Dai Hong sealed the door, leaving Reed and the lieutenant to battle Zou Mei. Reed had a smile on her face before she left. Isaac hoped that same smile would be there once the battle had ended.

The chairman urged Isaac forward. They found themselves in another storage room, this one filled with crates and filing cabinets. Dai Hong sent a wave of Rddhi towards an open container filled with papers. They soon caught light; he had arranged the crates in such a way that burning one would enable the flames to leap and spread across what must’ve been the important documents he kept hidden.

The fire licked at Isaac’s face as he brought Dai Hong to the back of the room. After setting the chairman down, he pushed aside a large slab of metal, revealing another door. This one was also made of solid steel and had Zhanghai characters carved along its edges. After being helped back to his feet, Dai Hong placed a hand into the largest character. Rddhi slipped from his fingers, filling the character, and the glow spread around the door. This one had even more advanced security, for previous unseen characters emerged, while others flipped direction or transformed entirely.

“Once you two have made it past this door, I’ll activate its destruction mechanism,” Dai Hong explained as the glow intensified. “The basement will cave in on itself, taking most of the estate with it. That should buy you enough time to take the passageway to Four Eagles.”

“A tunnel?”

“A long one, but you’ll make it there in no time. There’s a rail track leading right to my office below the ghetto. I used a handcar to escape from Four Eagles to here. It’ll still be there for your usage.”

A handcar would have to be powered by Isaac and Reed themselves. He could imagine her complaining about the extra physical labor. “Think there’ll be enemies in the tunnels?”

Dai Hong shook his head. “If there were, they would’ve made it here by now. The junior officers now control the subterranean facility below Four Eagles, but they must not have found the escape route from my office. The entrance can only be open by those with this bracer - the same goes for this door." He gestured at his bracer. "Once I've finished, take it. It has been passed down in my family for generations. For centuries, it has been soaked in blood, but perhaps you’ll find a more just use for it.”

“Did the bracer help you use that dragon attack?”

“That was a power of my own design. But the Bracer of the Westward Wind will channel your power into your first, increasing your strength tenfold. Well…maybe twofold. I don’t hail from a very powerful family. I married into power, after all, on account of my good looks and test scores.”

“...right, right.” Every second that passed worried Isaac more and more, the odd bits of Chairman humor did little to assuage him, but there was little he could do until Dai Hong finished unlocking the door. The clash of steel against Zou Mei in the other room still continued, while gunfire continued to blare upstairs.

The lights in the door sent off a climactic flash and then disappeared, leaving only lingering sparks. Dai Hong turned a large valve on the wall, and then the door hissed as it opened. Steam billowed into the room from the doorway, revealing a darkness inside that would travel miles and miles until it reached Four Eagles.

A massive collision then struck the door they came through. The lieutenant screamed out, and then the door exploded entirely. Reed flew through the storm of metal, crashing landing in the center of the second storage room. Her eyes looked lost in a daze while blood dripped from the Domino Sword.

Zou Mei limped into the storage room while taking ragged breaths. Her qipao featured a large gash along the side along with another wound in her shoulder. She moved to pounce on Reed, but the lieutenant raced after her from behind. He was missing an arm, yet his remaining limb still gripped his sword tightly. Zou Mei had to turn around to deal with him. With precise movements, she deflected the wild fling of his sword, then slashed him across the throat with her iron claws.

The lieutenant stumbled for a moment, then dropped his sword. He collapsed to his knees and then looked at his commander. A Zhanghai phrase dripping with regret escaped from his lips, and then he fell face first onto the ground. Isaac understood the phrase must have been one of apology. Dai Hong yelled back something frantically; the lieutenant’s face shifted into a sorrowful smile as he passed.

Isaac moved to help Reed, but Zou Mei reversed the magnetism on one of her claws, sending the spikes directly at Dai Hong. Isaac pushed the chairman out of the way before the spikes could hit him. By that point, Reed had gotten back to her feet. She remained in a slight crouch, lacking the energy to stand fully upright. She flicked the blood off her sword and eyed Zou Mei, who took the moment to recover her strength.

“I’m tired of all this,” Reed said as energy crackled up her sword. “I’m tired of all these issues with our fathers. I have ‘em, Kieran did, as does Henry Spinelli, as do you. It’s getting on my nerves. Is our generation just doomed to bear the sins of the father?”

Standing amid the shards of metal from the destroyed door, she rose to full height and raised her head. “I guess being on the receiving end of our fathers’ trauma isn’t something we can help. We’ll just have to make sure we don’t screw over our children when the time comes. In the meantime, though, we can control our own responses to it. We’re not slaves to our parents. We’re not model images of them, either. We’re our own people. We can be who we want to be and find our happiness in the way we want. Kieran realized that before he died. I’ve realized it, too.”

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Zou Mei gritted her teeth as Rddhi ran through her wounds. Reed kept talking. “I want to be me. I want to live how I want to live. And you’re sure as hell not taking that away by killing me.”

