Sorry for missing this week’s publishing window! I’m a little busy absolutely enthralled by some other writing. Here’s the first chapter of what will be my debut novel, The Seventh Prisoner:

The smoke woke me before the machine did.

The taste of burning insulation coated my tongue and forced a cough hard enough to drive the back of my skull into padded metal. I sucked in another breath by reflex and received more smoke for the effort.

Bad trade.

My eyes opened in complete darkness. I tried to sit up, but a rigid collar stopped my head before it moved an inch. Both wrists were locked beside my hips and heavier restraints secured my lower legs. Whoever had put me here had been thorough. They had also laid me down first, which was either considerate or simply easier for them.

I pulled my right arm. The cuff bit into my wrist without giving me any slack. The left one felt just as solid and pushing with my feet only tightened the restraints around my calves.

“Hello?”

The word came out hoarse and died so close to my face that I could almost feel it strike whatever covered me. Nobody answered. I rolled my shoulders, and the padding peeled wetly away from my back. Some sort of gel coated my clothes and skin, thick enough to gather beneath my ribs whenever I moved. It smelled like antiseptic and dead skin.

I hoped it was mine.

Orange light flared through a rectangular port above my face. Flames moved behind the dirty glass, revealing curved metal around my head and the underside of a lid less than a handspan above my nose. I recognized the shape a second before I remembered what it was.

I was inside a Resonance Cradle.

Cradles were supposed to keep an occupant alive, immobilized, and safely isolated from whatever their resonance might do under stress. They were considerably less reassuring when viewed from inside one while it burned.

I searched for the last event I could remember. My memory offered plenty of ordinary days, my old job, and streets in my hometown I could navigate after way too many drinks, but I had no fucking idea how I had gotten here.

The machinery worked. It simply refused to produce a single face, conversation, or terrible decision connected to the restraints around my limbs.

My name was Devlin. I was — or had been — a licensed adventuring guide, which meant people paid me to identify routes, traps, unstable resonance and the exact moment someone in their party was about to test a suspicious floor tile with their face. I had worked around enough containment equipment to recognize the machine currently trying to cook me.

Another orange flare passed over the window and a thin stream of smoke pushed through the seal around the glass. The new leak ended my memory search before it produced anything useful.

I flexed my fingers and confirmed that both hands responded. My right hip pressed against a hard edge beneath my forearm.

My Biblio!

“Activate.”

Nothing happened.

Smoke thickened beneath the lid.

“Biblio.” I forced more air into my lungs. “Wake.”

A click sounded beneath my arm. Blue light struck the lid of my coffin and assembled a fractured interface along my right forearm. A rotating loading bracket appeared and seemed to go on forever.

A bright synthesized chime sounded near my wrist. The familiar voice that followed had the sterile composure of an Archive construct somewhere that was currently not on fire, probably.

“Good morning. Your rest interval has exceeded the recommended duration.”

“No kidding."

“An urgent administrative update is available regarding your scheduled evacuation.”

I stopped testing the cuffs. “What?”

“An urgent administrative update is available regarding your scheduled evacuation.”

“I heard you. Expand it.”

“Voice confidence below preferred authentication threshold. Please repeat the command while maintaining direct visual contact with your Biblio.”

The Biblio sat against my right hip, its display turned away beneath my forearm. The collar around my neck prevented me from twisting far enough to see it and smoke continued pouring in around my head.

I forced my cheek against the heated padding and gained a narrow view past my shoulder.

“Expand evacuation notice.”

Bright brackets formed across the projection.

“Missed by how much?” I asked.

The Biblio answered with a pleasant confirmation tone.

“What the fuck?”

“Profanity has been detected in a restricted treatment environment. Please avoid inflammatory comments directed towards facility staff.”

Three years felt impossible. My memory wasn’t empty. I remembered old routing jobs, unpaid invoices, cheap apartments and the clinic owner who had tried to pass a resonance injury off as a pre-existing condition for the insurance claim. I could recall enough mistakes, arguments and regrettable mornings to recognize the life as mine.

But when I searched for how that life had ended with me restrained inside a burning machine, I found nothing. My memories just stopped. Beyond them sat one name without a single image or shred of context attached to it.

Site Zero.

Heat surged through the plate beneath my back and returned the fire to my first priority. The support foam beneath my shoulder blades had softened to the point of being useless. Pain spread along my right tricep where a failing plate dug into it and the gel had almost certainly ruined my jacket. It was a good jacket. Expensive enough that losing it deserved its own grievance, scheduled immediately after I stopped being cooked alive.

“Biblio, release restraints.”

“Restraint management requires authenticated medical authority.”

