“Cade,” Marius called.

The man appeared in Cade’s blurring vision, strong arms lifting him to his feet. He vomited, then choked a question through his bile-burned throat.

“Where are my friends?”

Marius shook his head. “Just a boy,” he muttered. “I forget, he is just a boy.”

“Friends!” Cade demanded, falling to his knees as his strength left him completely.

“They are in the fortress,” Marius said gently, wiping the vomit from Cade’s chin. “Looking for you.”

Cade grasped at Marius’s skirt, his weight pulling the man closer.

“Find them,” he croaked. “Find them! Now!”

Marius slowly prized Cade’s fingers from him.

“Rest easy, my son,” Marius said. “I will.”

Cade heard the orders shouted. Saw the feet of the legionaries passing by, as they hurried into the fortress.

Then, a crackle. A shift in his arms. The Codex rolled free, tumbling onto the ground before levitating into the air.

Cade stared into the empty eye of its lens, a silent hiss of frustration sputtering through gritted teeth. Behind him, Cade heard his friends call his name. And then … the world changed.

Like a blink that never happened. Faster, even. No flicker, no blur. What had been before no longer was.

He was on a mountaintop. No. A spire.

His feet were splayed upon a rough-stone platform, one so narrow he could topple from it with a single step. Beneath him, the rock sloped out and out again, a curving pyramid of crags and bluffs, as if some giant had pinched a tablecloth plateau between its fingers and pulled it high and taut.

It was devastating in its height. And the surrounding air was clear as day, such that he could see for miles. And all was desert. Not a single living thing.

Cade could have been anywhere. Another planet. Another galaxy. A hard reminder to the awful power of the pantheon. They could pluck him from existence with hardly a thought.

He still wore his armor, and it hung heavy on his body. The toy Gray remained in his hand, and he wondered if throwing it from the cliff would save him from Abaddon’s wrath. He was so tired.

“Cade.”

The voice crackled, as if the Codex had been damaged in the EMP attack. And it was indeed the Codex. Hanging before him in the air, its empty gaze focused upon him.

Then, she appeared. Skipping through the air like a ghost, yet so real he could reach out and touch her. Abaddon’s avatar. The girl.

“Did you enjoy it?” Abaddon asked. The girl’s voice did not belay the veiled fury beneath it.

“Enjoy what?” Cade asked.

The girl flickered, though whether it was emotive or glitching, Cade could not tell. “Your brief interlude of freedom.”

Cade felt himself gulp involuntarily, even as the little girl’s eyes bore into his. Though he knew they were but a projection, and Abaddon observed him through other means, it made him no less nervous.

“Just because the Codex ran out of battery doesn’t mean I was free,” Cade said, furrowing his brows in an attempted look of confusion.