Page 316 of Scarlet Wars
“What?” I whispered, narrowing my eyes.
He almost smiled. Not the cocky grin I was used to. This one was quieter. Calmer. Like he knew something I didn’t and wasn’t afraid of it.
“You can get us out of here.”
I blinked. “I can…what?”
He reached up and gently tucked a string of my hair behind my ear, the touch so gentle, so intimate, I almost forgot we were bleeding on the floor of a prison cell.
The way he looked at me. Gods, like I could do anything.
“You’re going to break the bubble.”
I laughed once. “That’s not possible.”
“Sure it is,” he said, almost too sure. “A bubble is no more than a form of translation. Complex but still built from the same rules. If it can be built, it can be undone. But to break it, you must understand it. Really understand it.”
I stared at him like he’d lost his damn mind. “Let me guess: you’re going to explain?”
He nodded. “I’ll walk you through it. You’ll undo the weave of the bubble from inside, while counteracting its effects by healing yourself as you go.”
“Caden…” I started, shaking my head, “that’s?—”
“You already did it,” he said, cutting me off softly. “You split your haze in two. You healed us both. Underneath a bubble. You shouldn’t have been able to survive it, but you did. You counteracted the kill effect without even knowing how. Now all you have to do is the same thing again but use both hazes instead of only your golden one.”
I stared at him.
Like really stared.
Because what he was asking—what hebelieved—was insane. And he looked at me like there was no one else in the world who could do this. Like if anyone could rewrite the laws of translation, unravel the impossible, and survive it, it was me.
The terrifying part?
Some small, buried part of me almost believed it too.
“Okay,” I murmured, nodding slowly. “Still sounds like a suicide mission...but I’d rather go out trying than sit here waiting for another round of Chiefs to tear us apart.”
Caden squeezed my hand, eyes steady on mine.
“Then let’s rewrite the rules,” he said, his voice alive with something dangerous. “Has anyone ever explained to you what a bubbledoes?”
I shook my head slowly. “No.”
He leaned back slightly. “Think of yourself as fire. When an Amplifier’s activated, it’s like pouring gasoline over that fire. It intensifies it. Makes it too big, too wild to contain. It doesn’t just burn, itconsumeseverything, including its source.”
He paused, exhaling hard. “The bubble is the opposite. It’s not fuel, it’s water. It suffocates the fire. It takes away the oxygen, snuffs it out. It doesn’t only suppress translation. Itkillsit by killing whoever is behind it.”
I nodded slowly, the metaphor beginning to crystallize. “So…if we had both—fire and water—they’d cancel each other out.”
“Exactly,” he said. “But we don’t need both.”
He looked at me with something close to reverence.
“We haveyou.”
Realization settled over me like ice and adrenaline all at once.
“Nightcrawler,” he said, and the nickname hit me like a jolt to the spine. His voice was firm,certain.
