Ingredients of a Cure

"Julian?" I stared at Seraphina, the name hitting me like a cold splash of water. "I thought he was dead."

"He was," Seraphina said, her hands flying across the controls. "At least, that's what Lucius wanted us to believe. The unwanted son. The failed experiment."

She banked the sub hard to port, sending us reeling. "He survived, Aria. And he didn't just survive. He built his own kingdom in the dark."

The hull groaned as something massive slammed into us from the starboard side. Sparks showered from the ceiling.

"He's trying to breach," Vesper shouted, checking the internal sensors. "He has a mag-lock on the hull."

"We can't fight a sub-to-sub battle," I said, looking at the radar. "We're not equipped for it."

"We're not fighting," Seraphina said. "We're running."

She pushed the throttle forward. The engines screamed in protest.

"We need a distraction," Dante said, limping onto the bridge. He looked pale, but his eyes were sharp. "Something to make him let go."

"Like what?" I asked.

"Like a depth charge," Seraphina said. "But we don't have any."

"We have fuel cells," Dante said, pointing to the engine schematics on the screen. "Eject the auxiliary tank. Detonate it remotely."

"That will cut our range in half," Seraphina argued. "We'll never make it to Antarctica."

"Better to drift halfway than sink here," I said. "Do it."

Seraphina hesitated, then nodded. She tapped a sequence into the console.

*Auxiliary Tank Ejection: Armed.*

"Brace!" she yelled.

She hit the button.

A dull *thump* reverberated through the hull, followed a second later by a shockwave that threw us all to the floor. The mag-lock disengaged with a screech of tearing metal.

We were free.

"Full power," Seraphina ordered.

The sub surged forward, diving deeper into the abyss. The blip on the radar—Julian—fell behind, caught in the turbulence of the explosion.

We ran silent for three hours, until the sonar screen was clear.

"We're safe," Seraphina said, slumping back in her chair. "For now."

I left the bridge and went back to the brig. Elena was still there, staring at the formula on the wall. She looked up as I entered.

"Did we make it?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, sitting beside her. "We made it."

I looked at the chemical structures she had drawn. They were complex, beautiful, and terrifying.

"This stabilizer," I said, pointing to the flaw she had identified. "What do we need to break it?"

Elena traced the line with her finger. "It's a specific isotope. Rare. Unstable."

"Where do we get it?"

"We don't," she said. "We have to make it."

"Make it how?"

"There's a facility," she said, her voice distant, like she was reading from a script in her head. "Lucius had a secondary lab. For synthesis. It has the equipment we need."

"Where?"

She looked at me.

"Tokyo," she said.

I froze. Tokyo. The place where Chloe and I had stolen the data drive. The place where I thought she had died.

"The biomedical tower," I said. "It's a shell company."

"It's more than that," Elena said. "It's a vault. Lucius kept his rarest samples there. Including the precursor for the isotope."

I stood up. "Then we're going to Tokyo."

I went back to the bridge. "Change of course," I told Seraphina.

"Tokyo?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "That's Broker territory."

"It's also where the cure is," I said. "And I'm not leaving without it."

"We'll need a plan," Vesper said. "The tower is impregnable. Security is tighter than the Citadel."

"Not for us," I said. "We have something they don't."

I looked at Chloe, who was sharpening her knife in the corner.

"We have a ghost."

We surfaced two days later off the coast of Japan. The tower loomed over the city, a needle of glass and light piercing the smog.

We docked at a private pier under the cover of darkness. Vesper stayed with the sub to guard Elena. Dante, Chloe, Felix, and I moved out.

"The lab is on the 40th floor," I said, checking the blueprints Felix had pulled from the drive. "Cold storage."

"Getting in is the easy part," Felix said. "Getting out with the sample... that's tricky. The moment we open the containment unit, the silent alarm trips."

"Then we don't trip it," Chloe said. "We loop the sensors."

"I can do that," Felix said. "But I need physical access to the security hub. It's in the basement."

"I'll take the basement," Dante said.

"You're in no condition," I argued.

"I'm fine," he said, checking his gun. "Besides, I'm the only one who knows the overrides."

We split up. Dante and Felix headed down. Chloe and I headed up.

We moved through the service corridors, avoiding patrols. The tower was quiet, sterile.

We reached the 40th floor. The lab was behind a glass wall. Inside, rows of freezers hummed.

"There," I whispered, pointing to a unit marked with a red hazard symbol.

We slipped inside. Chloe stood guard at the door while I approached the freezer.

I swiped the keycard Seraphina had fabricated. The light turned green.

I opened the door.

Inside, on a rack of vials, was a single container of clear liquid.

The precursor.

I reached for it.

"Don't move," a voice said.

I froze.

I looked at the reflection in the glass of the freezer door.

Chloe was standing behind me. But she wasn't watching the door.

She was pointing her gun at the back of my head.

"I'm sorry, Aria," she said. "But the Broker made a better offer."