​Intermission 13. Lily

Amy finished her report, and Lily was left alone in her sanctuary at the top of the world.

She turned the wine glass, and the red left a thin trail along the white crystal. She liked that sensation: weight in her hand, a stain on something perfectly clean. That’s how the Pact should be. One small crack — and their entire illusion collapses.

Bran’s words, relayed by Amy, echoed in her mind. Mark was the key. The one she had waited for so long that she had almost stopped believing. The red dragon who had swept a third of the stars from the sky today.

Now the picture of the battle was clear down to the last detail. The Agency, with its experiments, no longer seemed invincible. Their machines and borgs were nothing but pitiful attempts to lock the world inside a cage where every thought is prewritten and every emotion embedded in code. Once the fabric between the Pact and the Limb grows thin, they will burn.

And they shall not prevail, and there will be no place for them in the heavens.

Hell will come here, and the Pact will fall. She will be reunited with Satan, and their new world will be born — a world of chaos and freedom. She felt it with her whole body — not the wine in the glass, not the lights below — but the breath of what was coming, the thing that would bring fire down to earth.

Now it was up to Eliza. The defeat in the Ring would push the Agency to accelerate its research; Eliza would enter the game and break the City’s defenses. Without the central servers, the children would be able to break the encryption and disrupt Contour surveillance.

Then they would remove the safeguards and take the fabrication process out from under supervision. She would be able to print as many bodies as needed. Hide them in the Ring, embed them in the City. Chaos, once a scattered sect, would become an army, and her vessels would fill with those whom her daughter had gathered in the Limb.

Lily took a sip of wine. Metal and blood. Victory was almost tangible. But with it, the abyss breathed as well. The apocalypse was coming; all that remained was to wait for it. Eliza would play her role. Mark — his. Chaos would win.

But what comes after? A new world or ash? There was no answer. And perhaps that was the very power of Chaos.