The East Wing was a sterile labyrinth of white stone and silent wards. Fredrik was escorted to a room that looked less like a guest suite and more like a high-end containment cell. The walls were thick obsidian, inlaid with silver geometric patterns that hummed with a soft, steady vibration.
"Stay here," one of the sentinels commanded, his voice muffled by his visor. "Food and a chirurgeon will be sent shortly. Do not attempt to leave the ward-line."
The heavy door clicked shut with a sound that was far too final.
Fredrik didn't move until the sound of their armored footsteps faded. The moment he was alone, the tension holding him upright snapped. He stumbled toward a low, stone basin, his left leg dragging like a dead weight.
[NEURAL SYNC: 46% — SYSTEM BLACKOUT IMMINENT]
"Shut up," he hissed at the empty air.
With trembling fingers, he threw off the tattered wool cloak. Beneath it, the Ghost suit was a disaster. The matte-black plates were dull, covered in a film of ash and that black, oily coolant. He reached for the release seal at his collar, his knuckles brushing against his own skin.
He flinched. The interface ports—the points where the suit's filaments entered his flesh—were angry and inflamed. The skin was puckered, turning a sickly shade of bruised purple where the suit was "biting" back.
He peeled the chest plate open. The sound of the seal breaking was a wet, sickening pop. Fredrik gasped, leaning his forehead against the cold stone wall as a wave of nausea rolled over him.
The suit wasn't just armor anymore; it was a parasite that had run out of host energy. He looked into the small, polished silver mirror above the basin. The man looking back was barely recognizable. His eyes were bloodshot, his face gaunt, and thin black veins—the result of the suit's "leak"—were tracing a path up his neck toward his jawline.
He looked down at his hands. They were shaking.
"Focus," he muttered, forcing his mind away from the phantom smell of the trenches.
He needed power. He scanned the room, his eyes skipping over the plush bed and the ornate furniture. He wasn't looking for comfort; he was looking for the "veins" of the city.
He found it behind a decorative mahogany screen. A brass conduit, etched with the same silver filigree he'd seen in the halls, ran vertically through the masonry. It pulsed with a rhythmic, violet light—the city's Arcanum grid.
Fredrik knelt by the pipe, his fingers searching for a seam. He pulled a small, jagged multi-tool from a hidden pouch on his thigh. It was a relic of his own time, reinforced with the same black alloy as the suit.
He didn't have a charger. He had a tap.
As he began to scrape at the brass, the door chime echoed through the room.
Fredrik froze, his hand instinctively flying to the .45 resting on the floor beside him. He threw the cloak back over his shoulders, hiding the exposed, leaking suit just as the door hummed open.
It wasn't the chirurgeon. It was Elara.
She stood in the doorway, her expression a mix of exhaustion and something Fredrik couldn't quite place—pity, perhaps, or a lingering guilt. She looked at him, huddled on the floor behind the screen, and her eyes immediately dropped to the black stain on the white stone floor.
"I told the guards I'd bring you the restorative draughts myself," she said softly, closing the door behind her. She held up a small glass vial filled with a shimmering blue liquid. "They're already talking about you in the Lower Circles, Fredrik. They call you the 'Iron Ghost.'"
"I'm just a man with a bad leg," Fredrik rasped, not moving from his spot.
"A man with a bad leg doesn't leak black ink and smell like a lightning strike," Elara countered. She walked toward him, ignoring his hand on the weapon. She stopped three paces away and knelt, setting the vial on the floor. "The Council is going to come for that suit, you know. They won't wait for you to heal. They'll want to see how it works while the 'tax' is still active."
Fredrik looked at the brass pipe behind him, then back at her. "Then they'll be disappointed. It's not magic. It's just... broken."
"So fix it," she said.
Fredrik paused. "What?"
"I saw you looking at the conduits in the hall," Elara whispered, her eyes darting to the door. "Valerius thinks you're a curiosity. Kaelen thinks you're a fluke. But I saw the way you fought that Drake. That wasn't luck. That was a machine and a man acting as one."
She stood up, smoothing her robes. "The wards on this room are designed to stop magic from leaving. They aren't designed to stop someone from taking what's already in the walls. The grid pressure peaks at midnight when the Lower Tiers shut down."
Fredrik stared at her, his pulse hammering. "Why are you telling me this?"
Elara reached the door, her hand hovering over the release. "Because if you die in here, they'll just take that suit and put it in a glass case. And I think the world is a lot more interesting with you walking around in it."
The door slid shut, leaving him in silence once more.
Fredrik looked at the brass pipe. He looked at the blue vial. Then, he picked up his tool and began to cut.
He had four hours until midnight. Four hours to perform surgery on himself and a city he didn't belong to. He pressed the tool into the brass, and as the first spark of raw Arcanum leapt toward his suit, Fredrik screamed into his sleeve, his world turning a blinding, electric white.