Chapter 387: Two Keys

I sit up straight the way Rahul told me to, though my back still remembers the cabinet he used to greet me a few minutes ago.

The room went back to its usual state too quickly. The papers that survived the impact are on the desk, the cane rests between his hands, and the two people at the back pretend they didn’t witness Rahul Sharma lose control because somebody tranquilized his daughter. The only physical evidence of the earlier conversation is the destroyed side of the office and the taste of blood I still find when I run my tongue over the cut inside my mouth.

"What’s the problem?" I ask.

Rahul doesn’t answer right away. His eyes move past me to the large windows.

"Privacy."

I don’t ask why, since I can imagine what he means.

"I’d have preferred to give you this information on Earth."

"You could have had Anika knock on the door."

His look hardens.

"We’re not starting that again."

"Right. Sorry."

He rests the cane against the side of the chair, which reminds me that his assistant wasn’t in the room today.

’Did she take a Reentry?’

"Thirstfall isn’t an appropriate place for certain conversations."

I look around the office.

"Nobody followed me here. I just got back from Earth and came straight to your tower."

"That means nothing."

"For someone to hear me, they’d at least have to know I’m here."

Rahul tilts his head slightly.

"Do you think you’re the main character in this room? I’m considered the king of crime. Besides, you still think of sound as something that has to travel the shortest path between two people."

"Forgive the presumption. I’m not used to being a celebrity."

Rahul shrugs and continues.

"I once knew a Diver who could listen to a conversation through the vibration of objects on another floor. Another could pick a frequency inside a space and carry it along any continuous surface that had recently received OXI. There was a woman in Varuna who could remove certain bands of sound from a room and reconstruct them later."

I look at him.

"That sounds irritating for a man with a lot of secrets."

"It was extremely irritating."

He opens one of the desk drawers.

"And those are examples I know of. Not the ones that exist."

His hand disappears into the drawer and comes back holding a small black piece.

At first glance it looks like a three-sided pyramid the size of a palm, made of a matte material that absorbs almost all the light hitting it. Each face carries a human figure carved in ivory, with no eyes or mouth, arms extended toward the other two.

I recognize it before Rahul sets it on the desk.

"Effigy Isolation?"

He looks up.

"At least you know something useful."

"I’ve seen one of these before."

In the other life, but he doesn’t need to know that.

Items of that kind are expensive, rare, and useless to most Divers. They don’t help in a dungeon, they don’t raise attributes, and they don’t keep anyone alive in a fight. For negotiators, kings, informants, and people whose secrets can be turned into weapons, they’re worth a fortune.

Rahul touches two fingers to the apex of the pyramid and feeds in a small amount of OXI.

The three figures light up.

The faces separate from the core in slow movements, parting a few inches before staying suspended in the air. Thin lines of light connect them to each other, and an almost transparent film expands outward from them.

The dome passes through me.

Nothing changes visually.

The sound does.

The city disappears.

It doesn’t get muffled. It doesn’t sound distant. It simply stops existing. The noise of the streets below the tower, the movement in the corridor, the small vibrations of the building, even the wind against the windows all vanish in the same instant. When I move my foot on the floor, the sound stays inside the barrier without picking up the room’s normal reverberation.

"Much better than those acoustic junk panels they put in private restaurant rooms," I say.

"Because those try to keep sound from leaving. This keeps acoustic information from crossing the barrier, including when it’s been transformed or carried by OXI."

I look at the pyramid again.

"Comfortable, isn’t it?"

"Expensive. Luxury is expensive."

"Well. Apparently so is comfort."

Rahul ignores that.

"Now we can talk."

He picks the cane back up and rests the top under both hands.

"How do you intend to get into the Deep Asylum?"

The question comes out simply enough to make me suspicious.

"You already know part of the plan."

"I know what you told me weeks ago. I want to know what you intend to do now."

I think before answering.

"I’ll bring people with me as far as possible. The group helps with infiltration, patrols, the perimeter, and anything that needs to be removed without raising an alarm. When I enter the prison core, they leave."

"And you?"

"I keep going alone."

Rahul keeps looking at me.

"Alone."

He sighs.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because going into a place built to find intruders with five people seems like an efficient way to die with company."

He doesn’t react to the sarcasm.

"Go on."

"The deeper we go, the smaller the group. Fewer OXI signatures, fewer people to hide, fewer variables if something goes wrong. Once I’m inside the sector where my father is, the problem is mine."

