They found Werisah muttering to himself outside the reactor room.

“What’s the problem?” Kano asked, and Werisah recoiled.

“What? Oh, you’re back again. I see you brought the blob.”

“Do you two know each other?” Kano glanced back at Ren, who shook her head.

“An mentioned her in passing,” Werisah said, toying with the sleeve of his robe.

“Anyway, she said you were trying to fix the reactor or something? What’re you doing out here?”

“If you must know, I’m having trouble just getting inside. The door appears to be locked.”

Kano shrugged. “Can’t you just break it?” Surely a necromancer could manage that much.

“Possibly, but I’d prefer to avoid tripping any sort of alarm or damaging the reactor.”

Then it seemed like they were out of luck. Unless there was someone else who could open it for them. She took a closer look at the door. There was a good chance Kano wouldn’t be able to force it open on her own, and even if she could, it wouldn’t do much good if she messed something important up as a result.

That was, however, assuming they had to forcibly open the door at all. Based on Kano’s experience with the citadel and the Armonin Research Center, the door would probably open for a small group of approved people. And given that Karen would surely have been one of those people, it stood to reason that Kano would be as well.

She wasn’t quite sure how that all worked, but the door in Shorin’s room had opened for her. And sure enough, as she pressed her hand against the hardened steel, so did this one.

Werisah stomped over to Kano. “What did you just do?”

“Opened the door.”

“Yes, I can see that. How did you open it?”

“It just opened for me.”

Staring at her with an expression of loathing, he said “Forget it” and stepped past her into the reactor room. Not seeing much point in standing around outside, Kano followed him. Most of the large room was filled by the reactor, which was protected by a thick wall of glass.

The rest of the room seemed ordinary enough, but Kano had never seen anything quite like the reactor. Dark-colored organic gunk was arranged in a complex pattern that reminded her of an electrical circuit with lots of little nodes. Except the whole thing was biological rather than mechanical. Connected by delicate strands, tiny bulbs of organic matter shifted slightly from time to time. It was clear they were doing something, but Kano had no idea what.

This thing was responsible for generating all that energy? She supposed it made sense that she hadn’t the faintest idea how it did that, since the energy it created was a mystery to her. Did everything necromancers were involved with have to be so complicated? It made interacting with them even harder to stomach.

“So,” Kano said from the doorway, “can you fix it?”

“It’s hard to say,” Werisah replied, eyes fixed on the reactor. “Especially if you keep bothering me. If you insist on being down here, for whatever reason, at least stop talking.”

Though she very much wanted to keep talking to spite him as well as stave off boredom, Kano decided that would be foolish, given that Ren’s life was at stake. So instead, she waited as he spent a while inspecting the reactor and the various controls present throughout the room.

After a while, he stopped his examination. “I don’t understand.”

Kano snorted in amusement. Even if it might lead to Ren’s demise, Kano still enjoyed watching someone so arrogant sound so dumbfounded by their own incomprehension. “What’s wrong? Don’t you understand anything about the reactor?”

“I understand it well enough, or at least I’m beginning to. What I don’t understand is why it’s not working. As far as I can tell, everything is in perfect working order, and it was working up until very recently.”

“When did it stop?” Kano asked, curiosity replacing amusement despite her usual disinterest toward such things.

“It took a while before the concentrated energy in the lab started to disperse, but as far as I can gather the reactor stopped working around when…” Rubbing his forehead beneath his hood, he took a few moments to think. “It appears to have been around when An freed that blob from its captivity. How strange.” He turned to glare at Kano. “Did you have anything to do with this?”

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“What? I didn’t even know this reactor existed until a few minutes ago.” When Ren had told her about it. Was there actually some connection between the two? It was far from unthinkable. “Besides, if the reactor isn’t broken, can’t you just turn it back on or whatever?”

“That was one of the first things I tried, but there’s nothing in here that controls whether or not the reactor is actually on.”

Kano took another look at the room around them. “What is all this stuff for, then?” Had he just missed something? How could there not be a way to turn it on?

“It’s more for monitoring the reactor than anything, which isn’t overly helpful when the reactor isn’t running at all. Though I can say with confidence they indicate there’s nothing wrong with it.”

Oh, great, the necromancer was confident. Maybe the reactor was just broken instead of about to explode. “Are there controls somewhere else?”

“I doubt it. There’s nothing like that in the lab, at least, and I don’t see where else someone would have put them.”

