I cling to the vibrating lattice of the radio tower. The hex-chain, spent and scalding, breaks and drops from my hand, clattering against the tower's base fifty feet below. The severed cables spark violently for a second, then go dark. The sound of the falling assassin is muffled by the water's surface, a soft plop rather than a crash.
I push off the unstable, smoking junction box and lunged across the gap to the next tower. It's a blind, scrambling jump; my hands grip the cold, wet metal just as the first tower begins to groan and tilt slightly. I find a temporary foothold, pressing my back against the stable column, gulping air that tastes of static electricity and sea salt.
The surge of energy is gone, spent on the explosive burst needed to destroy the junction box. What's left is simple, searing pain—the gash in my side throbs, and my left arm aches from the effort.
The clarity Maro taught me vanishes, replaced by a suffocating fog. The pain in my side is a key, tearing open a hole in my mind. The world of the towers and the sea floor suddenly dissolves, replaced by the crushing weight of a memory that isn't mine.
The air is thick with the smell of brine, burning diesel, and the faint, sweet scent of expensive champagne that is now sickly mixed with blood. I am standing knee-deep in water that sloshes across a Persian carpet, the water already the color of used tea.
I'm wearing the uniform—the dark, high-collared suit of the Colonel. It's soaked and shredded, and my wrists are raw where the restraints cut in. I'm panting, leaning on the gilded railing of the opulence class cruiser, The Seraphim. The sight is sickening.
Lieutenant Alst, once my closest comrade, lies at my feet, his face frozen in a final, horrified grimace. The gun in my hand is the one I carried, and the smoke curling from the barrel is from the shot I fired. I did it. I killed him.
"You should have just taken your share and gone about your way, Colonel." Alst's last words repeat in a tight, damning loop in my skull. I remember the General's orders: seize the vessel, eliminate all the targets, and harvest the assets. But as I walk through the corridor, the mission becomes an obscenity.
The floor is a mosaic of blood and shattered crystal. They were not thieves or pirates; they were families. Their only crime was standing at the "apex of this world," as Ramsey—the General—had put it.
I move into the grand suite. I hear a sound—a small, ragged gasp.
I turn the corner, gun raised.
There she is. Tucked behind a heavy, overturned chaise lounge. A little girl, no more than two years old. Her silk nightgown is pristine white, but it is entirely, impossibly covered in the blood of another.
Her eyes are the most terrifying thing I have ever seen. Wide, deep pools of shellshocked darkness, vacant and unblinking. She is a hollow vessel, a tiny ghost in a room of carnage. She is the ultimate victim, and she is entirely alone.
My training—my years as the ruthless colonel who executed the general's toughest orders—shatters. All the general's talk of liberation and erasing "predators" means nothing next to this small, empty gaze.
I drop my gun. The clatter echoes in the dying ship.
I kneel in the crimson water. The girl doesn't flinch. I carefully lift her small, cold body.
It is in that moment, with the silent, bloody weight of that child in my arms, that Rist—the Colonel—realizes the horrifying truth: he is the monster who participated in the initial massacre, but he is also the only one left who can redeem the mission.
He makes his final, defining choice. He carries her out, ignoring the bodies, ignoring the sirens of the external forces closing in. He uses the last of the ship's explosives, not for the general's glory, but to wipe the canvas clean. He sinks the ship, burying the truth of the massacre, saving only the one living soul that could condemn him.
The thought of the law of action ran through my mind, making connections between the two and realizing it is not about taking. It's about making the choice to act against all previous instruction, regardless of the cost.
He became a traitor, a fugitive, and a debtor, all to protect the one innocent life.
I gasp, snapping back into the present. I am fifty feet above the water, clinging to a radio tower. The pain in my side is sharp, grounding, and real. The shellshocked eyes of the little girl are imprinted on the inside of my eyelids.
The realization slams into me with the force of a tidal wave: Rist, the man dangling from the chain below, is the Disgraced Colonel . He is the mass murderer who led the initial hit, but he is also the broken soul who risked everything—his life, his freedom, his identity—to save one child, a chile that he alone knows the whereabouts of. That is the nature of his debt.
And Ramsey, the general, knows this. He didn't want the riches; he wanted the obliteration of the upper class, and Rist's betrayal of the General's core principles—by saving that one life—is unforgivable.
"I won't let you have her!" I scream, and the words taste of blood and salt, echoing the Colonel's old resolve. Consequently the feeling of the Law of Action returns, fierce and protective. The energy is no longer frantic desperation; it's the will of a man sacrificing everything for a single life.
I look down. The remaining two assassins are climbing the tower directly below me, moving with predatory speed. The last one, who had been dazed by my blow, is climbing the adjacent tower, preparing for a flanking attack.
"The Colonel is nothing but a sentimental fool!" Ramsey bellows from below, momentarily halting his fight with Maro to look up. "He was supposed to destroy all evidence of that cruise, including the girl! Now he pays the price, and you, boy, are the one who will deliver him to me."
The assassins are ten feet below me. I drive my feet against the metal of the tower, channeling the full surge of the law into my core and legs. I am not trying to fight them; I am trying to destroy the entire arena. The structure is weakening, buckling under the focused intent of my will.
I am not the Colonel, but I now carry his defining moment. I know his debt, and I know his reason. The only action left is catastrophic.
I scream and drive my weight against the tower, forcing it to follow the path of the first. The sheer focus of the law overloads the weakened base. The metal of the second tower tears with a screeching sound that rips across the water, a sound that says the arena is about to shatter.