"And getting out?"

"Also mine."

Rahul runs his thumb over the head of the cane.

"That’s why I needed to talk to you."

Something in his tone makes me drop the more comfortable posture.

"What changed?"

He opens another drawer and takes out a thin metal plate. It isn’t the old map he’s already shown me, but a smaller copy of one specific part of the structure. He sets it on the desk and turns it toward me.

I see a long corridor ending in a thick division.

"The earlier intelligence was incomplete on that section," he says. "We’ve confirmed the mechanism of the last barrier before the containment core."

I pull the plate closer.

Two small symbols appear on opposite sides of the door.

"Two locks?"

"More than that. Two keys, two feed stations, and an independent presence sensor at each one."

I look at him.

"They have to turn simultaneously?"

"Within less than a second of each other."

That doesn’t sound like a major problem yet.

"I’ll keep someone with me as far as the door."

"And that someone goes in with you."

"They don’t have to."

Rahul stares at me like he’s been expecting this answer from the start.

"They do."

I point at the diagram.

"If the two keys open the door, that person can activate theirs, wait for it to open, and go back."

"No."

"Why not?"

Rahul pulls the plate closer and touches a small inscription near the two symbols.

"Because the keys aren’t the main authentication mechanism. They’re only the physical part. Each station has to receive OXI during activation."

"So someone feeds the second one."

"Someone other than me."

"Obviously."

"I don’t think you’ve understood."

He touches the first symbol.

"When you convert OXI into any usable form, the energy carries a signature. Mana, physical reinforcement, a skill, a raw discharge, it doesn’t matter. The structure changes, but there’s a pattern of origin that stays."

I know the concept, but I’ve never seen it applied that way.

"Like an energy fingerprint."

"Closer to a root than a fingerprint. The last door looks for two distinct roots at the same time. If the same origin feeds both stations, the mechanism doesn’t register a double presence. Going in and coming out."

I think about the problem.

"I can split my flow before converting it."

"It’s still you."

"Reservoirs?"

"Stored energy doesn’t satisfy the biological sensor."

"My ancestor, Duvilin?"

"There’s no organism present, only energy."

I don’t like how fast the answers come. Rahul has already run the same exits in his head.

Rahul shakes his head.

"The barrier interferes with spatial displacement in the final corridor. I don’t know whether it would block your particular skill, because I don’t know which one you intend to use, but betting the entire entry on it would be stupid."

I smile without meaning it.

"A Drowned?"

"No living OXI."

Rahul stays serious.

"The system also compares energy structure against what’s compatible with a Diver. The Deepwarden didn’t build that thinking only about human intruders. Drowned, summons, constructs, and bound creatures were all considered."

I look at the layout a while longer.

"Fifteen seconds," Rahul says.

"What?"

"When both signatures are accepted and the keys complete the turn, the door stays open for fifteen seconds. Then it closes and needs a new cycle."

"That’s enough time."

"For two people already standing there."

I finally understand why he isn’t talking about someone simply dropping me inside.

That person would have to cross with me. Putting one of Rahul’s agents at that point would mean infiltrating that agent all the way to the same core I’m trying to reach, taking the same risk, and then finding a way to extract someone tied directly to the Patala Syndicate out of an operation against the Deepwarden.

He can’t do that without turning my rescue attempt into his action. And any chance of failure would incriminate him.

"I see where you’re going. You can’t put one of yours in there."

"No."

"Because if they’re caught—"

"It stops being your rescue and becomes a direct act of aggression by the Patala Syndicate against a Deepwarden facility."

Rahul leans back in his chair.

"I’m creating an opportunity. Not starting a war."

I run my eyes over the layout.

"So I have to go in as a pair."

"As far as the cell core, yes."

That changes more than I’d like.

My plan depended on reducing the number of people as we advanced. Oliver could help break whatever needed breaking beforehand. Veric is excellent when the objective is keeping something from getting past him. Freya has enough strength to turn a bad withdrawal into a viable passage, and I don’t even know whether she’d follow me in there. Zhang Xi could keep everyone alive during the approach.

None of them was built to disappear inside a place like that.

One face comes up before I finish running through the others.

Rhayne.

Not only because Arthur trained her for espionage.

On Earth she detected three agents working in rotation before I did. She caught patterns, sustained a chase, went in and out of buildings without losing her head, and answered an opening with enough precision to put a Rank B on the ground.

