Chapter 94: Demure Infiltration

Sera stopped in front of it, her hand on the handle, her whole body trembling with the effort of not just tearing the thing off its hinges. She looked at Nacho, and for a moment he saw past all her defenses, past the Grand General and the warrior and the woman who’d survived everything this world had thrown at her.

What he saw was someone who was terrified of what she might find on the other side of that door.

"Whatever happens," she said quietly, "thank you. For being here. For not making me do this alone."

"You’re not alone. Not anymore."

She nodded once, took a breath, and opened the door.

The cell beyond was small and dark, lit only by a single candle that had burned down to a stub of wax. The walls were bare stone, the floor covered with dirty straw. In the corner, curled into a ball with her back against the wall, was a woman.

Dark hair. Scar on her left cheek. Thin. Too thin. Arms wrapped around her knees like she was trying to make herself as small as possible.

"Vael."

The word came out broken, cracked in half by the weight of everything Sera had been carrying since this nightmare began.

The woman in the corner didn’t move.

Sera crossed the cell in two steps and dropped to her knees, reaching out to touch the other woman’s shoulder with a gentleness that seemed at odds with everything Nacho had seen her do. Her hand was shaking.

"Vael. It’s me. It’s Sera. I’m here. I found you. You’re safe now."

Slowly, impossibly slowly, the woman raised her head.

Her eyes were the color of deep water, the same shade as Sera’s but darker, more haunted. Recognition flickered in their depths, followed by something that might have been disbelief or hope or the first stirrings of an emotion too complex to name.

"Sera?"

"I’m here. I’m real. I came for you, just like I promised."

A sob tore its way out of Vael’s throat, raw and ragged and years in the making. She lunged forward, wrapping her arms around Sera with a strength that shouldn’t have been possible for someone so frail, and began to cry.

Nacho turned away, giving them what privacy he could in this terrible place. He stood guard at the door, his senses extended to their maximum range, listening for any sign that their intrusion had been discovered.

Behind him, he could hear Sera whispering words he couldn’t quite make out, her voice soft and fierce and filled with a love that had survived six months of not knowing, of hoping against hope, of fighting a system designed to destroy her while holding on to the belief that somehow, someday, she would find what she’d lost.

They’d found her.

Against all odds, against every obstacle the Consortium had thrown in their path, they’d found her.

Now they just had to get her out.

The alarm started screaming thirty seconds after Sera opened that cell door.

A high, keening wail that bounced off the stone walls and drilled straight into Nacho’s skull. Red light flooded the corridor from crystals embedded in the ceiling, painting everything in shades of blood and shadow.

"We need to move." He turned back to the cell, where Sera was already helping Vael to her feet. "Now."

Vael could barely stand. Six months of captivity had stripped the muscle from her frame and left her legs weak and unsteady. She leaned heavily against Sera, one arm draped over her shoulder, her face twisted with the effort of staying upright.

"I can carry her," Nacho said.

"No." Vael’s voice was hoarse, cracked from disuse, but there was steel underneath the damage. "I can walk. Just give me a moment."

"We don’t have a moment."

Footsteps echoed from somewhere deeper in the facility. Lots of them, getting closer with every heartbeat. Nacho’s Combat Precognition was already feeding him information, threat vectors and escape routes and the approximate number of enemies converging on their position.

Too many. Way too many.

"The mining shaft," Sera said. "Back the way we came."

"They’ll have guards there by now. The alarm would have triggered a lockdown."

"Then we go through them."

Nacho pulled two Silverion daggers from his inventory, their edges gleaming in the red emergency lighting. The Dagger Duchess Talent hummed at the back of his mind, eager to be used.

"Stay behind me. Both of you."

They moved down the corridor at the best pace Vael could manage, which wasn’t nearly fast enough. The footsteps were getting louder, closer, and Nacho could hear voices shouting orders in the distance. The fortress was waking up, and it was angry.

The first wave of guards hit them at the junction where the special wing connected to the main holding area. Six men in heavy armor, swords drawn, shields raised in a formation that blocked the entire corridor.

Nacho didn’t slow down.

His tentacles manifested in a burst of darkness, snaking through gaps in the formation faster than human eyes could track. Two guards went down immediately, their ankles yanked out from under them. A third dropped his sword as a tentacle wrapped around his wrist and squeezed until bones cracked.

The remaining three tried to close ranks, but Nacho was already among them. Combat Precognition showed him every attack before it landed, every opening in their defenses, every moment of hesitation that could be exploited. He moved like water through their formation, daggers flashing, tentacles striking, and in less than ten seconds all six were on the ground.

[6 targets subdued. Charm distribution minimal. Combat efficiency prioritized.]

"Clear," he said, stepping over the groaning bodies. "Keep moving."

They pushed through the processing area without stopping, past the sterile tables and the restraints and the tools that Nacho tried very hard not to look at. Vael made a sound low in her throat when she saw the chair in the center of the room, something between a sob and a snarl.

"Later," Sera murmured. "We’ll burn this place to the ground later. Right now we run."

The main holding area was chaos. The prisoners in their cages were screaming, rattling the bars, calling out for help that might or might not come. The guards Nacho had subdued earlier were still unconscious, but more were pouring in through doorways on the far side of the chamber.