Chapter 313: Maintenance
Two weeks after getting his ring back, Liam found himself standing in the maintenance level where it had been discovered.
The coincidence had bothered him enough that Arik had ordered the area examined twice.
Nothing suspicious had been found.
This level belonged to ether extraction.
Liam adored it on sight.
He stopped just inside the main chamber, temporarily forgetting the engineers waiting to brief him.
Six enormous turbines occupied the length of the underground hall.
They looked nothing like anything used in Wrohan.
Their housings were built from overlapping dark-metal segments rather than a continuous casing, allowing thin bands of gold-white ether to remain visible between them. The rotor assemblies sat vertically within deep extraction wells, with concentric formation rings surrounding each shaft instead of conventional bearings.
Liam stared.
The chief engineer beside him waited.
Narissa waited.
The guards stationed at both entrances waited.
Finally, Liam said, "I want one."
Engineer Yaren laughed. "They are approximately forty tons each."
"I did not ask whether it would fit in my rooms."
Narissa, standing to Liam’s left in a charcoal trouser suit and low, practical shoes, glanced toward the nearest machine. "I believe His Majesty might object to replacing the sitting room with a turbine."
"He has sovereign authority. He can find another sitting room."
"That is an alarming interpretation of imperial privilege."
Liam was already moving toward the turbine.
The maintenance program he had technically come to inspect involved modernizing the extraction system without replacing the original machines. Ether naturally accumulated through Nuria’s deep geological formations, and these turbines drew that energy upward through controlled pressure differentials before separating unstable fluctuations from usable flow.
At least that was the simplified explanation Liam had been given.
The actual machinery was considerably better.
He spent almost two hours discovering exactly how much better.
The turbines did not merely extract ether. They induced controlled circulation.
Variable formation fields altered the pressure around the rotor, while the rotating assembly physically stabilized the flow before directing it toward the collection grid. Mechanical movement and ether manipulation were integrated so thoroughly that Liam had difficulty deciding whether he was looking at an engine using ether or an ether formation using a turbine.
That distinction delighted him.
"So the rotor speed changes with concentration?"
"Not directly," Yaren explained, bringing up a local schematic. "The outer field controls inlet density. The rotor responds to the stabilized flow."
Liam enlarged the section around the third formation ring. "Then why are you limiting this to eighty-two percent?"
"Cavitation."
"In ether?"
Yaren smiled.
Liam’s eyes widened.
There was apparently an ether equivalent of cavitation.
Wonderful.
Narissa eventually sat on the edge of a maintenance platform while Liam and four engineers argued enthusiastically over extraction efficiency.
She did not interrupt.
That was another reason Liam liked her.
She had long since learned the difference between Liam procrastinating and Liam working so intently that removing him would accomplish nothing except resentment.
By the time they finished, Liam’s dark green overshirt had been pushed to his elbows, several strands of brown hair had escaped the loose tie at his nape, and the maintenance program had acquired eleven annotations.
His engagement ring flashed against the tablet whenever he wrote.
Yaren closed the final schematic.
"We will revise the operating ranges and send the new simulations to your office."
"Include the transient data."
"I assumed you would ask."
"You are learning."
The engineer looked amused rather than offended.
The meeting dispersed gradually. Two technicians remained near the turbines while the rest headed for the main access corridor.
Liam walked beside Narissa, still looking over his notes.
"You enjoyed yourself," she observed.
"They have vertical ether turbines."
"I noticed."
"They deliberately generate unstable pressure zones and then use the rotor to correct them."
"You explained that to me twice."
"It deserves explanation."
"I am sure it does."
Liam looked at her. "You don’t care at all."
"I care that you are happy."
The answer was so uncomplicated that Liam smiled.
Narissa adjusted the tablet tucked beneath her arm. "Unfortunately, your happiness ends in forty minutes."
Liam’s smile vanished. "Why?"
"Wedding fitting."
"No."
"Yes."
"You said the previous fitting was the last one."
"I lied."
Liam stared at her.
Narissa remained composed.
"You have developed Rubis’s habit."
"I have survived Rubis for three months. Adaptation was inevitable."
They passed the first pair of guards at the junction.
The section beyond had been inspected earlier that morning, mostly because the extraction program included several unused maintenance rooms scheduled for conversion into monitoring stations.
One of their doors remained open.
Liam remembered it.
Empty room. Old stone. Inactive conduits along one wall. Nothing interesting enough to keep him there for more than thirty seconds.
A temporary engineering seal had not yet been installed because another team was returning that afternoon.
Narissa walked beside him as they approached it.
"If I refuse the fitting?"
"I inform Rubis."
"Cruel."
"I inform Arik."
"Manipulative."
"I inform Cassian."
Liam looked horrified. "That is excessive."
Narissa smiled.
"You will attend."
"I liked you better this morning."
"I expect to survive the disappointment."
They reached the open doorway.
Liam was turning toward her, already preparing another complaint, when Narissa moved.
Both hands struck him between the shoulders.
Liam stumbled across the threshold.
His tablet hit the floor and skidded ahead of him.
For one stunned second, he thought she had tripped into him.
Then he heard the door moving.
Liam spun.
"Narissa?"
He caught one glimpse of her completely calm face.
The door slammed between them.
Liam lunged forward and struck the panel just as a locking formation ignited across the frame.
Gold-white ether sealed the edges.
His first thought was disbelief.
His second was the guards.
They were less than twenty meters away.
They would hear—
The floor beneath him flashed.
Liam froze.
The same bare stone walls remained around him.
But something hidden inside them awakened.
A thin current of ether crawled through channels the engineers had declared inactive hours earlier.
Liam’s mark burned beneath his collar.
His stomach dropped.
"No."
The light intensified.
And somewhere beyond the sealed door, every sound disappeared.