Things moved fast. Reed slashed upwards, so Zou Mei leapt backwards to avoid the strike. Isaac had seen Reed’s sword enough to make out the usual patterns of Rddhi along it, but something shifted. The energy flared in different directions, with one surge striking a metal bolt on the ground. Reed, with her own magnetism powers, flung the bolt towards Zou Mei along with the initial strike. While Zou Mei dodged the sword strike, the little piece of metal pierced her thigh; she gasped from the unexpected blow and pain, temporarily dropping her defenses, and that's when things ended.

Reed slashed her sword downwards now, cleaving Zou Mei from neck to hip. Blood exploded from her body as the spikes dropped from her hands. The woman in the yellow qipao simply went slack jawed as she collapsed on her side. She couldn’t speak, but her mouth kept moving, like a fish gasping for her air.

“You,” she finally croaked out, glancing up at Reed. With pain in her eyes, Zou Mei tilted her head to look at her father. “You.”

Dai Hong initially covered his mouth, then lowered his head. “Daughter, I don’t expect you to forgive me. But here.”

He retrieved an object from within his armor and slid it across the ground. Zou Mei slowly reached a hand over to pick up the toy figurine, a little samurai made out of straw rendered ragged by the years.

“You gave that to me before I departed,” Dai Hong said. “I always intended to return it to you when the time was right.”

Zou Mei held the little samurai in her hand, then placed it over her heart.

“Daughter, we will be joining the spirits of our ancestors soon. I was ashamed to bring you back with me among the living, but I will not make that same mistake among the dead. If you wish to join me in our family’s hall in the Ashihara, you will be more than welcome to. We’ll find your mother and have her join us as well.”

Zou Mei took one last look at him, then closed her eyes. She shifted her head towards the ceiling. “Maybe I’d like that.”

Dai Hong was the first to die. He slumped against a stone wall then slid to the floor, bearing the same face of the lieutenant as he passed. The Rddhi lights within him flashed and flickered, draining away to the floor, until, one by one, they all went out.

That just left Zou Mei. She lingered on, her lights dying out slowly, until the figurine slipped from her fingers onto the floor. After a moment, Reed reached down and placed it atop her still heart.

“That’s that,” Reed merely said.

Isaac nodded. “Yeah, that’s that.”

He approached Dai Hong’s body and untied the bracer around his right arm. When he slipped it onto his own, it fit like a glove, except it was a glove without fingers and covered the wrist rather than the hand. When he tied the last string through the last hole, power surged within him. He could feel the bones and tendons and muscle and skin in his lower arm strengthening; Rddhi flowed gracefully into his right hand, which he clenched into a fist.

The battle may have ended below ground, but fighting continued on the upper floors. Isaac led Reed into the dark tunnel, leaving behind the fallen father and daughter. Inside the passageway, Isaac found a pipe and gauge on the wall, similar to the ones in the Heart’s underground facility. When he pushed Rddhi into it, the red lights streamed upwards, along the wall, activating a series of light fixtures. The lights continued down the tunnel, illuminating the way, until they disappeared around the bed.

The rail tracks followed the lights, and just as Dai Hong said, a handcart awaited them. It merely consisted of a flat bed and a mechanism in the center. If Isaac and Reed stood on either side and pushed down their respective handles in an alternating pattern, the cart would start moving.

“Extra physical labor?” Reed complained as Isaac caught her up to speed on how to get to Four Eagles.

He glanced back at the storage rooms. “Dai Hong didn’t have time to activate the door’s destruction sequence. We need to get moving. I don’t know how much longer the loyalist samurai upstairs can hold off the junior officers.”

Reed grunted, then turned toward the entrance. She nodded at Isaac, and then two launched their ranged attacks at the same time, over and over, until the roof in front of the entrance caved in, blocking the way out behind them. Nowhere to go but forward now.

Reed then stepped onto the handcar. Working in the Patuxet mines had familiarized Isaac with using such a machine; he pushed the handcar from behind, slowly picking up speed, while Reed pushed down on her handlebar. When the cart got moving, Isaac leapt atop of it and took up the job pushing down his own side of the mechanism.

The sounds of battle disappeared as the handcar continued down the tracks. Neither of the cadets said anything for a long while, and fortunately, once they got into a rhythm, using the handcar didn’t require all that much energy. The lights on the walls watched them silently as they headed for Four Eagles. Dai Hong never said how long it would take to reach the ghetto; considering they had to take a highway from the city to the estate, Isaac supposed it would take at least another two hours.

That gave him time to settle down and think after the long battle, at least. The same went for Reed.

“You think they’re really together in the afterlife?” she asked.

“I think so. It’s what they believe in, after all. The Skyfather has his Halls among the clouds, and they have their ancestral temple in the spirit realm.”

Reed looked at the lights. “No, I mean, is the afterlife even real?”

That threw Isaac for a loop. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“There’s no proof that it’s real, right?”

Isaac couldn’t say anything to that. He wasn’t sure what he could say.

The handcar continued on. More creaks, more lights, more tunnel.

“So don’t go dying on me, you hear?” Reed half-ordered, half-pleaded, her face tinged with red.

Isaac could at least answer that.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. And the same goes for you.”