The Wardens waited in the atrium, in their dark long coats. One of them held a keyring that bristled with iron and brass, each key stamped with different symbols Bram didn't recognize. The other carried a device that looked like a compass crossed with a sextant, its needle spinning lazily in the breath-lamp light.

Reggie stood between them, hands in his pockets, expression pleasant. He smiled when he saw Bram and Rosalie descending the stairs.

"Thank you for coming so quickly," he said, as if they'd had a choice. "I know this is unusual, but we've had a breakthrough that requires immediate testing."

"What kind of breakthrough?" Rosalie asked.

"Efficiency improvements. Significant ones." He gestured to the Wardens. "Shall we?"

The lead Warden turned without acknowledgment and started toward a door Bram had never noticed before, set into the wall beneath the main staircase, iron-banded and marked with the same symbols as the keys. The Warden fitted one into the lock. It turned with a sound like breaking ice.

The door opened onto stairs leading down.

Not the kind of down Bram knew from the Below. This was deeper. Older. The walls were rough stone rather than worked marble, and the air that breathed up from the darkness was hot and thick and tasted of metal.

"After you," Reggie said.

The stairs went down for a long time.

Bram counted at first, sixty steps, eighty, a hundred, then gave up when the numbers stopped mattering. The temperature climbed with each level they descended. His shirt stuck to his back. The mark pulsed in time with his heartbeat, faster now, almost eager.

Rosalie walked ahead of him, back rigid, one hand trailing along the wall. In the dim light from the Warden's lamp, he could see her fingers trembling.

The stairs ended at a platform. Beyond it: nothing. Just darkness and the sound of something vast breathing.

The Warden with the compass-device raised it. The needle stopped spinning and locked onto a direction with an audible click. They set off along the platform, footsteps echoing in the emptiness.

Bram's eyes adjusted slowly. Not to light, there was none, but to the shape of the darkness. Pillars emerged from shadow, massive things that might have been stone or might have been something else, rising up into a ceiling too distant to see. Between them, metal frameworks stretched like spiderwebs, and along those frameworks...

His breath caught.

Pipes. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, running in thick bundles along the walls and ceiling. They pulsed faintly, not with light but with something underneath light, something that made his teeth ache and his mark burn hot enough to feel through two layers of cloth.

"What is this place?" His voice came out hushed.

"The engine room," Reggie said from behind him. "Where the real work happens."

They walked for another five minutes before the first Siphon came into view.

It was beautiful.

That was the worst part. It was beautiful, elegant brass and crystal forming patterns that pleased the eye even as they made Bram's stomach turn. The device rose from the platform like a flower, all curved petals and internal geometry, refracting the faint pulse from the pipes into something that looked almost like starlight.

And at its center, a cable descended into the darkness below. Thick as Bram's thigh, wrapped in some material that looked like woven glass and seemed to breathe slightly, expanding and contracting in slow rhythm.

There, the voice said, and her voice was different now, harder, colder. Feel.

Bram didn't want to feel. But the flood was already rising, pulling him toward that gentle pulse, that rhythmic drawing-in-and-letting-go. He reached out without meaning to, his magic following the flow down through the cable, down through pipes and stone and...

Heat. Vast and old and alive.

Something bound in darkness, something that hurt with every extraction, every pull. Not dead. Not sleeping. Aware. And in agony.

He jerked back, gasping.

"Steady." Reggie's hand on his shoulder, firm and warm. "First time seeing the Source directly can be overwhelming."

"What is it pulling from?" Bram knew the answer. He just needed to hear Reggie say it.

"The dragon beneath this sector. Standard extraction protocols, regulated draw rates, cooldown periods, the whole approved apparatus." Reggie moved past him toward the Siphon, running one hand along its brass housing with something like affection. "This is one of our oldest models. Functional, but inefficient. Loses nearly thirty percent of the extracted essence to dispersal during transfer."

Rosalie had stopped walking. She stood very still, staring at the cable descending into darkness.

"And the prototype?" she asked quietly.

"Ah." Reggie's smile widened. "Come see."

He led them around the first Siphon to where a second device waited, newer and somehow more refined. Where the old model was brass and crystal, this one incorporated materials Bram didn't recognize, dark metal that seemed to drink light, crystalline structures that pulsed in time with the cable connected to them. The whole thing hummed at a frequency that made his molars ache.

"Threefold improvement in containment geometry," Reggie said, and there was genuine pride in his voice. "Directional channeling instead of omnidirectional pull. And the real innovation, sympathetic resonance tuning that adapts to the Source's fluctuations in real time."

He turned to Bram. "Which is where you come in."

The mark blazed. Bram pressed his palm over it harder.

"Me?"

"Your particular talent with systems makes you ideal for calibration work." Reggie gestured to the prototype. "The resonance tuning requires someone who can feel the flow directly, adjust it to optimal efficiency. Traditional mages just follow the calculations, but you..." He smiled. "You can make it perfect."

The word hung in the hot air like a challenge.

Bram looked at Rosalie.

She was watching him, her face very pale in the dim light, expression unreadable.

