The iron door of the observation deck didn't burst open. It didn't yield to the violence of a shoulder or a ram. Instead, it groaned—a slow, agonizing shriek of metal against metal—as the heavy hydraulic bolts were remotely disengaged.
The frost on the glass shattered, falling like frozen diamonds into the dark, white-vapor-filled room.
Victor Thorne stepped through the threshold.
He was a man who seemed to defy the very laws of the chaos around him. While the Aether was vibrating with the hum of self-destruction and the air was a lethal fog of liquid nitrogen, Victor looked as though he had just stepped out of a private box at the Metropolitan Opera. His charcoal overcoat was perfectly tailored, his silver hair swept back with military precision, and his eyes—the same pale, predatory gray as Marcus's—held a terrifying, vacant calm.
He didn't look at Silas first. He looked at Evelyn.
"Evelyn," Victor said, his voice a smooth, cultured baritone that seemed to absorb the sound of the alarms. "You have your mother's habit of hiding in corners when the world gets loud. It's a pity. Rose always did her best work when she was center stage."
Silas moved then, a low, guttural growl escaping his throat. He was still on one knee, his body a trembling mass of pain and cold, but he raised the 9mm, his finger tightening on the trigger. The muzzle of the gun was the only thing between Victor and the woman Silas was shielding.
"Don't take another step, Victor," Silas hissed, his voice sounding like it was being dragged over broken glass.
Victor didn't stop. He walked with the help of his gold-headed cane, the rhythmic clack... clack... clack on the frozen marble floor sounding like a gavel in a courtroom. He stopped exactly six feet away—the range of a master who knew his student was too weak to strike.
"Silas," Victor said, a hint of genuine disappointment in his tone. "I taught you that the most important part of a structure is the foundation. And yet, here you are, clinging to a ruin. You've spent three years playing the cripple, feeding me garbage data through the Aether's relays, thinking you were the one holding the leash. Did you really think I didn't know?"
"You knew?" Silas's voice was a fragile thread of disbelief.
"I knew the moment you began to 'sabotage' the Chrysalis," Victor said, gesturing with his cane toward the frozen, violet-eyed woman in the room below. "I let you do it. I needed the prototype to have a soul, Silas. And nothing creates a soul quite like the grief of a man who thinks he's protecting the woman he loves."
Victor turned his gaze back to Evelyn, his eyes narrowing. "He didn't tell you the whole truth, did he, Evelyn? About the night of the crash?"
Evelyn felt the cold from the nitrogen seep into her very bones, but it was nothing compared to the ice forming in her chest. She looked at Silas, whose face was a mask of grey, agonizing horror. "Silas... what is he talking about?"
"The crash was an accident," Silas whispered, his gaze fixed on Victor. "My father... he was trying to save her."
"Your father was a coward, Silas," Victor interrupted, his voice turning into a sharp, clinical blade. "Julian Nightwood knew the project was failing. He knew Arthur Vance was coming for the source code. So he made a deal. He offered me the code in exchange for a clean exit. But Rose... Rose found out. She tried to run. And Julian... your beloved, saint-like father... he was the one who signaled the truck."
The room went silent, the only sound the distant, dying scream of the server fans.
Evelyn felt the world tilt. She looked at Silas, the man she had begun to trust, the man whose scars she had traced with her own fingers. "Silas? Is that... is that true?"
Silas didn't answer. He couldn't. He stared at Victor, the gun in his hand trembling so violently it looked like it was made of shadow. "My father... he said... he said he tried to stop it."
"He lied to you, Silas," Victor purred, taking another step forward. "Just as you've been lying to her. You didn't marry her to protect her from me. You married her to protect the Nightwood name from the truth. You knew if she ever unlocked the Mercury, she'd see your father's signature on the liquidation orders for her mother's life."
Evelyn pulled back from Silas, her hands letting go of his shirt as if it were burning her. She stood up, her body shivering in the freezing air, her blue eyes turning into shards of lethal, unadulterated fury.
"Is that why you hid the drive, Silas?" she asked, her voice a low, jagged sound. "Is that why you didn't want me to see the Mercury?"
"Evelyn, no," Silas gasped, trying to reach for her, his legs failing as he slumped against the fallen pillar. "It's not what you think... Victor is twisting it..."
"The truth doesn't need to be twisted, Silas," Victor said, his hand reaching into his coat pocket. He pulled out a small, black device—a remote trigger. "The Aether is about to purge. In thirty seconds, everything in this room—the data, the prototype, and the two of you—will be erased. Unless..."
He looked at the silver drive in Evelyn's hand.
"Give me the Mercury, Evelyn. Give me the consciousness of Rose Vance, and I will let Silas walk out of here. I'll even give you the files that prove your father was the one who actually pulled the trigger. You can have your revenge. You can have your life back. All you have to do is let the ghost go."
Evelyn looked at the drive, then at Silas, who was watching her with a look of profound, soul-shredding despair. He wasn't the Master anymore. He was just a man caught in the foundations of his own lies.
"The Master must learn to crawl," Victor whispered, quoting the message from the nursery. "It seems he already has."
Evelyn's fingers tightened on the silver drive. She looked at Victor Thorne—the man who had orchestrated her mother's death, the man who had turned her life into a game of shadows. And then she looked at the "Clockwork Rose" below, the violet eyes still staring into the abyss.
She realized then that the war wasn't about the Nightwoods or the Vances. It was about the fact that everyone in her life had treated her like a piece of code to be compiled or deleted.
"Chapter twenty-three, section one," Evelyn said, her voice turning into a sharp, cold silk that made Victor's eyes widen in surprise. "If the foundation is built on a lie, then the only thing left to do is let the whole house fall."
She didn't hand the drive to Victor. She didn't give it back to Silas.
She walked toward the edge of the observation deck, where the glass had been shattered by the cold.
"Evelyn, wait!" Silas shouted, his voice a roar of terror.
"You want the Mercury, Victor?" Evelyn asked, holding the drive over the plummeting abyss of the server room. "Then you better hope your 'perfect' machine knows how to catch."
She let go.
The silver drive fell into the white vapor, a streak of chrome disappearing into the dark.
Victor Thorne let out a sound—a high, strangled hiss of fury—and lunged for the edge. For a split second, the polished "Architect" vanished, replaced by a desperate, greedy animal.
Silas saw the opening. He didn't use the gun. He used his body. He threw himself forward, his weight slamming into Victor's legs, taking the older man down with him into the frozen ruins of the server room.
"Go, Evelyn!" Silas roared as they tumbled over the edge. "Get out of here!"
Evelyn stood on the precipice, the cold wind whipping her hair, the smell of ozone and death filling her lungs. She didn't look back. She didn't cry.
She turned toward the rappelling line on the balcony.
The Aether was dying. The secrets were burning. And for the first time in twenty-four years, the ghost of Rose Vance was finally free.
But as Evelyn swung out into the dark, snowy night of the Catskills, she heard a sound from the server room below.
It wasn't an explosion. It was a laugh.
A high, melodic, and perfectly human laugh.
The Mercury hadn't been destroyed. It had been activated.