The Wardens walked slowly, their footsteps striking the floor in perfect unison like a heavy drumbeat. The sound echoed through the tall, vaulted ceilings of the Archive, shattering the stillness that had filled the chamber.
Their polished silver armor reflected the red light of the emergency sirens, making them appear smeared in blood. Their glowing T-shaped visors were locked entirely on me, ignoring Silas as if he were nothing. To the system, Silas was only a nuisance. I was the corruption. I was the Error that needed to be exterminated.
"Ethan, get behind the pedestal!" Silas shouted, fear in his voice unlike anything I had ever heard from him before.
He stepped in front of me, raising a metal rod like a sword. His knuckles were white, his hands trembling.
"Their spears are tipped with Stillness," he said. "A concentrated form of deletion. It will stop your heart before your body hits the ground. You'll just… be gone."
I stayed still. I had to.
It wasn't fear preventing me from moving today, but heat! An insane amount of heat generated within each metal shackle has given them such great amounts of pressure that they continue to vibrate within each bone I possess. Every single one of my arms feels as though they are "live wires" from all the heat generated within the shackles! To make it worse, the air surrounding, has that "ozone" smell you find in clouds before they are struck by lightning!
"They're going to delete me?" I whispered to myself.
Even my own voice sounded strange—deeper than before, carrying a faint metallic hum.
"They can try to find the delete key."
The lead Warden raised its spear, and the tip ignited with a bright, cold white light. Then it lunged.
It moved far faster than something so heavy should have been able to move, the spear aimed straight for my throat, crossing the distance in less than a heartbeat.
I did not step back.
I did not even blink.
I simply swung my left arm in one brutal, violent arc.
BANG!
My iron cuff colliding with the Warden's spear produced a loud sound. The collision represented two very different worlds clashing. Purple sparks erupted from the collision and intermixed with the electrical current of the spear to create a dangerous rain of light.
The impact created such a strong force that it shattered the nearby display glass areas. Those shards of glass exploded outward like shrapnel in an explosion.
The Warden — a being composed of solid metal and logic of Council — actually took a step backward. The Warden tilted its head as its visor flickered. It was trying to figure out how a "Blank" received a hit intended for a deity.
"It is now my turn," I said with a growl.
I didn't just make a fist. I extended my consciousness and could feel all the invisible strings that held the elements of this room assembled. I could feel the "Weight" of the floating bookshelves that were positioned above us. There were multiple tons of great wood, thousands of pages and — using both the power of writing and the mind of the man who wrote it — all books within the bookshelves were suspended in an area of artificial gravity created by the Archive.
With those invisible strings, I yanked.
"Down."
The structure of the room broke apart. The force holding the shelves in place simply ceased to exist. Three massive floor-to-ceiling bookcases, packed with the histories of the 1800s, tore free from the dark void above us and came crashing down like a collapsing city block.
All three Wardens looked up at the descending shadow, their visors reflecting the shape of their own destruction. But there was no time to escape. They were far too heavy, far too slow.
CRASH!
The weight of ten thousand books slammed into them, crushing the silver soldiers beneath splintering wood and iron shelves. Dust and paper burst into the air, spreading into a thick white fog that swallowed the hall.
The roar of destruction shook the Archive itself. It was history burying the very creatures built to guard its secrets.
"Did... did you just do that?" Silas said, coughing as he wiped dust from his eyes and stared at the wreckage of twisted silver armor and shattered shelves where the Wardens had stood.
"You didn't just move them," he said. "You rewrote the laws of physics in this room."
"I told you so," I gasped between ragged breaths.
The purple light from my cuff burned brighter than ever, casting long, sharp shadows around the edges of the room. My arm felt heavy, yet impossibly powerful.
"I am the one who writes the ending now."
The words had barely left my mouth before my victory ended.
A new sound came from the dark hole in the ceiling—the same place the shelves had fallen from. But this was not the thunder of boots. It was a high-pitched electronic scream, like a thousand broken modems shrieking at once.
"The Scribblers," Silas said, his face turning ghost-white as he gripped my shoulder hard enough to leave marks.
"Ethan, they are not soldiers. They are the Archive's cleanup team. They do not fight by fair rules. They consume data until nothing remains except a blank sheet of paper."
Then they came.
Horde after horde of small spider-like creatures made of glowing green wires poured down the walls and spilled from the hole above. They had no eyes, only tiny mouths shaped like circular paper shredders.
And they were not rushing toward us.
They were heading straight for the stone table.
I screamed, "The records will be lost! I'll never learn the truth about the Shapers—or why they kidnapped me!"
"Then we take the Well with us!" Silas shouted.
He swung his metal rod at the first wave of green spiders crawling across the table, knocking them aside in sparks and scraps of wire.
"Get the bowl, Ethan! Use the cuff to anchor it to the pedestal! If the liquid leaves the pedestal without a Shaper holding it, it will evaporate into thin air!"
I ran for the table, my boots sliding across pages scattered over the floor.
The green spiders moved faster than I did, leaping through the air in swarms. They were already on the stone basin, their tiny shredding mouths chewing at the rim of the crystal bowl.
I was in no position to be cautious.
I slammed my fist onto the surface of the table, sending a tremendous shockwave of violet energy through the stone. The spiders were blasted backward, the wires that formed their bodies snapping and short-circuiting in showers of sparks.
I seized the crystal bowl with both hands. It was freezing—colder than the Thames River in London.
The moment my iron cuff touched the glass, the silver liquid inside transformed. It stopped swirling, hardened, and became a solid glowing violet gem embedded deep within the crystal.
"I have it!" I shouted over the shrieking wail of the Scribblers.
"Then run!" Silas pointed toward a massive reinforced door behind the pedestal.
"The Wardens under those books won't stay buried forever. And that door leads to the Lower Levels—the deep storage where the Council keeps the things they're afraid of."
We ran for the door, the clicking legs of the green spiders skittering right behind us.
Just as I reached for the doorknob, a massive silver hand burst from the pile of books behind us, spraying splinters of wood across the room.
The lead Warden was dragging itself free from the wreckage, its armor cracked and dented, its T-shaped visor now glowing a furious red.
I didn't wait to see it rise.
I threw my weight against the door, yanked it open, and leapt into the darkness of the stairwell, dragging Silas in with me. Then I slammed the bolt shut just as a silver spear struck the other side of the door with a deafening crash.