The chute was slick with coolant residue and emergency foam, but there was no choice. The sound behind us—wet, dragging, deliberate—grew louder. Whatever it was, it was not rushing. It knew we could not go back.
Lyss kicked the old valve panel with her bare foot and slipped through the hatch like a tunnel-born rat. I followed, lowering Naeva in.
She hesitated at the lip, trembling. Her legs were bare now; the torn skirt flared with each motion, grime clinging to pale skin. One heel had snapped in the last corridor. She looked like an angel dragged through ash.
"I am not ready," she whispered.
I kissed her forehead. "Neither am I. That is why we go."
We dropped.
The chute ran longer than I expected, at least eight floors. Naeva screamed—sharp, pure, human—as we slid, heat baking us from all sides. We hit the waste bay grate with a clang that rattled bone.
Dim light. Steam hissed from old pressure lines. Broken drones and shattered crates littered the floor. The air stank of burned plastic and desperation.
We were not alone.
The bay was crowded. Some stood with weapons drawn, backs to crates. Others crouched, coughing or crying. Most wore the same hunted eyes we did.
No order. Only survival.
A child sobbed beside a gleaming Companion. Her body was pristine except for the blood on her feet. She held the girl close, whispering comfort in a dozen protocols.
Across from them, half-armored soldiers stood tense and silent. Their gear was not Sky Security standard: improvised, scratched, hand-modified. Neural plugs exposed. Chrome arms in place of flesh.
New-gen warspawn. Experimental. Off grid. They should not have been here.
Tyven landed hard beside me, dragging Danika. She collapsed, clutching a broken arm.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Transportation bay," Lyss said, already sprinting to an old control panel. "Maintenance line. Only goes down."
My gut dropped. A rail system was embedded in the far wall. Old. Crude. Functional.
A transport waited.
It looked like a train that had survived a war: battered plating, half its lights flickering, the rest painted over with evac symbols. The front read EXODUS LINE 09. Its engine hummed low and slow, like it had slept for years.
The crowd was already pushing toward it.
Sky nobles in shredded silk coats, crests burned or torn, clung to servants and Partners—beautiful loyal bodies now bruised and filthy.
One noblewoman screamed at a half-machine man reaching for her seat. "You are not allowed. This is not your transport."
He stared. One glowing eye flickered. "Tell that to the fire upstairs."
A gun lifted, then lowered. Rules no longer mattered.
Near the platform, ground-born civilians clustered tight. Lean faces. Hollow eyes. One woman held a homemade energy blade, conduit coil and copper pipe fused together. Her daughter bore Sky-standard tattoos.
A mix of above and below. A bastard child.
Tension thickened. Everyone wanted aboard. No one knew what waited below.
I helped Naeva stand. Her legs shook. Her robe was nearly gone. She caught her reflection in a strip of chrome and gasped.
"I look like a corpse," she whispered.
I pulled her close. "You look alive. That is more than most."
The transport hissed. Doors groaned open.
A loudspeaker crackled: garbled, ancient.
This is an unregulated emergency transport. Final destination: Lower Earth Transit Fringe. Board at your own risk. No returns.
Panic snapped.
People surged. Screaming. Shoving. Fighting. A Companion went down and was trampled before anyone could pull her free. A soldier in a gas mask punched a nobleman in the throat.
Everyone wanted to live. No one trusted anyone else.
Naeva clutched me, breath ragged. She stared at the chaos: broken families, dirt-smeared elites, modified warborn, filthy children hugging luxury oxygen tanks.
Tears welled in her eyes.
"This was not supposed to happen," she whispered.
"No," I said, pulling her toward the train. "But it is the only way forward."
We stepped into the dark.
The doors slammed. Exodus Line 09 groaned away, its frame screeching along the rails as it vanished into smoke.
We did not make it.
Naeva screamed my name, palms slamming the gate. "Kael, they are still inside."
Through soot-smeared glass I saw Aeris, my old colleague. She smiled weakly and touched the window.
Then white.
Boom.
The explosion was not just fire; it was fury. The tunnel lit in a roaring chain of blasts. Metal tore like wet paper. The train folded, twisted, vaporized.
Heat slammed into us. I threw myself over Naeva as the shockwave shattered every panel.
Silence followed, broken by groans, crackling fire, distant sobbing.
We pushed up. The platform was wreckage: smoke, blood, debris. No one knew where anyone was.
Tyven was gone. Danika? Maybe alive. Maybe not. Lyss vanished in smoke.
Bodies sprawled across the deck. A Companion lay face-down, back ripped open, pale hair soaked in oil and blood. Her skin was flawless. Her spine was not.
Screams rose.
"I told them not to board.""They overloaded it. Sabotage.""Where is my partner? He was on that train."
A nobleman stumbled out, bloodied and blind, dragging a boy in a golden uniform. Behind him limped a hybrid mercenary, visor melted, teeth clenched.
Not a failed evacuation. A massacre.
"Kael," Naeva said, gripping my sleeve. "We cannot stay."
"Where?" I said. "Everything burns."
"There."
A voice I had not heard in years.
Joren. Maintenance tech. Ex-civil engineer. Older now, beard scorched. He waved from behind a half-collapsed beam.
"I have an old shaft. Off grid. Freight route. Manual override. Magnetic line. It goes down."
We did not argue.
Those still breathing moved. We passed the wounded, the begging. Some we carried. Most we could not.
Joren led us through a forgotten corridor: rusted panels, blinking lights untouched for a decade.
A massive steel door waited—round, gear-locked, vault-like.
He slammed his hand on the panel. "Come on…"
A hiss. The door groaned open to a cargo descent platform, half buried in dust. A relic.
It worked.
"On!" Joren shouted.
We piled in—twenty, maybe more: survivors, elites, workers, hybrids, a woman in a lab coat holding a half-functional child unit.
Naeva helped a crying young man aboard. Her bare feet were slick with someone else's blood. Her ruined skirt hung in tatters. She trembled, yet moved with purpose. No longer only a Companion. She was surviving.
A shout. Gunfire.
Two figures sprinted down the corridor—armed, masked, not ours.
"Stop the lift," one barked.
I raised my weapon. Too slow.
One lunged for Naeva.
I stepped between.
The blade cut my shoulder, deep. I slammed the attacker into the rail, roaring.
Blood poured down my arm.
"Kael!" Naeva screamed.
Rell fired from the edge. The attacker fell.
The other fled.
Joren kicked the release lever.
The platform shuddered and began its descent—slow, groaning, steel grinding steel as we dropped into the unknown.
Naeva pressed against me, hands shaking as she tried to stop the bleeding.
"I am fine," I muttered.
"No, you are not."
She looked up, eyes shining. I smiled anyway.
We were going down. Whatever came next was no longer the sky's decision.