Chapter 60 Designed
Lyra didn’t sleep.
The lights dimmed at some point, sliding from bright white to a softer, bluish dusk, like the building was pretending to care about human circadian rhythms. But the cameras in the corners still blinked, and the hum in the walls never stopped.
She lay on the bed, one arm over her eyes, counting the seconds between vents kicking on and off. When that got old, she counted the tiny pulses in her wrist where the mark lived, a quiet silver tap beneath the skin.
It never dipped into gold again.
Not once.
Almost like it was hiding, too.
“Coward,” she whispered.
The mark pulsed twice, as if offended.
“Yeah, yeah,” she sighed. “Join the club.”
Sometime in the not-quite-morning, the door hissed open.
Lyra sat up fast.
Not Maverick.
A man in pale gray scrubs, tablet in hand, nervous energy radiating off him like static. Early thirties, curly dark hair, glasses that kept sliding down his nose. He glanced at her, then at the tablet, then back like he wasn’t sure which one might bite first.
“Ms. Hayes,” he said. “I’m Dr. Kwan.”
She arched a brow. “Congratulations.”
He cleared his throat. “I’ll be overseeing your… evaluation.”
“Observation,” she said. “Director Ice Queen likes that word better.”
His mouth twitched, like he was fighting a smile and losing. “She would.”
Lyra tilted her head. “You don’t seem like the ‘cut open the glowing girl’ type.”
“I’m not.” He sounded tired. “I’m the ‘don’t let them blow up the building by accident’ type.”
“Comforting.”
“Relatively.”
He tapped at the tablet. The glass wall behind her flickered; data overlaid the corridor view for a second—heat signatures, diagrams, a map of the wing. Then it vanished.
“We’ll start with baseline scans,” he said. “Non-invasive.”
She eyed him. “You realize that’s exactly what people say before something very invasive happens, right?”
“No needles,” he said quickly. “No blades. I just need readings. Heart rate, brain waves, magical output.”
“Is that the technical term? Magical output?”
“Internally it’s ‘Anomalous Energy Index,’” he admitted. “But that’s too many syllables before coffee.”
Lyra wanted to dislike him. Really, she did. But something about the harried sincerity in his eyes made it hard.
“And if I say no?” she asked.
“Then they send someone who doesn’t ask,” he said quietly. “And you get scared. Scared people leak power. Power attracts attention we’re not ready for.” He hesitated. “Help me keep you off Vale’s main schedule.”
There it was. The choice that wasn’t really a choice.
Lyra swung her legs off the bed and stood. “Fine. But if anything glows that isn’t attached to me, I’m leaving.”
“Understood.”
He led her out into the corridor. Two security officers fell in step behind them—both with tasers and sidearms, eyes politely empty. Lyra resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at the nearest camera.
They walked past more glass-front rooms. Some held equipment. A few held people.
One room contained a woman with skin like polished obsidian and eyes that shimmered pale blue. Tiny arcs of electricity jumped between her fingers as she sat on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest.
Another room held a broad-shouldered guy pacing like a caged tiger, tattoos on his arms shifting when he moved—actually shifting, patterns crawling and changing like living ink.
Lyra’s mark ticked silver at both doors.
“These people like me?” she asked under her breath.
Dr. Kwan glanced sideways. “Like you? No. Like themselves? Not exactly. Like what the world did to them?”
“That sounds ominously poetic.”
“It’s cheaper than therapy.”
They turned into a larger room—circular, ringed with monitors. In the center stood a metallic frame that looked like someone had tried to reinvent the MRI while drunk and magically inclined.
Kwan gestured. “If you’ll step inside.”
Lyra eyed the machine. “That thing going to eat me?”
“It barely works,” he said. “If anything, you might eat it.”
That almost got a smile out of her.
She stepped into the frame. Panels slid into place around her, leaving her head free. The interior smelled faintly of metal, ozone, and cleaning chemicals.
Kwan moved to a console. One of the guards planted himself by the door. The other stood off to the side, watching her like she might sprout fangs at any moment.
“All right,” Kwan said. “Just breathe normally. Don’t try to… do anything.”
“Doing nothing is my specialty,” she said.
He tapped the screen. The machine hummed, a low, searching vibration that glided up her spine.
Her mark responded with a soft silver glow, easy as breathing. She felt it rise from her arm through her chest, tracing nerves and veins, mapping her from the inside.
Monitors lit up. Lines spiked and settled. One monitor showed a vague silhouette of her body overlaid with shimmering light—centered in her forearm, but branching through her heart, her skull, like a secondary nervous system made of moonlight.
“Fascinating,” Kwan murmured.
“That’s not a word I love in this context,” Lyra said.
“It’s… ordered,” he went on, more to himself than to her. “Most anomalies we’ve seen are chaotic. Spikes everywhere. But you—this is… designed. Symmetrical.”
“So I’m aesthetically pleasing. Wonderful. How about ‘safe’?”
He hesitated. “Define ‘safe.’”
“That’s also not a good sign, Doctor.”
The door hissed open.
Lyra’s instinct flared before she even saw who it was. The machine’s hum hit a different frequency. Her mark flickered.
Maverick stepped in, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.
He wasn’t in combat gear now. Dark henley, black jeans, sleeves shoved up to his elbows. It should’ve made him look less dangerous.
It didn’t.
The guard by the wall straightened. “Unit Seven.”
“At ease,” Maverick said without looking his way. “Director ordered me to observe the first scan.”
“Of course, sir.”
Lyra snorted. “Oh good. An audience.”
Maverick’s gaze found hers. “You look thrilled.”
“Just wondering if there’s a punch card for all the humiliations, or if this is a single-purchase experience.”
He almost smiled. Almost. Then his eyes flicked to the monitor behind Kwan, where Lyra’s light-mapped silhouette pulsed softly.
His expression changed.
“Is that… normal?” he asked.
“For her?” Kwan said. “We don’t know yet.”
“This is baseline?” Maverick stepped closer, heat coming with him like a second presence. “She’s not even using it.”
“She’s always using it,” Kwan said. “Just at rest.”
Lyra cleared her throat. “Can we not talk about me like I’m a car with the engine idling?”
Kwan flushed. “Right. Sorry.”
Maverick’s gaze drifted back to her forearm. The panel edge didn’t hide the glow completely; the light spilled around it, soft and steady.
“Has it gone gold again?” he asked, voice low enough that only she could really hear it.
Lyra’s pulse skipped. “No.”
“Liar.”
“Are you going to tattle?”
His amber eyes held hers for a heartbeat too long. “Not today.”
Before she could come up with a smart reply, alarms blipped softly on one of the side monitors.
Kwan frowned. “Uh. That’s… odd.”
“Define ‘odd,’” Lyra said.
He tapped the screen. “There’s a spike in the western wing. Energy reading off the charts.”
“Another anomaly?” Maverick asked.
“No,” Kwan said. “That frequency’s too familiar. That’s—”
The building shook.