Chapter 4

4: 4

I brushed the sand off my hands and stood.

I pulled out my phone and brought up the electronic contract we'd signed at the handover.

"Read it carefully. Black and white."

I shoved the screen straight into Albert's face.

"First line of the handover checklist. Bianca Whitfield voluntarily waived all my post-handover maintenance duties."

"And she signed a full liability waiver."

"Complete with a thumbprint. The whole thing's on record, right here."

"You two lost your minds, broke the machine yourselves, and now you come running to me to fix it?"

Albert stared at the bloody thumbprint on the screen, his eyes darting everywhere.

But he stiffened his neck and dug in anyway.

"So what if she signed it!"

"You're the Underworld's top engineer. You knew the risks, so why did you let a rookie run wild?"

"She doesn't know any better. Are you telling me you don't either?"

Bianca pulled a soul-breaking array disc from her robes, black vapor leaking off it.

"All we have to do is draw the array core out of your body and pour it in. The system will repair itself automatically!"

"Albie, we can't let her get away. For the greater good, she's the only one we can sacrifice!"

Albert saw the disc, and he didn't stop her.

He lunged forward instead and clamped down hard on my wrist.

"Tamara, I know you feel wronged."

"But the safety of the whole Warden Temple hangs on one choice from you. I'm afraid we have to put you through this."

"Don't worry. Once we're past this crisis, I'll talk the Temple Warden into promoting you. I swear it."

Looking at that face of his, I nearly threw up.

Bianca activated the disc.

It roared to life with a fierce pull, dragging straight at my meridians.

They meant to drain me dry to plug the catastrophic hole Bianca had torn open.

I stood inside the array without a flicker of resistance and let it sweep my aura away.

Bianca took that aura and jacked it straight into the Underworld system's main network.

"Repair complete!"

"Albie, I did it!"

Bianca burst out laughing, smug as anything.

But the smile lasted all of two seconds.

From the direction of the Underworld's main network, a blinding blood-red light erupted.

Then the top-level alarm screamed out across all three realms.

Even the ground on Penumbra Isle began to shake violently.

Albert's eyes went wide with terror.

He stared at the receiver in his hand, which was now spitting smoke.

"What's happening? Why is this happening?"

The disc hadn't repaired the system at all. The false aura had severed every safety lock on the main network.

Junk data flooded through like a hail of arrows and punched clean through the last firewall of the eighteen levels of hell.

"You... what did you do!"

Albert staggered back three steps, his voice shaking apart.

I wrenched hard and tore my wrist free of him.

Then I opened the fist I'd kept clenched the whole time.

In my palm lay a small control chip, glowing a quiet blue.

This was the true core of the entire Underworld network.

I watched the terror on Albert's and Bianca's faces, and pressed down with my fingers.

"Crack!"