And that was without her Battle Ribbon.

Without OXI.

Without Void Monarch working the way it works here.

Her ability changes the environment around her presence. Not simply hiding a body, but creating that strange nullity that interferes with how energy gathers and gets perceived. Inside a prison where every corridor probably has some form of detection, having Rhayne beside me could be the difference between crossing a section and lighting up half the complex.

The problem is the Rank.

Still D.

Now I understand why my insistence on her training stopped being only concern about her development.

I need her at C.

Fast.

"You’ve already picked someone," Rahul says.

I look up.

"I’m considering."

"Your face considers very decisively."

"Maybe I have an option."

"Then make sure your option is ready."

He doesn’t ask who, and I prefer it that way.

Rahul opens a small compartment in the cane itself.

This time he takes out two metal pieces.

He sets both on the desk.

I look at them.

The keys don’t look like keys.

Each one is a short rod of dark gray metal, a little larger than my closed hand. At the tip there are three incomplete rings mounted one inside the other, each cut at a different point, like broken orbits around a central hexagonal blade. When Rahul pushes one toward me, the rings turn a few degrees on their own and return to their original position.

I pick it up.

The metal vibrates faintly against my fingers.

The other one is almost identical, but the cuts in the rings are mirrored.

"Pretty."

"They weren’t made for decoration."

"You have a difficult relationship with compliments."

Rahul points with the cane.

"They’re functional copies of the keys that will be available during the shift change."

I turn one of them.

The rings move again.

"Copies?"

"Made from the correct matrices."

"How did you get the matrices?"

Rahul only looks at me.

I nod.

"Right. Stupid question."

"Finally, some progress."

I set the two side by side.

"And will they work on the day?"

"If nothing changes before the window, yes. One at each station. Both have to receive OXI while completing the activation."

"And if they change the mechanism?"

"Then you don’t get in."

Direct.

"Wonderful."

"Would you rather I lied, Mr. Sands?"

"No."

I put both away.

The weight in my inventory is practically irrelevant.

The meaning isn’t.

Two keys.

Two people.

Rahul touches the Effigy Isolation.

The three suspended faces start returning to the core. The film covering us loses shape, and the instant it disappears, every sound in the tower comes back at once. Footsteps in the corridor, wind against the structure, some equipment humming in another room. After several minutes inside absolute silence, it feels like somebody opened a door onto the whole city.

Rahul collects the small pyramid and puts it back in the drawer.

"That’s what I needed to tell you."

"You sent three agents to follow me on Earth to inform me that a door needs two people."

"I sent three agents because I preferred to discuss the structure of a Deepwarden facility somewhere half the existing classes don’t function."

"You could have started with that."

"You could have accepted the approach."

"Your daughter had a tranquilizer."

"Considering this conversation, I’m starting to think she should have brought two."

I let it go.

Rahul picks up a document from the desk.

The conversation is clearly over for him.

"In less than two weeks I’ll contact you again. When that happens, the window will be close and there won’t be much time for last-minute changes."

"Then I’ll get everything ready."

"Get the person going with you ready too."

That sentence lands differently now.

I stand.

"Anything else?"

"I have work to do."

I look at the destroyed cabinets.

"I imagine you have décor to replace as well."

Rahul doesn’t look up from the paper.

"Get out, Dryden Sands."

I accept the invitation.

I cross the room, open the door, and leave the office before he finds another way to charge me for the furniture.

Out in the corridor, my hand goes almost automatically to my inventory.

The two keys are still there.

One is mine.

The other still has no official name.

But I already know who needs to hold it.

I walk toward the elevator thinking about Rhayne. Hours ago I told her to go train because she needed to reach Rank C as soon as possible. Now I have a much worse reason to want her to make it.

She’s going to want to come.

That’s exactly the problem.

Rhayne has spent too long trying to prove she can be useful, that she doesn’t need protecting, that she deserves to be where the important decisions happen. Telling her I need her in the core of the Deep Asylum will probably sound like trust, recognition, and maybe even a reward for everything Arthur taught her.

To me, it means putting the person best suited for the job inside one of the most dangerous places I know.

The elevator doors open.

I arrived at that tower planning to break into the Deep Asylum alone.

I leave with two keys, and now I only have to work out how to tell Rhayne without making it sound like good news.