The outer door of the Boiler Room was gone. Not broken, not forced. Just gone. In its place was a rectangle of smoke and the angry orange flicker of emergency lighting from the corridor beyond. The air, usually thick with the smell of damp metal and wet ozone, now tasted of burnt wiring and something sharp, like powdered steel. The steady, rhythmic hum of the massive water pumps was lost beneath the crackle of pulse-rifle fire and the percussive slam of Warden boots on the grated floor. The siege had begun.
There were eleven rebels left inside. The Warden forces numbered more than fifty. It was bad math.
The Veteran Dreamer, Silas Kane, moved through the chaos like a man walking through a gentle rain. His presence was a form of gravity, pulling the frantic energy of the younger defenders into a more stable orbit. He placed a hand on the shoulder of a boy who was fumbling with a power pack, his fingers trembling. The boy looked up, his eyes wide with terror.
— Steady, son, — Silas said, his voice a low rumble that was felt more than heard. — One shot at a time. Make it count.
The boy nodded, his hands suddenly still. He slammed the power pack home. Silas was already moving, his gaze sweeping over the fortified positions they had thrown together from old machinery and scrap metal. His real focus was not on the firefight. It was on the bank of servers in the heart of the room, their indicator lights blinking with a frantic, silent urgency. The archives. The complete history of their rebellion, every name, every dream, every small act of defiance. All of it was being uploaded to the Foundry Chorus. It was the only thing that mattered.
His comm crackled. It was Jax, his voice a tinny wire of pure stress stretched across the distance from the Foundry.
— Archives at seventy-five percent, Silas. Ten minutes on my clock. My analysis says you have Wardens two minutes from the server room.
Silas looked at the main corridor. The first wave of Wardens was pinned down, but a second, larger group was massing just beyond the smoke. He did the math. They did not have ten minutes. They did not have five. The price of their history was time, and the bill was coming due.
A young woman, her face smudged with grime, scrambled over to him from her position behind a rusted pump housing. — Sir, the last group is pulling back to the blast door. We have to go. Now.
The main blast door to the exit corridor was their final chokepoint, their only way out. Silas looked from the blinking server rack to the dark maw of the corridor where the Wardens would make their final push. He saw the equation. He saw the only variable he could control. Himself.
— No, — he said, his voice quiet but absolute.
— But sir—
— I’m buying you ten minutes, — Silas stated. It was not a boast. It was a transaction. He was trading himself for the data. He turned to the young woman. — Get them to the door. All of them. That’s an order.
He saw the conflict in her eyes. The instinct to obey, the horror of leaving him behind. He was their anchor, the man who told stories of the old days and made them feel like this fight was part of something that stretched back through time. He was the living thread connecting them to their own past. And he was telling them to cut him loose.
She hesitated for a heartbeat, then nodded, her jaw tight. — Yes, sir.
He watched as she relayed the order. The remaining defenders fell back, a slow, fighting retreat toward the massive steel blast door at the far end of the chamber. They moved with a reluctance that tore at him, their backward glances like physical blows. He stood his ground, a lone, gray figure in the flickering light, a scavenged pulse rifle held loosely at his side. He was a storyteller, not a soldier. But some stories had to be paid for in blood.
The last rebel slipped through the doorway. The blast door began to hiss shut, its massive gears grinding in protest. For a moment, he was alone. The sound of the firefight was replaced by the hum of the servers and the steady drip of water from a high, unseen pipe. It was the sound of his home.
Then they came.
The first squad of Wardens moved into the room, their movements fluid and synchronized. They fanned out, weapons raised. At their head was the Warden Commander, a man whose immaculate gray uniform seemed to repel the grime and smoke of the room. His face was a clean, angular mask of professional calm. He saw Silas standing alone and raised a single hand, halting his squad.
The Warden Commander’s eyes met his across the fifty meters of open floor. There was no flicker of recognition, no hint of emotion. It was the look of a man assessing a final, predictable obstacle. Silas gave a slow, deliberate nod. The Commander returned it. The terms were understood.
Silas let the rifle clatter to the floor. He closed his eyes. He was not a soldier. He reached for a different kind of weapon. He reached inward, into the endless, quiet space of the Dreamscape. He gathered the threads of memory. Not of people, or places. He gathered the memory of weight. The memory of stone. The feeling of bedrock, of mountains, of things that did not move. He pulled on them, not with the delicate touch of a weaver, but with the raw, desperate strength of a man trying to build a dam with his bare hands.
The air in the Boiler Room grew thick, heavy. The temperature dropped ten degrees in as many seconds. A fine layer of frost bloomed on the server racks. The Warden Commander took an involuntary step back, his professional calm finally cracking. His soldiers murmured in confusion.
With a sound like the world tearing, a wall of solid, gray stone erupted from the floor. It slammed into the ceiling, a monument of pure, dream-forged reality. It was a hundred feet thick and sealed the corridor completely. The Psyche-Bleed was immense. Silas felt a warm trickle of blood from his nose. His hands shook with the strain. He had done it.
A single green light on the server rack blinked, then went dark. A voice, small and clear in his ear-comm.
— Transfer complete, Silas. We have it. Get out of there.
It was Jax. It was too late.
The stone wall held for three seconds. Then four. On the fifth second, it exploded inward, dissolving into a storm of gray dust and psychic noise. The effort had been too much. The dream had broken.
The Warden Commander stepped through the settling dust, his pulse rifle now aimed at Silas’s chest. His expression was unreadable, a mask of cold logic reasserted. Wardens swarmed into the room, their weapons trained on the lone, unarmed old man. Silas did not move. He was spent. He had bought the time. He had paid the price. The rebellion’s memory was safe.
The low hum of the now-empty server rack filled the sudden silence. The air smelled of cold stone and ozone.
Now they would make him a weapon.
