Chapter 15 The Oxygen Thief

The white glare of the ruby doesn’t just record my heart rate. It bleeds into the sterile suite like a flare, a silent alarm my faked telemetry cannot mute.

Damian’s fingers remain pressed against the scanner’s glass, inches from my chest. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t blink. He watches the glowing stone, reading the erratic pulses as if they’re a confession written in light.

"Master," Julian’s voice is jagged.

He hovers over the console, fingers twitching toward the override keys. "The—the locket is a prototype. High-spectrum interference is common. The digital logs are the only—"

"Be quiet, Julian."

Damian doesn't raise his voice. It’s a flat, cold line of sound that shears through the doctor’s panic.

I try to draw a breath, but the air has turned to lead. It’s not terror—it’s physics. The oxygen in the room is vanishing, siphoned out by a vacuum I can’t see.

My lungs expand, straining against the silk of my robe, pulling in nothing but the sharp, metallic sting of ozone. It’s the smell of a lightning strike a second before the bolt hits.

The silver threads in my arms aren't just itching now. They’re humming, a conductive lattice beneath my skin that has suddenly developed an appetite. They aren't just fueling my muscles; they’re feeding on the atmosphere itself.

I gasp, my head lolling back against the headrest. The titanium wrist-locks click as my hands spasm. Three. Two. One.

I try to ground myself, but the rhythm is lost in the roar of blood in my ears.

"Her vitals are dropping," Sarah Jenkins says.

She steps toward the chair, her professional veneer finally fracturing. She isn't looking at the monitors. She’s staring at my throat, where my skin is turning a translucent, ghostly white.

"Master, the vessel is in distress."

Damian finally looks up from the ruby. His eyes lock onto mine. There’s no pity there—only a dark, focused hunger. He’s watching me the way a chemist watches a solution reach its flashpoint.

"The environmental sensors are redlining, Sarah," Damian says.

He gestures toward the wall panel without looking at it. "Carbon dioxide levels are stable, but the oxygen saturation in this room just dropped twelve percent in thirty seconds. Where did it go, Julian?"

Julian shakes so hard his spectacles slide down the bridge of his nose. "I... I don't know. A leak in the ventilation? A chemical fire in the—"

"There is no fire," Damian cuts him off.

He turns from the glass and walks toward a recessed cabinet. He moves with a heavy, slow precision that makes the thinning air feel even more oppressive. He pulls out a medical oxygen concentrator.

The unit hisses as it primes, a serpentine sound in the silence.

Black, jagged holes tear through my vision. My heart is a frantic weight trapped in a cage of silver ribs. I can feel the thing in my womb pulsing with a cold, rhythmic hunger that matches the drain in the room.

It isn't just me. The child is breathing through me. And it doesn't want the air; it wants the energy.

Damian stands over me, the oxygen mask dangling from his hand. He doesn't put it on me yet. He waits, watching the way my chest heaves, watching the silver threads begin to glow through the fabric of my robe.

"The Argus system says you’re stable, Elena," he murmurs, leaning close enough that I can smell the tobacco and expensive silk. "Julian’s data says you’re a perfectly healthy, fragile woman. But the air around you is dying."

I try to spit a curse at him, but my tongue is a dry weight. I can only stare, my eyes wide and wild.

"Master, please," Julian whispers. "She needs the mask."

Damian ignores him. He reaches out, his thumb catching a bead of sweat on my temple. His skin is unnaturally hot.

The moment he touches me, a jolt of static electricity jumps between us—a sharp crack that echoes off the tiled walls. He smiles. It’s a thin, dangerous thing.

"You aren't just a casing, are you?" he asks, his voice dropping to a rasp meant only for me. "You’re a catalyst. You’re turning the world around you into fuel."

He finally presses the mask over my face.

The rush of pure, concentrated oxygen hits my lungs like a physical blow. I suck it in, greedy and desperate, my fingers clawing at the armrests as the black spots in my vision recede.

Damian holds the mask in place. He doesn't let go. He keeps his hand over mine, forcing the seal against my skin, his palm a brand of heat that won't fade.

"Breathe, Elena," he commands.

I look at him through the clear plastic. My pulse levels out, the frantic drumming in my ears fading to a low hum. The silver threads under my skin dim, retreating back into the marrow.

Julian collapses into his chair, head in his hands. Sarah is back at the door, eyes fixed on the oxygen levels on the wall panel. They’re climbing again.

The crisis is over, but the silence that follows is a different kind of suffocation. Damian pulls the mask away just enough for me to speak. He’s still too close.

"What..." I cough, my voice a raspy thread. "What do you want?"

Damian adjusts the strap of the mask. His fingers linger near the micro-needle port at the base of my skull. He isn't looking at the screens anymore. He’s looking at me as if I’m the only piece of data left in the world.

"I noticed the room's air quality dropped the moment your pulse stabilized on Julian's faked reports," he says.

He leans in, his breath ghosting over the edge of the mask. "Tell me, Elena. If you aren't a fragile surrogate, and you aren't a dying asset... what are you breathing for?"

I don't answer. I can't. The truth is buried in my skeleton, and if I tell him, I’m not just a weapon anymore. I’m a target.

He stares at me for a long minute, waiting for a lie that won't come. Finally, he stands, signaling Sarah to take over the concentrator.

"Keep her on the high-flow until the midnight transit," Damian orders.

He doesn't look back as he walks toward the lead-lined door. "And Julian?"

The doctor flinches. "Yes, Master?"

"Don't bother deleting the environmental logs. I've already archived them."

The door hisses shut, the magnetic seal engaging with a heavy thud.

I lie back in the chair, the pure oxygen hissing in my ears. Sarah steps forward, her cold fingers replacing Damian’s on the mask. She doesn't say a word. She just watches me with those clinical, judgmental eyes.

I reach into the dark, trying to find the cold place where my father’s training lives. But all I can find is the echo of Damian’s voice and the realization that the cage isn't just the mansion anymore.

It’s my own skin.

I look down at the ruby on my chest. It’s no longer white. It’s a deep, bruised crimson, pulsing in time with a heartbeat that isn't entirely my own.

Sarah's hand tightens on the mask, her eyes darting to the door.

"He knows," she whispers, so low the microphones won't catch it. "And if he knows, they’re coming for the harvest early."

She reaches into her pocket and slides a jagged piece of glass into my restrained hand.

"Midnight," she says. "Either you use this, or we both die in the transit."