"What do I need to do?" His voice came out steadier than he felt.

Reggie explained. It was simple, really. Put his hands on the intake nodes, there, and there, let his magic flow into the device, feel for the resonance points, tune them until the system achieved maximum efficiency. The prototype would handle the rest.

Simple. Elegant. Effective.

And it would make the torture more precise.

Bram's hands wouldn't stop shaking. He clenched them into fists.

"This doesn't feel right," he said.

Reggie's expression didn't change. "Feelings aren't data, Bram. Does the mechanism function?"

"That's not what I..."

"I understand what you mean." Reggie's voice was still pleasant, still reasonable. "You're uncomfortable because you can feel what's happening Below. That's natural. But consider: these dragons are already bound. The extraction is already happening. All we're doing is making the existing system more efficient."

"More efficient torture."

"More efficient utilization of available resources." Reggie didn't flinch from the words. "The dragons were bound three centuries ago. That can't be undone without destabilizing the entire city, you've seen the echo-bleeds, you know the system is already under strain. We can't free them. But we can make their... contribution... serve a greater good. Better extraction efficiency means we can power more dampening arrays, more suppression fields, keep more people safe from uncontrolled magical surges."

He gestured around them at the darkness, the pipes, the vast engine of it all. "This isn't cruelty, Bram. It's pragmatism. Making the best of an impossible situation."

Bram's throat was tight. "And if I refuse?"

Reggie was quiet for a moment. Then: "That would be unfortunate. For several reasons." He started counting them off on his fingers. "One: we'd need to find another calibrator, which would delay implementation and cost lives lost to dampening field failures. Two: the Oculus board would need to reconsider your position, calibration work is part of your research obligations. Three: your stipend is contingent on active contribution to approved projects."

A pause.

"Your family needs that money, don't they? Your father's medical costs, your sister's treatments?"

The words landed like physical blows. Bram's hands had gone numb.

"That's not fair," Rosalie said quietly.

Reggie turned to her. "Fair rarely enters into it. This is necessity." Back to Bram: "I'm not trying to manipulate you. I'm giving you the complete picture so you can make an informed choice. You can refuse. Walk away right now. But know what that costs, your position, your security, your ability to send money home. Or you can do what needs to be done and continue your work here. Continue being part of something that matters."

Do it, the voice said, and her voice was ice and stone. Aperture must see all of it. Must be part of it. Only then will you understand.

Understand what?

What must burn.

Bram looked at the prototype Siphon. At the cable descending into darkness. At the elegant brass and crystal that would make extraction forty percent more efficient, that would pull more essence from something already screaming, that would...

His vision blurred. He blinked hard.

"How long will the calibration take?" His voice sounded distant, like someone else was speaking.

"Twenty minutes. Maybe less, given your sensitivity."

Twenty minutes. That was all. Just put his hands on the device, tune it to perfect efficiency, and walk away. Twenty minutes, and he could keep his room, his position, his ability to help his family. Twenty minutes, and he wouldn't have to go back to the Below, wouldn't have to see his mother's hands shake, wouldn't have to watch his sister deteriorate because they couldn't afford proper care.

Twenty minutes, and he'd be complicit.

But he already was, wasn't he? He'd been eating their food, sleeping in their bed, taking their money for days. This was just making it official.

"Bram." Rosalie's voice, very quiet. "You don't have to..."

"Yes I do." He moved toward the prototype before he could think better of it. "Let's get it over with."

The intake nodes were warm under his palms. Smooth crystal and rough metal, humming with potential. Bram closed his eyes and let the flood rise.

It came easier than it ever had before, like water finding a crack. His magic poured into the device, following its internal pathways, mapping the resonance chambers and sympathetic channels, feeling for the places where frequency and flow aligned just so...

There. And there. And there.

Each adjustment made the system tighter, more focused. Each tuning brought it closer to perfect efficiency. He could feel it working, feel the draw becoming more precise, less wasteful, pulling exactly the right amount from exactly the right places.

He could also feel what it was pulling from.

Not thoughts, exactly. Dragons didn't think the way humans did. But sensations, vast ancient loneliness, awareness stretched across centuries, the slow crushing weight of containment, and underneath it all a pain so constant it had become background noise. Like tinnitus. Like breathing. Just there, always, unchanging except when the Siphons drew and then it would spike bright and sharp before settling back into that endless low ache.

And now it would spike forty percent more efficiently.

Bram tuned the last resonance point and pulled his hands away.

The prototype hummed. Perfect. Beautiful. Exactly as efficient as Reggie had promised.

"Brilliant work," Reggie said, and he sounded genuinely pleased. "The readings are exceptional. This could revolutionize the entire extraction network."

Bram's knees gave out. He sat down hard on the platform, hands shaking so badly he had to press them flat against stone to make them stop.

Rosalie crouched beside him, not touching but close. "Breathe."

He was breathing. Too fast. His vision kept tunneling.

"We should get him back up," she said, but Reggie was already turning away, making notes on a clipboard pulled from somewhere, talking to the Wardens about implementation timelines and network integration.

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