“Emergency release.”

“Emergency release has already been requested.”

“When?”

“Three years, seventeen days, eight hours and thirty seconds ago,” it announced without a shred of irony.

A cable bundle snapped outside. White sparks scattered across the window and insulation shrivelled away from exposed copper I could see in the ceiling.

I rotated both wrists and mapped the restraints by pressure. The left cuff had no play. On the right, the gel had opened it perhaps half a finger’s width, though the inner edge caught against my wrist whenever I folded my thumb inward. The leg restraints secured my lower calves rather than my ankles. Bracing my feet only drove my hips deeper into what remained of the foam.

My right fingertips slid through the gel until they brushed a recessed slot beside my hip. I pushed two fingers inside and found a slick metal handle.

“Gotcha.”

I hooked both fingers underneath it and pulled with as much leverage as I could. Which wasn’t a lot considering, you know, cuffs. The mechanism gave. A component snapped inside the lower housing, and the handle tore free into my palm.

I let it fall against my hip. “Biblio?”

“Yes, registered bearer?”

“Did the emergency release fail?”

“Internal release status is currently unavailable.”

“Take a guess.”

“Guessing is not an approved Archive function.”

The lid looked like geoferium. That was going to make punching useless even if I had a free hand. Plus, I’d never really considered myself much of a puncher.

Was that water?

I stopped moving and felt a cold line run beneath my ribs. The leak was slow, only a few drops, but it meant the cradle’s cooling system was still working. That damaged line might have been the only reason I had woken up instead of roasting while sedated.

The pipe’s intake sat near my right hand, but reaching it required pulling that hand through the cuff.

The gel improved my odds. It also seemed prepared to help the restraint remove several useful layers of skin.

Another electrical crack ran across the lid and melting exterior foam added a chemical sting to the smoke.

I folded my thumb across my palm and wrenched the widest part of my hand against the restraint. Skin stripped from the side of my thumb and the Biblio scraped along the cuff with an offended chirp.

“Caution. Device impact detected.”

“You’ll be fine. I’m a little busy with the room being on fire.”

“In the event of a fire, remain calm and proceed to the nearest authorized exit. If physically restrained, request assistance from qualified personnel. If qualified personnel are unavailable, continue remaining calm.”

“I didn’t—oh, never mind.”

I pulled once more. The cuff tore across my knuckles and wrenched my wrist, but my hand shot free. My arm dropped across my ribs, shaking hard enough to knock the Biblio against the empty restraint. The swelling could become a problem after survival. My fingertips found the copper water line. Cold water rushed through it toward the cradle’s cooling system.

The water was moving forward. I needed it to move backward. That should have been simple, except my resonance had never shown much respect for the word should.

I hadn’t chosen to become a Halfbound, but if I had, I wouldn’t have picked the affinity that treated instructions as loose suggestions.

The line was already cracked where a bracket fixed it to the cradle’s inner shell. If I reversed the flow sharply enough, the pressure change might make the damaged pipe kick against the bracket and tear it loose. One bracket wouldn’t open a geoferium cradle. But, it might give me enough room to reach something that would.

A burning cable dropped across the lid and threw sparks through the central seam. There might have been safer plans, but the deadline for those had long since passed.

“Biblio, assess structural stability.”

“Assessment in progress. Estimated completion time: seven minutes.”

“I don’t have seven minutes.”

“Would you prefer a less accurate assessment?”

“Yes.”

“Structural stability is poor.”

“Excellent.”

I flattened my palm against the copper line and focused on the flowing water. I pushed one instruction into it.

Back.

The flow stopped. For one second, the pipe lay cold and still beneath my hand. Then frost spread across the copper. It raced away from my palm in both directions, filling the crack with white ice before continuing through the cooling lines around the cradle. The metal snapped and ticked as the temperature dropped faster than anything natural could manage. The water had not moved backward. It had frozen.

“Oh, come on.”

Everything after that was ordinary.

Water expanded when it froze. Only by about a tenth, but that was enough to burst pipes and split sealed tanks. The cradle’s water was trapped inside a thin cooling jacket between the padded bed beneath me and the rigid outer frame.

The ice needed more room. The cradle didn’t have any.

A sharp crack sounded beneath my ribs. The cooling jacket split along one seam, and a ridge of ice forced itself into the narrow space between the bed and the frame.

The geoferium frame did not bend. The old mounts holding the bed inside it did.

One snapped beside my hip. Another failed near my shoulder. The bed dropped crooked beneath me while the frame and locked lid remained fixed.

The restraints moved with the bed.

The collar did not.

Unfortunately, my body was still connecting the two.

The Biblio display turned red.

