The sound of their footsteps on the metal stairs echoed through the dimly lit stairwell in what felt like an endless cascade. From the first landing on the last, Kano was in another world in which only her journey and the sounds it produced existed. When she finally reached the bottom, it was like being reborn back into the real world. Everything felt new and alien before she settled back into reality, the experience vanishing as rapidly as it had appeared, like waking from a dream and having all memory of it fade away. She was getting really tired of going up and down stairs.

“What’s wrong?” Miusvon asked, stepping past her and looking back.

Kano shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

They continued beyond the stairwell into the bowels of the structure. The lights were on and everything looked in good repair, but there was no one in sight. Had all the workers fled or had they been removed? Kano imagined they must need quite a few to keep the place running, but there was no sign of them. There was nothing to indicate violence, so she doubted they’d been killed.

That was a positive, at least. They’d need them to go back to work once whatever was happening here was dealt with. Kano walked through the myriad of mechanical and electrical apparatuses around her, looking for any abnormalities. Everything looked like it had been maintained and was free of any obvious tampering, not that she knew what they were for or cared to know.

“See anything?” Kano asked.

“Nope,” Miusvon said, scanning the room in much the same manner as Kano, “but I don’t think anything is broken, and there’s nothing broken on the citadel’s end either. So something must be unplugged or turned off around here.”

And then they’d just turn it back on or plug it back in? It seemed hard to believe whoever was behind this would go to all this effort if their tampering was so easily reversed. What was their goal? Were they trying to halt An’s progress? No one outside the citadel should even know enough about what she was doing to want to stop her. And unless they’d broken something important, this was a poor attempt at stopping her. All they’d really done so far was inconvenience An and send Kano off on a pointless errand.

Kano froze. “Can you contact An from here?”

“No, why?”

“What if they only did this to lure us out here? And now that we’re gone, they’re going to try to take over the citadel?”

“Oh shit,” Miusvon said, eyes widening. “You might be right.”

“You should probably go back and check, just to make sure. Take the ghouls with you. I’ll be fine here.”

Miusvon stared hard at Kano without saying anything. After apparently coming to a conclusion, she said, “Are you sure?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Casting a final look back at Kano from the bottom of the stairs, Miusvon hurried off. Kano sighed as she contemplated her own dull task, and the tension she’d felt since the ambush at the entrance drained away. It was hard to maintain a sense of danger when she was poking around down here without any sign of opposition. If they were going to attack her again, surely they would already have done so.

She kept her ears open for anyone hiding among the contraptions around her, but there was only the sound of the normal operation of the machinery. As dull as it was, Kano forced herself to proceed slowly. Missing something because she was rushing would only cost her later, as would stumbling into whatever might be waiting for her down here. She wasn’t overly worried about the potential enemies after the sorry bunch she’d encountered on the top floor, but there was no need to court disaster with a lack of caution.

Threading her way through the narrow walkways between the machines, Kano sneezed. There was something in the air, some particle that was irritating her eyes and nose, but she couldn’t see or smell anything out of the ordinary. Rubbing her eyes, she explosively exhaled through her nose then pinched it shut and hurried forward, no longer searching for problems with the machines.

She was willing to bet whatever was in the air shouldn’t be here, which meant the intruders had likely brought it with them. It got worse the farther she went, until her eyes were burning and it was hard to see through the stream of tears. But rather than deter her, she moved faster. The worse it got, the more convinced Kano was that this was the right way.

She was passing an innocuous pipe when she noticed it had been pierced with a number of holes. They were too small for her to see much of what was happening inside, but there were streams of tiny particles issuing forth from each of the holes. The particles seemed to vanish almost as soon as they left the hole, so Kano assumed they must be too small for her to see once they were less densely packed. Judging by how she felt, this certainly seemed to be the source of the irritation.

Following the pipe, Kano ended up in a small corner of the metallic maze. There was a larger hole in the pipe there, and everything within arm’s reach, including the pipe itself, was covered in a grayish-brown slime. Including some ghouls standing in a tight formation in her path. There had to be at least two dozen of them, all just standing there watching her. A few of them held tools, but none of them were really armed, yet Kano still found their attention disquieting.

