," Maria said, her voice dropping, stripping away every shred of morning banter. "It's about where we came from."

Nicole knitted her brow, the chitin plates along her jaw clicking with curiosity.

"Where you came from? You claimed in Low Ember that you hailed from the Ash Wastes. The outer rim of the Fourth Continent."

"We operated out of the Wastes," Dante stepped in, his voice measured as he set his empty plate aside and laid his palms flat on the cloth. "We were not born in the Fourth Continent. Nor were we born across any of the other twenty-three continents of this realm."

Nicole looked into Dante's gray eyes, then studied Maria's unyielding features.

She let out a short, incredulous laugh, assuming it was some manner of frontier hunter joke.

"Not born here? Where were you born, then? Up in the purple vault? Did you two fall out of the clouds?"

"We were born on Earth, Nicole," Dante said directly, without hedging or metaphor. "The upper plane. The world of the living humans."

Silence crashed onto the corner table with the finality of an anvil dropped into a dry well.

Nicole's laughter cut out that very second.

All four of her amber eyes locked onto Dante's face with aggressive scrutiny. She searched for any telltale twitch of mockery on his lips, any glint of tavern falsehood or deadpan humor.

There was none.

Only the same mathematical chill that had plotted the sniper shot across eight hundred feet on the crane and calculated the breach along the serpent's underbelly.

The huntress dropped her table knife with a sharp clink against the wood.

"That is absolute madness, Dante," her voice dropped to a harsh whisper, her slit pupils narrowing into hairline threads. "Everyone knows the mortal plane is completely barred to those below. The etheric bulkhead separating both worlds is sealed by the primordial matrix anchored in the Ninth Continent. Neither Citadel archdemons nor Legion marshals can ascend to draw living human breath without being unmade by causal vacuum shear. It is an immutable physical law of this cosmos."

"It is a physical law for those relying on the traditional avenues of this empire," Dante replied with total calm, drawing back his shirt sleeve to display the bare skin of his forearm. "I do not rely on traditional avenues. I drew my first breath with a dimensional key branded into my soul matrix. A skill designated as Planar Transit."

Nicole snapped her gaze to Maria, waiting for the vanguard to dismiss the boy's lunacy.

Maria simply met the huntress's stare with her usual grounded weight.

"He isn't making it up, girl," Maria confirmed, her voice heavy with certainty. "Seven years ago, he tumbled out of a black cloud in a reeking alleyway down my old street on Earth, bleeding from his ribs on four hit points. I hauled this bighead to my house in a rusted construction wheelbarrow and scrubbed the ash of this hell out of his meat with yellow bar soap and rubbing alcohol. We're both seventeen years old, we hold a leased penthouse in Brazil, and we came down here to build our strength."

Nicole sank back against the wooden bench, her breathing quickening once more, not from the claustrophobia of the conduit, but from a dizzying conceptual vertigo that upended the foundation of her entire reality.

"You... you cross back and forth?" she whispered, her gloved fingers clutching the edge of the runner. "You can step into the realm of the dead... and return to the land of the living whenever you choose?"

"We can enter and exit whenever we please," Dante answered, leaning in. "Provided we remain within the geographic coordinates matching the jump point. The townhouse we leased in the Boilermakers' Village serves as our fixed anchor here in the Capital. But to establish the matching emergency egress on Earth, I must purchase land in rural Brazil, directly along the forest frontier."

He looked straight into the girl's amber eyes.

"We are telling you this because you live under the same roof as us. Because your mother died trying to uncover the truth of the matrices those white-jacket operatives deploy, and because if the Citadel surrounds our townhouse tomorrow, that rift is the only escape route keeping you off a cast-iron dissection slab."

Nicole sat motionless for ten full seconds.

Her mind, trained on tripwires and sewer horrors, strained to comprehend the sheer scale of the revelation.

Two living humans.

Two youths crossing the forbidden boundary between the planes with the casual ease of stepping across a drainage ditch, carrying the single most hazardous, coveted secret in creation right beneath the snout of the Iron Legion's garrisons.

She looked down at Dante's hands, across at Maria's iron brigandine, and back to the platter of hot meat between them.

Her ingrained paranoia yielded to an awe-inspiring, chilling clarity.

"If anyone out there ever learns this..." Nicole whispered, her voice faltering slightly for the first time, "...it won't be a sergeant's patrol knocking down that townhouse door. It will be the entire standing army of the First Great Continent."

"Which is why nobody out there is ever going to find out," Maria answered on the spot, smacking her heavy palm against the wood. "Now finish that pork shank before the grease hardens. We're heading back to the townhouse, barring the workshop door, and Dante is going to open the rift right in front of your face so you stop thinking we've lost our minds."

Nicole picked up her fork slowly, her fingers still slightly numb from the shock, and gave a single, resolute nod.

The secret had been shared, the bolt of trust driven home between the three of them, and the townhouse in the Boilermakers' Village had just become the most perilous, pivotal outpost in the entirety of the iron Capital.