Central Square is a heaving mass of bodies—sweaty workers, smeared in mud and oil, fight with a line of wardens in riot gear. The line of black-clad officers sways like an organic thing, bending but never breaking, no matter how much the workers try to push through.

The wardens stand between the mob and the shiny marble streets of Central Square—blazing white even in the late evening sun, and lined with neatly manicured shrubs and flowerbeds. Where the rioters have stormed through, the plants are decimated, shredded on the floor under steel-capped boots and sneakers.

“They’ll never hold them all back,” I mutter to Frank, who seems like he’s aching to join them.

We hold back, peering out at the riots from a safe distance to plan a route through to Sinclair’s building—an imposing skyscraper encased in green glass. It stretches into the sky like an emerald needle, with Sinclair most likely sitting right at the top.

“Maybe we can sneak through when they break the line?” I motion to the rioters.

Frank nods. “Maybe we could. But it’d be hard to go unnoticed. Especially if they’re Harding’s crew. They all know our faces by now.”

“Kind of difficult to sneak with this stuff in tow, I guess,” I nod to the trolley behind me, covered in a dust sheet.

“It’s okay, we don’t have to get to the top, anyway. The service tunnels will work just as well.”

“We won’t get into the normal service hatches with our cargo.”

“I have a shortcut.” Frank beckons to me, backing away from the heaving mob towards Main Street.

I’m not the least bit disappointed to leave the crowds behind us, but it takes a moment to get the trolley moving. The weight of the bottles slows me down, and every bump in the pavement causes the glass to clatter together, until I’m sure someone is going to come running after us.

With Frank’s help, I take the trolley down Main Street—deserted now the crowds have all descended on the Square, and we duck down an alley behind a shop. Frank leads me to a tall steel gate in the wall. It looks locked, but he grabs the cross bar and gives it a quick jerk, grimacing from the effort, and it swings freely.

We push the trolley through and close the gate behind us. Inside, a long service tunnel extends forward, lit by orange emergency lights.

“Ugh,” I sigh. “Great, more tunnels.”

“Almost done,” Frank says.

I pause, my hands gripping the trolley so tightly that my knuckles turn white. “Frank…”

He stops, turning to regard me questioningly.

“What if I’m wrong? What if Harding’s nowhere in Skycross?”

His face softens, and he takes my hand in his, easing it away from the trolley and holding it in his firm grip. “Then we’ll try something else. But I think you’re really on to something here, Kyla. It’s a better lead than anything else I can think of.”

“Maybe if Melly checks the security footage again—”

“She already checked. Harding knows how to go unnoticed better than anyone. If there was anything to see, she’d have seen it.”

I frown, battling with the doubt that creeps up my neck. It all seemed so plausible back at Lena’s place—Sinclair was the only other contact we could find with any meaningful connection to Harding. Someone with his reputation so heavily tied into Harding’s plan must be involved somehow.

“If they don’t have a safe house here,” Frank continues, “then we’ll look elsewhere. But Kyla, I need you with me now. We have to get this done.”

He’s right. But since leaving Reform, my mind has been straying, wandering and circling around the same anxieties every few moments.

“Do you need a dose?” Frank holds a small bottle towards me for the millionth time this afternoon.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I roll my eyes. “No, no more doses! If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it now, without anything else from Emotiv.”

Frank frowns. “But Kyla—”

“I know, Frank.” I hold my hand out, irritated by his reminder. “I know. But later, okay?”

I release my fingers from his grip and take the trolley handle again, heaving my weight against it to get it moving. The heavy stack of bottles clink together in complaint, the wheels barely turning as it inches along.

Oblivion slinks in the back of my mind, its black smoky tendrils reaching for any lucid thought it can find, any ray of light it can extinguish.

But I have to fight it. Relying on Emotiv’s syrups to fix this problem means I’ll never be free of them, I’ll always be in debt to the very people who got me in this mess to begin with. I can’t explain it to Frank, who’s so practical, so logical—he’d just laugh at me, tell me to stop being so stubborn. But I can’t help it.

“Kyla, you’re on dangerous territory here.” Caleb’s face swims in my vision, like a ghost hovering in front of me. I shake my head to clear it and shove against the trolley again, building the momentum enough to get it moving. Frank grabs the front handle with a sigh and pulls it along, casting concerned glances my way every few moments.

