Rain streaks the greenhouse panes like veins of quicksilver. She stands in the central atrium of The Glass Orchard. It hums, alive and wrong. Every drip against the glass amplifies the rage inside Ira's skull, pressed against the taut quiet of midnight.
She surveys the vast gallery of cages — stacks upon stacks of living beings arranged with surgical symmetry. Steel cells, glowing terrariums, tanks pulsing faintly like heartbeats. The creatures inside are mostly hybrids—genespliced, broken, and remade. A fox with translucent fur revealing circuitry beneath the skin. A crow whose wings have fused into a single membrane. A snake whose eyes glow blue and blink vertically, like shutters.
Ira swallows hard. "Oh gods."
Something vaguely lupine raises its head. Tubes hang from its neck. It makes a sound — a whimper without breath. The sight cracks something open in her. She exhales through her teeth, eyes beginning to glow a deadly red.
"All right," she murmurs. "Let's do this."
Her fingertips tingle. When she spreads her hand, the air shimmers between her fingers. For the first time, she can feel the field that coats her nails: metallic, alive. She hums softly until the frequency catches. Her talons extend — black to mirror-bright silver, edges rippling with light.
The first lock yields like butter.
"I'm getting you out," she says. "All of you."
Her sneakers squeak against the tile as she moves between cages. She starts where the smallest beings are kept. She cuts metal like cloth, talons singing low in the air. Every lock she splits sends sparks cascading to the floor — tiny golden meteors dying in puddles of disinfectant. Doors swing open. Some creatures stumble forward; others freeze, too long caged to trust the open air.
"You're free," Ira insists. Her voice sounds foreign — steady, sure. Adrenaline hums through her veins. The space between her shoulders aches, pressure building under her skin. She ignores it. Not the time.
"Go," she urges again through clenched teeth.
A small avian creature, feathers iridescent and eyes intelligent, hops to her shoulder before taking flight through a ceiling vent. Its wind brushes her cheek. A reptile with glassy scales coils around her ankle, then darts into a drainage grate.
She reaches what looks like an aquatic wing: tanks stacked in towers, water glowing pale green, shadows shifting within. Her reflection swims alongside them — a specter with blood-red eyes and silver claws. She presses her hand to the glass, tracing the frame to its metal braces. Without hesitation, she cuts.
The braces snap. The tanks implode inward. Water floods the floor in violent waves. She slips, catches herself on a railing, and laughs breathlessly, soaked to the skin. "Sorry, sorry—go!"
Something brushes her calf — a small creature with stained-glass scales. For an instant she thinks of Drum, and the ache steadies her. Fish, amphibians, serpents spill out in shimmering chaos, but she's planned for this. The water rushes through grated drains that lead to the open sea.
From the vents above, alarms shriek to life. Red strobes flash. The air thickens with steam and electric dust.
"Time to hurry," she mutters.
She sloshes forward, careful not to step on the escaping creatures.
This section houses the giants. Chimera silhouettes shift in the dark — a horse with antlers, a stag with folded wings, a feline flickering between flesh and hologram. Their fear hits her in waves.
"It's okay," she says, voice trembling with rage. "I'm not one of them."
One by one, she frees them. Chains fall. Bolts snap. The air fills with heat and motion as wings unfurl and hooves strike tile. The scent of blood and disinfectant merges into something wild and alive.
A minotaur larger than any she's ever seen bellows a roar so deep it rattles the walls, then charges through the brick, leaving a gaping hole to the rain-soaked night. Landbound creatures pour after him, flooding the streets in a rush of fur and wings. Ira laughs — loud, raw, bright — a sound she barely recognizes as her own.
This is what freedom sounds like.
The glass ceiling above trembles with a thunderous boom. Something vast moves across it, a shadow blotting out lightning. A second later, talons the size of scythes punch through the dome's apex. The structure wails.
The creature forces its way through — a colossal hybrid of bone and membrane, wings unfurling in a storm of glass and rain. Its hide is plated in dull bronze veined with light, eyes burning gold. It bellows once, splitting the night open. A dragon.
The ceiling gives. The dome ruptures outward, shards raining down like crystal hail. Cold air rushes in, mixing with the heat within. Through the breach, the dragon soars, carving through the storm. Behind it, smaller creatures follow — bats, birds, insects, winged reptiles — flooding upward in a living column. The sky becomes a pulse of motion and freedom.
Ira shields her face from the downpour of glass and wind, heart hammering. For a heartbeat, framed in the breach, the dragon banks and looks down at her.
Then it vanishes into the rain.
She imagines the city from above — Noctreign's dark grid lit by this sudden bloom of life, animals spilling through streets, vines reclaiming glass. A legend born in real time.
She moves faster now. Every cage opened feeds the momentum. She's part of something vast — no longer an intruder but the pulse of the place itself.
By the time she reaches the central atrium, the floor is ankle-deep in water and petals. At the center stands the great tree — a sculpture of brass and circuitry, roots coiling into tanks.
She recognizes it: the emblem of the Bone Collector. His mark stamped on every screen, every syringe, every lie.
A server built from suffering.
At its base, a terminal hums, projecting strings of data across the glass floor.
Ira places her hand on it. The screen flares white.
ACCESS RESTRICTED.
She smirks. "Sure it is."
Her claws pierce the panel. Sparks flare. The system screams. She channels her resonance through her talons — but this time she adds everything she's held back: rage, grief, love. The circuit answers. Lines of code shatter, devoured by her pulse.
She reroutes every file into a loop of corrupted data, the system eating itself alive. By dawn, the Bone Collector's empire will be gone — every byte of pain he hoarded erased.
When the terminal finally dies, she stands in the silence that follows. It isn't true silence — rain, breath, heartbeat — but it's the first absence of machines she's heard in months. It feels like the city finally took a breath with her.
The air tastes of ozone and salt. Rain pours through the shattered roof, washing everything clean. She tilts her head back and lets it hit her face. The stench of synthetics fades, replaced by wet earth and fur.
Above, the sky is bruised violet, lightning threading like veins across it. Between flashes she glimpses shapes — dragons, or maybe only the illusions of freedom — winging through the storm.
Sirens begin to wail.
Ira spits on the ground. "Come and get me."
Then she climbs over the rubble the minotaur left behind and walks into the rain-soaked streets of Noctreign.