Affinity:Chaos

Inside the abandoned warehouse the air was thick with dust and the dry scent of old wood. Moonlight filtered weakly through gaps in the boarded windows, painting thin silver lines across the wide, empty floor. Grey and Reynolds slipped in through one of the open upper windows, the sealed black-clad man still hanging limp in Grey’s grip.

They landed silently on the wooden floorboards. The large space stretched out in every direction, broken only by a few rusted support beams and scattered crates. Grey’s eyes locked onto the far corner of the building. A faint blue glow flickered across his pupils as he studied the area. After a moment he tossed the captive to Reynolds.

"Wait here."

His figure melted into the deeper shadows along the wall. He moved without sound, each step careful and measured, until he was only a few meters from the corner that had drawn his attention. There he stopped and sent a thin thread of mental energy forward, probing the space ahead with extreme care. Several seconds passed before he narrowed his eyes and withdrew the probe. He returned to Reynolds as quietly as he had left.

"Any luck?" Reynolds asked in a low voice.

"There’s a concealment array covering that corner," Grey replied. "I can sense Necromancers beneath it, most likely in a lower chamber. I can break the formation, but the moment I do they’ll know we’re here. If there are more of them than we can handle, we can still escape, but so can they."

That was the problem. He did not want to alert the Necromancers and give them the chance to flee before the group could be wiped out.

The captive beside them shuddered when he heard Grey speak so accurately about both the concealment array and the underground chamber. For a brief moment the wild thought crossed his mind that Grey might somehow be one of them. The idea died almost instantly. There was no world in which Grey Dawson worked with Necromancers, not when the Gnomes themselves had spent so much effort trying to kill him.

The small movement of the man’s body drew Grey’s attention. He turned his head and looked down at the sealed man.

"Looks like you know a way in that won’t set off any alarms," Grey said. His voice remained casual, almost conversational. "Tell us and I promise not to kill you."

The man spat onto the dusty floor. "Do I look like a child? You’ll kill me anyway. Even if you don’t, the Mayor won’t spare my life once he finds out."

"You’re not wrong," Grey answered. Then his tone shifted, still quiet but carrying a cold edge. "If you tell us how to enter without raising the alarm, I’ll give you a clean, quiet death. The Mayor will never learn your identity. You should know what happens if I hand you over to him. Your entire family will be dragged into this."

The man’s expression turned frosty. He let out a short, bitter scoff. "You think if I still had a family I’d be working with Gnomes and Necromancers?"

"Interesting," Grey murmured. He studied the man for a moment longer. A cold light flickered through his eyes.

The captive took an involuntary step back when he saw that light. He did not know what Grey intended, but he was certain he would not enjoy it.

Grey grabbed the man by the collar and left the warehouse in a single blur of movement. They reappeared some distance away inside another abandoned building, this one even darker and more decayed than the first. Grey threw the man onto the floorboards like a discarded sack.

His mental energy flared.

"I haven’t done this in a while, so bear with me," Grey said. "I hope you don’t change your mind halfway through."

Goosebumps rose along Reynolds’s arms as he watched from the side. The captive felt the change even more strongly. A cold, eerie pressure flooded the small space, pressing against his mind like a living weight. He tried to scramble backward, only to discover that his legs had already been bound to the floor by earth elemental energy without him noticing.

Grey’s mental sense sank into the man’s consciousness with overwhelming force. The captive’s face twisted the moment he felt the foreign presence forcibly prying open the defenses of his mind. He tried to resist with his own mental energy, but a sudden jolt of lightning ripped through his consciousness, scattering his defenses. In the same instant a powerful brand was etched into the core of his mind. He could only watch helplessly as the overbearing mental sense moved through his mind as it pleased.

Fear gripped him when he realized what the brand might mean. He immediately tried to use his own mental energy to erase it. Sharp, white-hot pain exploded through his head, forcing a strangled sound from his throat.

"Hmm. I didn’t break anything important," Grey said thoughtfully. He crouched so that his eyes were level with the man’s. "All right. Let’s start again. How do we enter that place without raising any alarm?"

The man glared up at him with gritted teeth. He had never felt pain like the one that had just torn through his consciousness. Even so, he kept his mouth shut.

Grey remained unfazed. He lifted one index finger and pressed it lightly against the man’s brow.

A stinging, electric pain surged through the captive’s entire body. His limbs went rigid, then began to spasm violently against the floorboards. A raw scream tore from his throat, but the sound never left the immediate area, Grey had already sealed the space with a thin layer of wind elemental energy, making it impossible for anyone even a meter away to hear.

Reynolds watched the man thrash and seize with cold, expressionless eyes. There was no pity in his gaze.

The screaming continued for several long seconds. When the pain finally subsided, the man lay soaked in sweat, chest heaving, every breath ragged.

"Tell me what I want to know," Grey said.

The man glared at him with pure hatred. "You’ll have to kill me first."

"That won’t work," Grey replied, voice still bland. "A dead man is of no use to me."

His mental sense flared once more. The captive’s screams rose again, trapped and echoing only inside the small, sealed space of the abandoned warehouse.

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