The handle turned.

Nessa did not have time to invent a brilliant plan.

So she invented an empty corridor.

She threw the illusion across all four of them an instant before the basement door opened: bare stone walls, closed numbered doors, an uninterrupted strip of gray floor where Nessa, Rhydian, Tavi and Ilya actually stood pressed against the wall.

It would not stop anyone who walked into them.

It would not hide their breathing if someone listened closely.

And it certainly would not make Tavi's chronometer stop ticking if it chose that moment to betray them again.

Nessa held one finger to her lips.

The door opened.

The technician stepped into the corridor.

He was younger than Nessa had expected up close, perhaps thirty, with silver spectacles and the serene expression of a man who had removed a mother's memory of her son and still intended to sleep well afterward.

Behind him stood a woman in a dark Astral uniform.

Not Chancellor Solenne.

Nessa knew Solenne's face from coins, proclamations and enormous civic portraits designed to make citizens feel personally disappointing.

This woman was perhaps fifty, narrow-faced and gray-haired, wearing no visible insignia except a small twelve-pointed star pinned beneath her collar.

The technician looked left.

Then right.

His gaze passed directly across Nessa's illusion.

Tavi's hand remained clamped over his coat pocket.

No second tick came.

"You heard it," the technician said.

"I heard something," the woman replied.

She stepped farther into the corridor.

Toward them.

Nessa's pulse climbed.

The illusion could fool eyes. It could not change the fact that four people occupied a corridor barely wide enough for six.

The woman stopped two paces from Rhydian.

He did not move.

Nessa could see the tension in his jaw.

The woman tilted her head.

For one terrible second, Nessa thought she could somehow see through the spell.

Then a bell rang upstairs.

Three short notes.

The technician frowned.

"Security response."

"Bellglass?"

"Possibly."

The woman glanced once more at the apparently empty corridor.

"Lock the sample room. Move the compatible vial to transit storage. If Quill reached the building, she should find only what we intended her to find."

Nessa almost laughed.

Apparently the conspiracy had not accounted for her standing eighteen inches away.

The technician returned to the sample room and pulled the door shut behind him.

The gray-haired woman walked toward the stairwell.

Nessa maintained the illusion until her footsteps disappeared above.

A moment later, metal clicked behind the sample-room door.

Then came the scrape of another door opening farther inside, followed by the technician's muffled voice.

"Transit carrier. Now. The authorization key is in the rear cabinet."

Another voice answered too indistinctly for Nessa to make out the words.

A rear door closed.

Only then did she let the false corridor dissolve.

Tavi exhaled first.

"I hate your job."

"My job usually involves making wealthy men remember being better fathers. This week is unusually complicated."

Ilya stared at the locked sample-room door.

"Did you see her pin?"

"The star," Tavi said.

Rhydian was still looking toward the stairs.

"I know her voice."

Nessa turned to him.

"From where?"

A silence.

"I don't know."

That frightened her more than recognition would have.

Rhydian pressed two fingers against his temple as though searching through shelves that no longer existed.

"Not recently. It feels... older."

Ilya's expression sharpened.

"Older than twenty-seven years?"

"I cannot tell."

The words from behind the door returned to Nessa.

What he was before we erase him again.

She wanted to ask whether he was all right.

The heart-contract mark warmed faintly beneath her skin before she could speak.

Nessa noticed.

So did Rhydian.

He immediately stepped away from her.

The warmth cooled.

Nessa hated the contract for making even concern feel suspicious.

"We are not leaving empty-handed," she said.

Tavi pointed toward the sample room. "They are about to move the vial."

"Not until he comes back with whatever a transit carrier is."

Ilya glanced toward the stairwell. "Which gives us very little time."

The door was physically locked.

Tavi reached for his tool.

Rhydian shook his head.

"No time."

He did not use chronomancy.

Instead he planted one shoulder against the door beside the latch.

Ilya blinked. "That is an archival door."

"Thank you."

Rhydian struck it once.

The frame cracked.

Twice.

The latch tore free.

"Less elegant than clockwork," Tavi muttered.

"Faster."

They entered.

The technician was not there. A second door at the rear stood closed, the route he had evidently taken to obtain the transit carrier and its authorization key.

The black extraction case remained on a steel table.

Open.

Inside were six empty vial slots and one occupied slot.

A narrow glass cylinder lay there, filled with milky white light.

