CHAPTER 23 — Bury the egg or bury the pain
Lyra passed through the gate and felt the city air hit her face. It smelled like oil and food and a little rain. The place Kelvin told her to go to was in a part of the city that never slept. Old warehouses, neon signs, back doors—people came and went at all hours. A lot of them looked like normal people. Some of them were not.
She held the egg in both hands. It was wrapped in cloth.
Lyra did not like the idea. She did not like trusting a place that smelled wrong. But Kelvin told her to do it. . So she obeyed.
She walked into the building Kelvin showed her. It had a sign that said nothing. Inside, the light was low. People leaned against the walls. A man counted small metal trinkets on a table. Two women in loud jackets bargained over a case with glass. A TV in the corner showed a game between hunters and some parkour footage. No one noticed Lyra.
She moved slow. She felt eyes from the shadows. She kept her head low. She found a stair that led to the basement. The floor smelled of old beer. The stairs creaked with each step. Her heart beat fast. The egg throbbed like a tiny drum in her lap.
The basement was worse. Boxes stacked high. Pipes bent like bones. A ceiling lamp hummed. Men moved around like they owned the darkness. She felt their looks. Some of them had scars, some had jewelry that glowed faint. They were not here to trade bread. They traded other things—artifacts, contraband, things stolen from dungeons.
Lyra stopped near a dead corner where a broken pipe leaked slow water. She found a patch of earth under a cracked wooden board. She brushed away dirt with her hands. The egg felt heavy. She thought for a moment. If Kelvin told her to hide it here, maybe it made sense. Maybe the men who moved artifacts would not dig under the floor to find a small egg. Maybe they would ignore a little, weak thing.
She put the egg down. It felt warmer now. She dug a shallow hole with her bare hands. Her fingers moved fast, like she had done this before. She buried the egg and covered it with old cloth and dirt. She made the ground look like nothing. She breathed out. The world felt like it paused for a second. She wanted to stand up and leave, fast.
That was when she heard the boots.
Voices came from the back. Men laughed like wolves. One of them called, "Hey, look what we got. A small lady in the back."
Lyra froze. She did not turn. Her palms went flat on the dirt. She did not want trouble. She thought maybe they would pass. Maybe they would not care.
They came closer. The man with a thick neck and a bad tooth stepped into the lamp light. He smiled slow, and the smile was ugly. "What are you doing here, baby?" he said. He had three men with him. They smelled like cheap liquor. Their hands were big.
Lyra felt a cold part in her chest. She wanted to run, but the men blocked the only exit. The man with the bad tooth slapped his hand against a crate and it made a loud sound that echoed. The others whistled. One walked right to her, leaned in, and the smell of cheap whiskey and old sweat hit her. He grabbed her by the arm hard. "You look pretty. Maybe we can… have fun."
Lyra's stomach turned. Her mouth curled, but it was not fear. It was fury that burned like acid. The egg was buried. Kelvin told her to do this. She could not be something else now.
She tried to pull away. The man's fingers dug into her skin. He laughed. "What, you don't like me? You a shy girl?"
Lyra felt something cold and focused come up inside. It was her power. It was not a light or a punch. When she touched someone, she could pull up their worst moments, their hardest memories, their pain, and push them into sorrow.
She looked at the man. Without a word she let her hand touch the sleeve of his jacket. The moment her fingers grazed fabric, the man shivered like a dog. His eyes widened. He tried to laugh but it came out wrong. Lyra closed her eyes and let her power wake.
She did not plan to kill anyone. She only wanted to stop them, to make them understand what they wanted to do to her. She wanted to make them feel how small and empty and terrified she had felt so many nights. She wanted them to feel every time someone had hurt throughout their lifetime, again and again, until they could not stand it.
The man staggered. Tears came out of his eyes. Not because he was sorry he didn't know how to be sorry but because Lyra made him relive a night when his father beat him until he could not breathe. Lyra made that night happen again in his head but compressed into a few seconds. The man grabbed his chest, gagged. He fell to his knees and coughed up something dark. He looked like a puppet with broken strings.
The other men laughed at first. Then Lyra touched the nearest one by accident as he lunged.
He froze and screamed, a sound like an animal. Lyra had shown him the time he watched his sister take her own life, watched what his father did to his mother and sister as he was powerless. The man felt the shame and hunger and the bruise of an old belt on his back. He fell forward, sobbing.
The thick-necked man tried to get up and hit Lyra. His fist blurred through the air. Lyra ducked and grabbed his wrist. Her fingers were steady as iron. She tightened her touch and let her power pour in.
What happened next was not pretty. It was quiet, and it was loud. The man's face changed. At first, his eyes darted like a trapped animal. He saw his mother in the kitchen crying. He felt the fear of the night his whole house burned. He felt the pain from a broken tooth he never fixed. Lyra repeated it. She pushed wave after wave. Each memory hit him like a stone. He shouted and tried to claw at his own face. The other men watched, as if the world stopped and only the three of them existed.
Lyra did not stop. She kept pressing and pressing, but she also let some of the pain settle into the thing between her ribs that had nothing to do with them. It was ugly in her mouth to watch them fall apart. It made her stomach flip. But their hands were on her. She had a right to fight.
One man got control and swung a crate like a club. It hit Lyra hard on the shoulder. For a second she saw white. She thought it would end. But then she pushed through that swelling pain and grabbed the man who swung the crate. She put her forehead to his and sent his memory of a night in a cold alley when he almost died and could not call for help. She made him feel the cold again, the breath that wouldn't come. He dropped the crate and started to scream quietly.
They were not smart men. They were used to other people breaking, but this was different. They had never met a person who could fold their own life into them like a paper and tear it again and again until the man could not stand. They dropped to the floor, crawling, hitting their heads on the crates, pulling at each other like drowning men.
Lyra ran then. She wrenched free, grabbed a rusted pipe, and swung it so hard that it hit the nearest lamp and it shattered. Sparks flew. She did not stop to see the run. She ran up the stair, blood on her palms, breath loud, heart furious. She could hear muffled cries behind her, the kind of screaming that leaves no melody.
She reached the door and pushed into the street. The night air hit her like a slap. She ran until the city's lights blurred and she could not think. She stopped in a small alley and leaned on a wall. Her chest heaved, her hands shook. The egg was still buried. She had done what Kelvin told her. She had kept the thing safe.
She thought about those three men. They would wake up with pieces of themselves missing. They would not be the same for a while. Maybe they would be better. Maybe some part of their childhood would come back and make them cry in the dark. Maybe they would never touch another girl again. She did not know, and she did not want to think too long. She only knew she had to go.
She cleaned her hands in a small puddle. Blood mixed with rain dust.
And flashes of her childhood flickered.
"Do it lyra don't be afraid to kill.." An agent said to her when she was a little girl pointing a gun to a half dead man and continued
"This is who you are."
BANG!!!
She shot with her eyes closed
" Good girl, see it's not as hard as it looks, you just have to see your enemies as animal and don't hesitate to kill..."