“Well, that’s what the sewers will do to you, I guess.” Caleb’s eyebrows draw together, concern etched on his forehead.

“Shut up,” I hiss back at him.

Frank stops the trolley, staring at me. “I didn’t say nothing.”

“I know,” I reply, shaking my head. “It’s just… It’s nothing. Come on.”

The orange lights flicker as we jog along the long tunnel. Where the route we took to get out of reform felt like the beginnings of an underground labyrinth, this tunnel is almost a direct route, with only a few side paths, which Frank mostly ignores, intent on moving forward.

At the end, a large service elevator stands idle—a big cage with two barred gates covering the entrance. It’s a far cry from the clean, slick tech above ground, but seeing as only workers ever use it, I doubt the VIPs care that much.

We each take a gate handle and yank them apart, pushing the trolley inside and clambering in after it. The metal squeaks in protest, and I glance down between my feet, through the grate. Below the swinging cage, a long shaft descends into darkness—the light from the small emergency lights swallowed by the oblivion below. The giddying height makes my stomach turn, and I grip tighter on the handrail.

Frank cranks the lever and the motors whirr into action. We descend into the shaft with nothing but the small orange cage light to see by.

I glance at Frank—his stern face set, he peers into the darkness with one hand on the lever, ready to stop us. I feel like I can read his thoughts—his doubts, his fears. They’re the same as mine, I’m sure.

“Do you really think this is gonna work?” I ask in a small voice.

He turns to me in surprise, as if he’s forgotten I was standing with him. “Of course I do,” he says, squeezing my shoulder. “Why would I have come with you otherwise?”

Caleb cocks one eyebrow in a ‘told you so’ expression. “See, even he must see this isn’t all your fault.”

Frank frowns. “Kyla? What are you looking at?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. We’re almost there.”

Below our feet, bright white lights break through the oblivion, shining across a wet concrete floor, and a set of steel doors. When the cage reaches the bottom, Frank pushes the lever, and the clamps engage with a squeal.

I peer at the sign above the double doors—Central Square Reservoir.

“Alright,” Frank says, tugging on the trolley. “Let’s do this.”

We clatter through the gates, past the double doors and into a large chamber, buzzing with the drone of heavy machinery. Somewhere unseen, massive engines power the water treatment facility, cleaning and recycling the supplies for Central Square. The first chamber is an enormous cube, with doors in the middle of every wall leading off to other facilities. In the centre of the chamber, a large reservoir sits below our feet. The floor is clear perspex, allowing us to see the surface of the water, reflecting the white lights back at us.

“How do we get this in there?” I motion to the trolley.

Frank pulls me over to a corner, where a control station sits. It’s like the control console for a crane—a small panel with a few dials and switches. It’s probably very simple to use when you know what you’re doing.

Caleb snorts. “You of all people know it's not that simple, Ky.”

I shake my head, wiling myself to ignore him as Frank bends over the desk, flicking switches and muttering to himself. At first, nothing happens. Then a whirring sound behind me makes me spin around.

At my feet, a panel of perspex slides across, exposing the water’s surface so I could reach in and touch it.

“It’s for testing,” Frank says, “but this works for us, too. Come on, before someone comes by.”

I grab the dust sheet on the trolley and yank it back, uncovering the bottles underneath. Honesty, Bliss, Understanding, Empathy, Compliance, Serenity—anything that could invoke a sense of community, of wellbeing, of the will to do the right thing. Every syrup we could think of and gather from Lena’s supplies sits stacked on the trolley, the liquid sloshing about as we take one huge bottle at a time, and dump it into the reservoir.

“Have you ever mixed this many syrups together at once?” I ask, dumping a third bottle of Honesty in the water.

Frank chuckles darkly. “Nope. But with it this diluted, I figure we can’t exactly kill anyone. And if we do…”

Caleb nods. “Well, pobody's nerfect.”

I swallow the lump in my throat and grab a bottle of Serenity, unscrewing the cap and dumping it into the water with the rest. At some point, we give up on emptying the bottles, and just open them and throw them in. This way, we get through the trolley in minutes, emptying the contents into the VIP’s water supply.

With the last bottle empty, Frank beckons to me. “Alright, Kyla, let’s go find our girls.”