The conversion triggered a backlash. Every muscle across my torso contracted. My spine arched against the collar, my left cuff dragged my shoulder toward the sinking bed and both leg restraints hauled downward against my calves.

My freed arm slammed into the casing.

For several seconds, breathing became an ambitious long-term project.

More cracks travelled around the cradle as the ice continued expanding. The remaining mounts tore loose one by one, allowing the bed to drop farther and twist sideways inside the frame.

Its upper edge struck one of the latches holding the lid closed.

The latch tore partly free. A narrow gap opened above my shoulder, admitting orange light and one breath of air containing slightly more smoke than the air inside.

I planted my feet against the lower plate and pushed my free hand against the lid. Another spasm tore through my abdomen, but my weight shifted the loose bed farther sideways. Metal ground against metal above my face. The bed struck the second latch and ripped it from the frame. The lid did not bend. Everything holding it closed was coming apart.

The cooling jacket finally burst along its length. Ice, slush, and strips of thin metal spilled into the bed. The expansion stopped, but the cradle no longer had enough intact mounts to hold itself together.

The final mounts failed together. The bed dropped out from beneath the lid, struck the raised platform on one side, and rolled toward the opening.

Both leg restraints broke loose as it twisted. The collar lock tore open. My left cuff remained closed, but its anchor ripped out of the bed with a section of casing attached.

Momentum did the rest.

I left the cradle sideways, covered in coolant, melting ice, and support gel, with the restraint still locked around my left wrist and part of the machine dragging behind it. The platform caught my shoulder first. My hip struck next, and hot grating scraped through my wet clothes as I rolled across broken glass and slush.

The cuff housing landed beside my head with enough force to dent the grating.

I stopped facedown in a puddle of freezing water and tested each limb before trying to make it to my feet.

Not my most graceful exit to date.

A bright chime sounded from my right wrist.

“Good to know that part of my Biblio still works.”

Once I could lock my elbows, I lifted my head.

The isolation bay was larger than the cradle had suggested and had been abandoned long enough for dust to coat every control station. The ruined machine occupied a raised central platform.

The observation window was black with grime. No staff or medical constructs had responded to the fire, the alarms or the destruction of a very expensive piece of equipment.

I pushed onto my hands and knees. My arms trembled beneath my weight and the cuff around my left wrist was less than cooperative. A torn cable and a jagged strip of casing still connected it to the mounting housing I had dragged from the cradle. Removing it properly required tools and time that I didn't have.

Standing took two attempts and the nearest control station. Support gel, dirty water and sweat ran into my eyes. My clothes clung to steam-burned skin along my right ribs and my right wrist had begun swelling.

I was alive. The result lacked elegance, but it satisfied the primary requirement.

A physical identification plate remained fixed to the cradle platform. Heat had melted its surface around two surviving words.

PRISONER SEVEN.

I read the plate twice because the machine could have called me a patient, detainee, test subject or any of the other polite terms institutions used when restraints were involved.

It chose prisoner.

A sharp chime cut through the bay.

My Biblio’s fractured display filled with text.

Every functioning machine in the isolation bay shut down. The coolant pump died beneath the cradle. A damaged ventilation fan stopped mid-rotation, and the electrical hum disappeared from the walls.

For one breath, the only sounds were fire and dripping water.

Then power returned selectively to the emergency beacons, the sealed door and every surviving Archive display. Rotating red light passed over the broken cradle and my wet outline beside the control station.

Some sirens sounded just beyond the door. Others answered from farther away, spreading through sections of Site Zero I couldn’t see.

“Biblio, define Tier Three.”

“Tier Three: Lattice Integrity Failure.”

“I can read. What does it do?”

“Facility correction protocols have escalated beyond safe recapture.”

A delayed line appeared beneath the definition.

Static erupted from the wall speakers and drowned out the sirens. My Biblio cleared its display and every active screen in the bay turned red. A measured synthetic man’s voice spoke through the crackling speakers.

“Attention all Site Zero custodial, medical, and security units.” Heavy machinery activated beyond the sealed bay door. “Lattice Integrity Failure is now in effect. All active sectors will initiate correction procedures. Surface access remains prohibited.”

The door’s internal mechanism began moving through a sequence too substantial for an ordinary lock. “Prisoner Seven has resumed consciousness without authorization.”

I leaned away from the damaged station and pulled the cuff housing closer. The torn casing had enough mass and grip to serve as a club.

A locking bolt withdrew from the door with a metallic clunk.

My Biblio flashed one final notification.

A second bolt retracted inside the door.

The voice delivered its final instruction without emphasis. “Locate the anomaly and delete the altered resonance pattern.”

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