The Burning Wastes and The Betrayer

The heat outside the ship was a physical weight, pressing down on them with agonizing force. The sky was a roiling ocean of blood-red plasma, the atmospheric gases beginning to ignite in high-altitude bursts of terrifying aurora.

Elara and Kael leaned against thick leather harnesses, dragging a makeshift sled constructed from a heavy piece of hull plating. Lashed securely to the sled was the *Icarus's* central plasma core—a glowing, unstable cylinder of raw energy roughly the size of a barrel.

Every step was agony.

The sand of the Rust-Wastes was scorching through the thick silk wrappings on Elara’s feet. Sweat evaporated from her skin the moment it formed. Kael marched silently beside her, his jaw locked in a rictus of sheer physical exertion, hauling the lion's share of the weight.

They walked for two hours. Four miles had never felt so vast.

Finally, as the crimson sky began to brighten with the terrifying, blinding glare of the approaching solar crest, they saw it.

Built into the base of a jagged rock formation was a massive, rusted steel blast door, half-buried in the irradiated sand. Next to it was a smaller, circular manual maintenance hatch, locked tight by decades of corrosion.

"There!" Elara gasped, her throat dry, pointing a shaking hand toward the cliff.

They dragged the sled the final hundred yards, collapsing against the scorching cliff face in the shadow of the rusted doors. Kael immediately began unlashing the plasma core, pulling a heavy magnetic det-charge and a spool of wire from his pack.

"I need three minutes to rig the localized charge," Kael wheezed, his hands flying over the detonator. "It has to be shaped perfectly, or it'll just blow us into the desert instead of breaching the steel."

"Do it," Elara said, leaning against the rock, trying to catch her breath.

"Elara..."

The voice was weak, raspy, and sounded like tearing paper.

Elara froze. The blood turned to ice in her veins. She turned slowly around.

Stumbling out from behind a rock formation thirty yards away was a nightmare.

It was Julian.

He was unrecognizable. His sleek transit suit was scorched and half-melted to his skin. His face was covered in horrific radiation burns, his hair burned away, his eyes wild and bloodshot with absolute madness. He was clutching a heavy, military-issue sidearm in his trembling hand.

Elara stared at him, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. "Julian?"

Julian staggered forward, raising the gun, pointing it at Kael, who had frozen, his hands still on the detonator wire.

"Step away from the door, grease-monkey," Julian rasped, coughing up a spatter of dark blood onto the sand.

"Julian, how are you here?" Elara breathed, stepping between the gun and Kael. "The Genesis Vault..."

"A trap!" Julian screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria and agony. "It was a slaughterhouse! The guards... they started dragging people to the lower levels. They threw Lyra into a pod. They tried to take me... I ran. I crawled up the ventilation shafts... the radiation in the outer tunnels... it's killing me."

He leveled the gun directly at Elara’s chest. His eyes were devoid of anything human. He was a cornered, dying animal.

"I tracked your biometric signature from the Vault database," Julian wheezed, taking another staggering step forward. "I know this is a military bunker, Elara. I know you need an archivist override to open the internal blast doors once the hatch is blown. You're going to get me inside. You're going to save me."

"You left me to die," Elara stated, her voice shockingly calm, devoid of all the terror she had felt on the plateau. She looked at the pathetic, broken man before her. She felt no pity. She felt nothing at all.

"I survived!" Julian shrieked, cocking the hammer of the pistol. "I'm the one who deserves to live! Open the door, Elara, or I shoot him, and then I force you to do it!"

"Hey, Julian," Kael’s voice rang out, cold and sharp.

Julian’s eyes darted to Kael.

In that split second of distraction, Elara moved.

She didn't run. She didn't cower. She reached down with lightning speed, grabbing the heavy, thick folds of the ripped silk train that was tied around her waist like a sash. The heavy synthetic pearls and steel beading embroidered into the fabric gave it massive, lethal weight.

She twisted her hips, generating brutal kinetic force, and whipped the heavy, beaded silk train through the air like a flail.

The weighted fabric struck Julian directly across the face with a sickening *crack*.

The heavy pearls tore across his radiation burns, blinding him instantly. Julian screamed in agony, his finger convulsing on the trigger. The gun fired wildly, the bullet ricocheting off the steel blast doors inches from Kael’s head.

Julian stumbled backward, dropping the gun, clawing at his ruined, bleeding eyes.

Elara didn't hesitate. She lunged forward, driving her knee upward with every ounce of strength she possessed, catching Julian squarely in the sternum. He collapsed onto the burning sand, wheezing, entirely incapacitated.

Elara stood over him, breathing heavily, the bloody, beaded silk dropping from her hand.

"Charge is set!" Kael roared from the hatch. "Get back! Three seconds!"

Elara turned and sprinted toward Kael. He grabbed her by the harness, throwing her behind a massive outcropping of rock, throwing his own body over hers as he hit the detonator.

* KA-BOOM.*

The shockwave was deafening. The shaped plasma charge blew a massive, jagged hole directly through the rusted steel of the manual maintenance hatch.

"Move!" Kael yelled, hauling her to her feet.

The sky behind them was no longer crimson. It was blinding, incandescent white. The crest of the solar flare was cresting the horizon, a wall of unimaginable, world-ending fire rolling across the Rust-Wastes, vaporizing the glass canyons instantly.

The heat was a physical wall slamming into them.

Elara scrambled through the jagged, smoking hole in the steel hatch, tearing her arm on the hot metal. Kael dove in right behind her.

Outside, as the wall of fire hit the cliff face, Julian began to scream.