Chapter 598: The Frantic Search
The seawater pressed against him, but it was the alloy of the mech that truly strangled his Soul Sense. The moment he recognized the metal, a sharp jolt went through Ethan. He had seen it before—deep beneath the Silverwood estate, in the hidden medical bay he had stumbled across while searching for Lyla’s father. The walls of that chamber had been made of the same oppressive material.
Does the Silverwood family have even more secrets? The thought came unbidden, tight with unease. And Liam Silverwood... how did he get his hands on a spatial pouch embroidered with the emblem of Hurricane City?
But this was no time to linger on suspicions. He forced the thoughts aside; urgency left no room for speculation. Under normal conditions, his Soul Sense could sweep two hundred kilometers without the Shatterstar’s help. Here, wrapped in the half-finished mech, it was choked down to barely a thousand meters.
When the machine was complete, the alloy would no longer hinder him. On the contrary, it would become a vast amplifier, a weapon in itself. For now, though, he had to work with the narrow reach left to him.
The mech shot downward, cutting through the dark water with a speed Ethan could never match in his Travel Form. In a blink he had plummeted three thousand meters, into the crushing black beneath the waves.
"Bottomed out... and there’s nothing!"
Bitterness filled his mouth. What had looked like a lead dissolved into nothing at all. Regret hit him with the weight of the sea. Back at the Whitmore estate, he never should have let Lyla leave with Astrid. If he had stopped her, none of this would have unfolded.
He swept the seabed again and again, but found nothing except scattered wreckage from the fishing boat. The trail ended there. With a surge of frustration, he drove the mech upward and broke through the surface, spray raining down as he paused to think. South. That was the only choice left.
The first storm of panic was ebbing, and he forced himself into calm. He pulled up the map, his gaze settling on the reef where Lyla’s phone had first been discovered. It lay at the southernmost tip of Timshell Island, technically still within its waters, roughly two hundred and fifty kilometers southeast of Crescent State.
He engaged the Shatterstar’s systems, pushing his senses outward. Far beyond Timshell, he located the two Serpent Islanders—an incredible one thousand eight hundred kilometers away.
The timeline was tight, impossibly tight. From the moment he severed communications and entered the underground facility outside Ashwick, barely any time had passed. The longest delay had been the half hour it took Williams to crack the vault. In all, no more than an hour had slipped by since his last call with Lyla.
In that single hour, Lyla had reported being at the House of Zane—one of the Noble Eight Lineages. Then, she had been attacked near Crescent Isle, two hundred and fifty kilometers out, and somehow transported another one thousand eight hundred kilometers, to a nameless island at the edge of the Grand Ocean. Already they were beyond the Siren Sea, into open, endless water.
What kind of force could move two unconscious people such a distance in so little time?
"That’s it! The House of Zane... Amber Zane!" Ethan’s voice cracked the silence.
"Shatterstar, pull up the recent call history for this number: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX," he commanded, reciting Lyla’s digits.
A chime acknowledged the request, and a moment later the call log shimmered before his eyes. The first thing he saw was a list that twisted his gut: more than twenty missed calls, every one of them to him. His phone had long since died, abandoned in the chaos of getting the Shatterstar working, and he hadn’t thought to charge it. It was still lying uselessly in his Mindscape.
It was obvious now—Lyla had felt something was wrong, or had tried desperately to warn him. Guilt stabbed through Ethan, sharp and quick, but he shoved it down. This was not the time to wallow. He scrolled further up the list.
Just as he suspected, before the string of unanswered calls to him, there was another outgoing call. The timestamp placed it while he was still in the underground base beneath the ruined factory. The call had lasted two minutes. The number was registered to Crescent State.
"Shatterstar, call this number."
The line was busy. Sharp tones beeped in his ear.
"Force the connection," Ethan ordered. He couldn’t afford to wait.
The call broke through, and at once he heard a familiar voice. "Aunt Melody, you don’t have to worry. I’m sure Kiara will be fine... Oh, and Lyla called me earlier, completely out of the blue. She asked if something had happened to Kiara. Did you tell her anything?"
Ethan’s chest tightened. Amber Zane. Lyla’s childhood friend, her confidante—the same Amber who had once masqueraded as a man at the Silverwood estate.
"No, I didn’t..." came the reply, calm but hesitant. Ethan knew that voice too. Melody Quinn, matriarch of the Quinn family.
"Kiara? Kiara Quinn?" Ethan cut in, his voice taut. "What happened to her? What did Lyla say?"
Silence slammed down. For a moment he thought the call had dropped. "Hello?" he pressed.
On the other end, the two women had gone still. They pulled their phones away, staring at the screens as if the devices themselves had betrayed them. A strange man’s voice had just pierced their private conversation.
"Who are you...?" they demanded together, their tones sharp and cold.
"It’s Ethan. Tell me what Lyla said!"
"Ethan?" Amber’s voice curled with disbelief and contempt. "Don’t make me laugh. Him? Hardly. Who are you really, and how did you manage to hack into this call?"
Ethan’s jaw clenched. That woman had never once given him the barest scrap of respect.
"Amber, you conniving, two-faced bitch," he snarled, his fury boiling over. "Don’t make me fly over there and slap the arrogance right off your face. Now talk! What was the last thing Lyla said to you?"
In her sprawling villa, Amber Zane froze. The glass of red wine in her hand shook violently, liquid spilling over her fingers. The blast of Ethan’s rage through the phone had left her stunned, her mind suddenly blank.
"...Ethan? That’s you. I remember your voice." The second voice was softer, steadier. Melody Quinn. A woman attuned to sound more than anyone else, master of music, unable to forget a voice once she had heard it. They had met only once, yet recognition came instantly.
"Uh... Aunt Melody," Ethan said, and for a fleeting moment his anger cracked, embarrassment slipping in. "You might want to hang up. I’ll call you back later. Things are about to get ugly."
"Ethan... CRASH!..."
Amber’s shriek tore through the connection, high and jagged, followed by the shattering of glass.
"Save your hysterics!" Ethan roared, no longer caring if Melody was still listening. His patience was gone, stripped bare. "Now listen carefully. Lyla is missing. So stop playing games and tell me exactly what I need to know!"