The air in the Black Room's central sanctum tasted of copper, incense, and impending death.
Mark felt the cool, polished obsidian floor beneath his knees, a familiar sensation against the fabric of his black combat trousers. But the wet warmth soaking through the material from the wound in his abdomen was new. It pulsed in time with his slowing heartbeat, a sickly rhythm that echoed in the ringing silence after the explosion. Smoke, acrid and thick with the scent of shattered alchemical vials, coiled in the dim light of the shattered glow-crystals overhead. Shadows danced like dying things along the walls, carved with the names of a thousand forgotten kills.
Across from him, ten paces away, his master—his father—Alistair Cromwell, leaned against the fractured remains of the Command Throne. A shard of the same obsidian, propelled by Mark's last trap, protruded from his chest. Blood, darker than the stone, welled around it, staining the impeccable grey silk of his tunic. The elegant man who had taught Mark how to hold a dagger, how to blend into a crowd, how to stop a heart with a whisper, was breathing in wet, ragged gulps.
"The student…" Alistair coughed, a smile touching his blood-flecked lips. It was the same smile from Mark's childhood, the one that never reached his cold, mercury-colored eyes. "Finally… surpasses the master. A poetic cliché. I taught you to be better than clichés, boy."
Mark tried to speak, but only a choked gasp came out. His own injuries were a symphony of pain: the deep stab in his gut from Alistair's needle-blade, the broken ribs from a thrown desk, the burn on his right arm where a containment ward had backfired. But they were nothing compared to the raw, screaming wound in his mind. The memories, unlocked in the fury of their fight, played behind his eyes in vivid, unrelenting flashes.
The smell of baking bread and lavender. A woman's laughter, bright and clear. A man's strong hands lifting a small, giggling boy onto his shoulders. Sunlight through a cottage window. Then, the smell of smoke, of blood. Shadows at the door. The glint of a familiar dagger. A man with cold mercury eyes, standing over two still forms, turning to a hiding boy with that empty smile…
"You killed them," Mark finally managed, his voice a scraped-raw whisper. He spat blood onto the obsidian. "My parents. You made me watch. You made me forget. Then you took me. Trained me. Called me son."
Alistair's smile didn't waver. "I salvaged you. Your peasant parents were… collateral damage in a contract. But you, Mark. You had a spark in your eyes, even cowering in that cupboard. The spark of potential. I shaped that potential. I gave you purpose. Family is a weakness. I made you strong."
"You made me a weapon," Mark snarled, the force of it sending a fresh wave of agony through his torso. "Your weapon."
"And what a magnificent weapon you were," Alistair sighed, his gaze drifting to the shattered ceiling where real stars were beginning to peek through the settling dust. "The Prodigy of the Black Room. You completed contracts kings would balk at. We were a perfect machine, you and I. Until your mind started to crack. Until the past started leaking through."
The memories kept coming. Not just the murder. The years after. The endless drills in this very chamber. The cold praise for a perfect kill. The isolation. The lessons on human anatomy, on politics, on poison, all delivered with that detached, scholarly air. Alistair had been father, tutor, and god. And it had all been a beautiful, grotesque lie built on a foundation of blood.
Mark's hand, trembling, found the final device on his belt. A single resonance crystal, charged to overload. It wouldn't destroy the entire underground base, but it would collapse this sanctum. A tomb for them both.
"You're going to burn it all down?" Alistair chuckled, then winced in pain. "The Black Room. Our legacy. With us inside. Fitting. The weapon destroys itself and its maker." His mercury eyes locked back on Mark. "Do you regret it? The life you lived?"
Mark thought of the hundreds of lives he'd ended. Some deserving, many not. He thought of the silence in his own soul, a silence Alistair had cultivated. He thought of the bread and the lavender, memories so sweet they were an agony all their own.
"I regret," Mark said, his voice firming with finality, "that I didn't do this sooner."
He activated the crystal.
A low hum filled the air, vibrating up through the floor and into his bones. The remaining glow-crystals flickered wildly, casting strobing, jerking shadows. Alistair closed his eyes, his smile finally fading into an expression of… acceptance? Satisfaction?
The hum climbed to a shriek. The obsidian walls began to crack, spider-webbing from floor to ceiling. Dust and debris rained down. Mark's world narrowed to the feeling of the cold floor, the searing heat of his wounds, the face of the man who had stolen everything, and the ghost-scent of lavender.
As the world dissolved into blinding light and thunderous sound, a thought, desperate and primal, cut through the pain and the fury. Not a thought of revenge, nor of the lives he'd taken. It was a child's thought, from the boy who had died in that cupboard long ago.
I wish… I wish I could do it over. I wish I had a second chance.
Then, everything was consumed by the dark.