BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!
Jinx swore, a single, sharp curse that was swallowed by the oppressive dark.
Her fear of Michael, the cold dread that had her hand hovering over her pistol, was instantly vaporized by a new, more immediate terror.
A known threat was always better than an unknown one.
"Move," she hissed, her voice all jagged edges and adrenaline. "Now!"
She didn't need to tell him twice. From the depths of the cavern below, a low, guttural vibration began to shake the very stone beneath their feet.
GRRRRRRR-RUMBLE.
It wasn't just a sound; it was a feeling.
A deep, bone-jarring resonance that vibrated up through the soles of their boots. It was the sound of something immense, ancient, and very, very hungry, waking from a long sleep. Loose pebbles on the cavern floor began to dance.
"So, what's the new boss monster?" Michael asked, scrambling after her as she sprinted away from their alcove, his voice tight. "And does it drop any good loot?"
"It's a Grave Wurm, you idiot!" Jinx shot back, her voice strained with a panic that was chillingly real. "And the only thing it drops is a slow, agonizing death in its digestive tract!"
"Right. No loot. Lame boss design," he muttered.
The rumbling grew louder, closer.
The air grew thick with the smell of disturbed, ancient earth and decay. Jinx didn't head deeper into the cavern: she headed up, her eyes scanning the ceiling with a desperate, practiced intensity. She pointed to a dark, narrow crack far above them, almost invisible against the black stone.
"There!" she yelled over the growing roar. "That's a maintenance shaft! Our only way out!"
A maintenance shaft. A ladder to the sky. A classic video game escape route. Michael felt a surge of something that was almost relief.
They scrambled towards it, the ground shaking so violently now that loose rocks began to rain down from the ceiling. A stalactite the size of a car crashed to the ground a dozen feet from them, shattering into a thousand pieces.
Jinx reached the shaft first, leaping onto a pile of rubble and grabbing the bottom of a rusted iron ladder that seemed to ascend into infinity.
"Go!" she commanded, her face grim in the eerie, fungal light. "Don't look down! And for the love of god, don't make a sound!"
He didn't need any encouragement. He started climbing, the cold, rusted metal of the ladder biting into his palms, slick with a fine layer of mossy slime.
The air grew colder as they ascended.
The rumbling of the Grave Wurm faded below them, replaced by the sound of their own ragged breathing and the soft, rhythmic clank of their boots on the rungs.
After what felt like an eternity of climbing in absolute darkness, he saw it.
A faint, square patch of gray light far above them. A manhole cover. An exit.
They reached the top, panting, their bodies screaming with exhaustion.
Jinx put a finger to her lips, her eyes wide with warning.
She listened for a full minute, her head cocked, her entire being focused on the sounds from the world above.
Satisfied, she put her shoulder into the heavy iron cover and pushed.
It grated open with a sound that was deafeningly loud after the silence of the Pits.
The first thing that hit Michael was the smell.
Rain-soaked asphalt, exhaust fumes, saltwater from the nearby docks.
It was the most beautiful thing he had ever smelled in his life.
He crawled out onto the wet, slick cobblestones of a deserted alleyway, Jinx right behind him.
She slammed the manhole cover back into place, the sound final and absolute.
They were out.
They were on the surface.
Red Hook, Brooklyn. The pre-dawn gloom was thick and heavy, the sky a bruised, starless purple.
A light rain was falling, turning the streets into a black mirror that reflected the faint, distant glow of the city.
The world was overwhelming.
The constant, low hum of electricity from the power lines, the distant wail of a single siren, the oppressive, humid weight of the air, it was a sensory assault after the dead silence below.
"Okay, kid," Jinx whispered, her voice a low growl. "Welcome back to the land of the living and the heavily surveilled."
Her fear of him seemed to have been left down in the Pits, suppressed by the familiar, comfortable paranoia of an urban survivalist.
She was in her element now. He was the novice.
"Lesson number one," she said, pulling him deeper into the shadows of the alley.
"The city has a rhythm. You have to learn to hear it.
The DGC, they move against that rhythm.
They're a flat note in the music."
"So, it's a rhythm game now?" Michael's inner monologue quipped. "Great. I'm terrible at those."
"See that guy?" she nodded towards the end of the alley, where a man dressed in rags was huddled in a doorway, seemingly asleep.
"He's been there for minutes. Hasn't moved a muscle. But his boots? They're DGC-issue tactical. Clean. No scuffs.
And his posture is all wrong. Nobody sleeps like that in Red Hook.
You sleep like that, you wake up without your shoes. Or your kidneys. He's a spotter."
Michael felt a chill run down his spine. The man looked like just another piece of the city's sad scenery. An NPC. But he was a mob in disguise.
"The cars," Jinx continued, her eyes scanning the street.
"Look for the clean ones. The ones that don't belong in this neighborhood.
Black sedans. Unmarked vans.
And that garbage truck over there? It's been idling for five minutes. Sanitation doesn't run this route until noon. It's a comms hub. They stick out like a sore thumb if you know what to look for."
"The whole city is a minefield," he breathed, the scale of the DGC's operation sinking in.
"Yep," she confirmed, a grim satisfaction in her voice. "And we're the ones who know where the mines are buried.
Now come on. We need a high-level perch with a good view."
They moved like ghosts.
She led him through a maze of back alleys and fire escapes.
They never crossed a street directly. They never stepped into the light of a streetlamp.
He was seeing the city through her eyes now.
Not as a place of homes and shops, but as a complex, three-dimensional grid of sightlines, cover, and potential ambushes.
It was terrifying. It was also exhilarating.
Finally, she stopped at the base of a dilapidated, five-story apartment building, its windows dark and empty.
"This is it," she whispered, prying open a boarded-up door. "Top floor. Perfect vantage point."
They made their way up five flights of dusty, creaking stairs and slipped into an apartment.
The far wall of the living room was just a massive, gaping hole, offering a perfect, unobstructed view of their target.
The "Secure Self-Storage" facility.
It sat under the faint, orange glow of the streetlights, looking quiet. Normal. Almost peaceful.
A flicker of hope, bright and stupid, rose in Michael's chest.
Maybe this would be easy.
Maybe the Ghosts had given up.
Maybe his father was already free.
He looked over at Jinx. She hadn't moved.
She was standing by the hole in the wall, her face pale, staring intently at a small, battered device in her hand.
It was a custom-made scanner, its screen flickering with a complex web of faint, glowing lines.
The lines were all centered on the storage facility. They formed a perfect, invisible cage.
Jinx slowly lowered the scanner, her knuckles white.
She turned to him, her electric-blue eyes wide with a look of utter, absolute defeat.
"Kid," she whispered.
"We have a problem."