The Bellglass woman's stolen memory.

Nessa's inner pocket became painfully hot.

All six Lot Seven crystals reacted at once.

She did not touch the vial.

"That's it," she said.

Ilya leaned close without reaching for it.

"Can we restore it?"

Rhydian's answer came immediately.

"Not safely here. Extracted memories retain an owner resonance. Mishandling can fragment them further."

Tavi looked toward the rear door.

"Then take the whole case."

"No," Rhydian said. "Too obvious, too heavy, and they may track it."

Nessa noticed papers beneath the case lid.

A thin transport sheet had been clipped into a metal frame.

She pulled it free.

The heading read CIVIC CONTINUITY COMPATIBILITY TRANSFER.

Below were columns of coded entries.

Most meant nothing.

One did.

SECOND SEAL — LUNAR RESONANCE THRESHOLD 71%.

Another line read:

PRIMARY KEY: QUILL, N.

SECONDARY: QUILL, T.

Tavi went very still.

"They tested me."

"Apparently," Nessa said.

"When?"

No one answered.

She scanned lower.

There were references to harvested memory classes, Anchor resonance and something called ASCENSION RESERVE.

Then Rhydian took the page from her hand.

Not violently.

But with a suddenness she had never seen from him.

His eyes had fixed on a line near the bottom.

KEEPER INSTANCE: N-7.

ACCESS PATH: LOWER ARCHIVE.

PRIOR DESIGNATION: ORISON.

STATUS: RESET AUTHORIZED UPON RECOVERY.

For several seconds nobody spoke.

Tavi finally said, "Instance?"

Rhydian did not answer.

Nessa read the line again.

"Orison."

Something changed in Rhydian's face.

Not recognition exactly.

Pain without a memory attached to it.

From somewhere beyond the rear door came the sound of metal striking metal.

Rhydian whispered, "I've heard that name before."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

A key scraped against a lock beyond the rear door.

Nessa took the transfer sheet, folded it once and pushed it into the outer fold of her pocket beside the graphite-rubbed archive card. The six crystals, Mirelle's debt-stay card and Tavi's note remained secured in the fastened inner pocket.

"Now we leave."

The rear door opened.

The technician stepped through carrying a narrow silver transit cylinder in one hand and an authorization key in the other.

He froze when he saw them.

His gaze moved from the broken main door to the open extraction case.

Then to Nessa's pocket, where the transfer sheet had disappeared.

"You weren't supposed to get that."

"Wonderful," Nessa said. "I was beginning to worry this was still part of your plan."

He dropped the transit cylinder onto a side table and reached toward his coat.

Rhydian crossed the space before the man could draw whatever he carried.

He caught the technician's wrist and drove it against the wall.

A silver extraction needle clattered to the floor.

Tavi kicked it beneath the steel table.

The technician did not look afraid.

That was the worst part.

He smiled at Rhydian.

"They said you'd come back eventually."

Rhydian's grip tightened.

"Who did?"

"The people who made you."

Silence struck the room harder than any blow.

Nessa saw Rhydian's face empty.

The technician leaned closer despite the hand pinning him.

"Orison was kinder than you are."

Rhydian released him as if burned.

The technician laughed once.

Then lunged toward the open extraction case.

Nessa expected a weapon.

Instead he slapped his palm against a concealed plate inside the lid.

Every vial slot flashed white.

The Bellglass memory blazed.

And from Tavi's coat, the chronometer answered.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Tavi dragged it out.

Its imperfectly latched casing remained closed, the black-stone disk still hidden behind the partially lowered gears. The hands still pointed toward the thirteenth hour.

The first crescent remained steadily illuminated.

The second, which had only flickered before, brightened.

Then stayed bright.

Rhydian stared at it.

"Tavi—"

The entire building lurched.

Not sideways.

Down.

Dust spilled from the ceiling.

People screamed upstairs.

The technician's smile vanished.

For the first time, he looked genuinely terrified.

"No," he whispered.

He stared at the glowing case as if it had betrayed him.

"That wasn't the order."

A deep sound rolled through Vespera.

The same impossible turning of an ancient lock they had heard beneath Bellglass Square.

Only louder.

Closer.

Tavi's chronometer chimed a thirteenth note.

The second crescent stayed lit.

No one moved for a heartbeat.

Then, through the basement wall, came the unmistakable roar of an ocean.