Maybe in another, similarly sealed room? There had been a lot of switches in there, but there was a good chance she’d need a necromancer to figure them out. She was hesitant to hand the citadel’s secrets over to a necromancer on general principle, but the need was probably sufficiently great here. “I think I might know where the switch you’re looking for is.”

Werisah stared at her.

“What?” Kano asked. Was he trying to see if she was telling the truth?

“Well? Where is it?”

Stepping out of the reactor room, Kano realized Ren was nowhere to be seen. She considered going to look for her, but from what Ren had said, she probably wouldn’t leave the citadel. Whatever the blob was doing, Kano could always fetch her once the reactor was working again.

After another brisk hike through the citadel, Kano brought Werisah to the sealed door in Shorin’s old room. It opened for her again, and she gestured toward the various switches within. “Well, there they are.”

Mumbling unintelligible yet unkind-sounding words, the necromancer stepped past her to the controls. He’d been at it for less than a minute before he threw his hands up in frustration. “Nothing here so much as mentions the reactor.”

“Are you sure?” It had seemed like a fairly safe bet.

“Of course I am. Reading isn’t exactly difficult.”

“Well, even if they aren’t directly related to it, there might still be something there that will help.” They’d already walked all this way. She didn’t want to leave empty-handed, and there had to be something of use. Why else would Karen have even built this room? Particularly since she’d gone to the trouble of sealing it off.

“Fine,” Werisah said, and went back to looking. After a while he sighed and said, “I’m not sure if it will be of any use, but I have found something of potential interest.” He pointed at one of the switches labeled simply “Log.”

“What is it?”

“I’m guessing it either allows you to record or access records of some kind.”

“Well, turn it on, then.” Neither of those sounded the least bit dangerous, so they might as well get started.

The switch turned upward with a mechanical click, and a semitransparent figure in black robes appeared before them. Their face was one that had become very familiar to Kano after spending so much time with Ren—that of Kano herself. Or to be more precise, Karen.

“Whoever you are,” the image of Karen said, “the fact that you’re watching this means that I’m dead, as is Shorin. Wherever his soul ends up, I hope he suffers horrifically for all the problems he’s caused me. Though I’m probably somewhat to blame, given that I made him in the first place.”

Karen shook her head before continuing. “But I digress. None of that matters anymore. Now that Shorin is dead, the reactor will have activated, and before long, the energy stored in the citadel will reach a critical level. The safeguards should be able to safely shut it off, but it will turn back on, and the whole cycle will start over until the safeguards fail.”

Seemingly distracted by something, Karen looked away for a few moments. “Now that I’m dead, there’s no longer anyone who can control it, so your only option is to shut it down for good. All you need to do is—” The image flickered before disappearing along with the sound.

Kano blinked. “Seriously?”

Laughter sounded through the room, followed by Karen’s smiling face reappearing. “Pardon the joke, but I found it entirely too amusing. Anyway, all you need to do is break it while it’s turned off. If you managed to get in here, then you can probably manage that much. And that’s all from me, bye. I’d love to hang around and chat, but things are really hectic over here right now, what with the dying and all.”

This time the recording cut out for good.

“That was interesting,” Werisah said, “albeit of little use.”

“How do you mean? Don’t we need to break the reactor like she said?”

He sneered at her. “And why would we do that?”

“To prevent, umm…” Now that he mentioned it, Karen hadn’t actually specified what would happen if the safeguards failed beyond the energy reaching a “critical level,” whatever that meant. And destroying the reactor would also mean dooming Ren. Much as Kano hated to admit it, Werisah was probably right. Seeing that he was leaving, Kano said, “Wait, what’re you going to do now?”

“I’m going back to the lab. From what she said, the reactor will reactivate eventually. We just have to wait for it.”

“Won’t the safeguards just turn it off again?”

“It seems they only activate once the energy has accumulated to a certain extent, so all we need to do to stop that is make use of that energy.”

Kano let him go, feeling confused but relieved. It was hard to grasp the whole of what was happening, but she understood enough to figure out that Ren should be fine once the reactor was back on.

Kano didn’t know if Ren needed to be in her tank or not when the reactor turned back on, but it seemed the safest option. Which meant she had to find the runaway blob by spending yet more time walking through the citadel.

At least she didn’t have to fix the reactor anymore. Searching for Ren was almost pleasant by comparison.