Had they been waiting here? Why? “What are you doing here?” she demanded, but none of them seemed to hear her. Were the ghouls who worked here deaf and dumb? No, it didn’t seem possible. There was no way people that braindead would be useful, especially for a task as complex as maintaining and operating a power plant. Then what were they doing here? Were they supposed to stop her from getting too close to whatever that slime was? She wasn’t sure why she’d want to, but if someone was trying to stop her from doing it, that was a good enough reason for her.

“Get out of the way,” she said, addressing the group as a whole.

As she expected, none of them moved, and she found herself at something of an impasse. There was no room to move past their ghoulish wall, which only seemed to leave killing them until she cleared a path. Something about it was distasteful to Kano, but she couldn’t quite figure out what as she shouldered her rifle and took aim at the closest ghoul.

She was pulling the trigger back when she heard a voice from amidst the group in front of her say, “Wait.” Their words were curt, authoritative, and they didn’t sound quite right. It was like they were coming from some sort of speaker rather than the owner being present, and Kano hadn’t noticed any of the ghouls in front of her speaking. None of them had even moved.

Figuring the voice must be coming from a device carried by one of the ghouls, Kano spoke in their general direction. “Why should I wait? And who are you?”

“Though I doubt it means anything to you, my name is Eomonsa,” the voice said. “And these are the ones responsible for maintaining the power plant, who I think you’d prefer not to kill if given another option.”

“Yeah? And what’s this other option?”

“Well, you could always leave here and give up, but I’m guessing that’s not going to happen. Instead, how about this: You give me some time, let’s say twenty-four hours, and then you can have your power back no problem.”

“And if I refuse? What if I just kill these ghouls?”

“Not only will you be without anyone to man this facility,” Eomonsa said, sounding rather smug, “I’ll see to it that it’s wrecked badly enough that it won’t be producing power again anytime soon, maybe ever.”

Kano frowned. Were they really willing to go that far? “You’re really willing to ruin this place? Don’t you need it as well?”

“I do, but I have other options available to me.”

She wasn’t sure she believed that, but she couldn’t afford to call him on his bluff either; there was too much at risk. If Eomonsa, whoever he was, was planning to negotiate like this, why had he ambushed them at the entrance?

“Why did your men attack us?” She wasn’t certain they were his, but it seemed pretty damn likely.

Eomonsa hesitated before responding, and when he did there was a hint of uncertainty in his tone. “The orders I gave them were not very precise. They must have misinterpreted what I wished them to do.”

It was possible. Ghouls messing up what they were supposed to be doing was hardly anything new, but Kano thought he was probably lying. If he were telling the truth, there’s no reason why he would have hesitated. Which meant there must be something he wasn’t telling her. She tried to think of what it could be, but nothing came to mind. Was anything he’d said up to this point true?

Mind racing, she discarded that notion and switched to reviewing everything she could safely assume was true. As she worked down the list, she realized he must have lured them out here on purpose. It was possibly he didn’t know who exactly would show up, but he’d clearly done it on purpose.

This elaborate setup made no sense unless he was expecting them. That, and he didn’t seem at all surprised to see her here. And he must know who she was. After all, who didn’t? Whereas Kano had never even heard the name Eomonsa before.

“Why do you need this power? Couldn’t you have waited?” If he wanted to avoid conflict, he could have waited until An’s work was done. He appeared to have some familiarity with what she was doing.

“I would have liked to, but time is of the essence.”

“For you to do what?”

“I’m not sure you’d understand.”

“Try me.” He was definitely trying to stall her, but to what end?

“I’ve created something, a living being. But it is dangerously unstable. Keeping it stable and contained requires an immense amount of energy, far more than I had anticipated. Hence this temporary seizure of the power plant.”

It seemed like a decent explanation, but what he’d done here didn’t strike Kano as a spur-of-the-moment thing. There was a lot of information and at least a little planning that had gone into this. “You made something? You’re a necromancer, then?” She hadn’t considered it before, but it was hardly surprising. Who else would do something like this?

“A necromancer? No, not exactly. So, what’s it going to be? Are you going to leave peacefully, or are you going to ruin this place for the both of us?”