The hour of rest was a tense, coiled thing. There was no real sleep, only a grim, focused quiet as they prepared. Elara meditated on her swordsmanship, her eyes closed as she mentally rehearsed the stances and parries. Ben triple-checked his chemical devices, ensuring the fuses were secure and the payloads stable. Kai, the leader, watched them, his mind a battlefield of strategy and fear. He felt the weight of their lives, of their collective hope, resting squarely on his shoulders.
When the time came, they moved with the practiced silence they had learned hours before. Slipping out of the lab, they descended through the tomb-like science building and emerged once more into the ghostly gray of the quad.
The Collector patrol was just disappearing around the far corner. Their ninety-second window was open.
"Ben, you're on your own until we link back up," Kai said, his voice a low command. "Set the timer for ten minutes. Don't take any chances."
Ben nodded, his face pale but determined. "Understood. The diversion will be placed on the second-floor balcony overlooking the east wing. Maximum auditory and olfactory dispersal. Good hunting."
With that, he broke from them, a lone, scurrying figure in a lab coat, clutching his satchel of bombs as he sprinted towards a secondary entrance of the student union. Kai and Elara watched him go, a pang of anxiety hitting Kai. They were splitting the team for the first time.
"Come on," he said to Elara, turning their attention to the main, shattered doors. "We need to be in position."
They slipped inside the Union of Shadows once more. The building was just as they had left it—an eerie, silent testament to a world interrupted. The bodies of the Gnawers they had slain on the staircase were gone, leaving behind only faint, dark stains on the marble.
"They cleaned up after themselves," Elara whispered, her twin blades held ready. "Creepy."
The pack was still here, then. Licking its wounds, waiting.
Using the floor plan Ben had given them, they navigated the dark, debris-strewn lobby, their every sense on high alert. They found the mailroom corridor easily. It was exactly as Ben had described: a long, narrow hallway, no more than five feet wide, lined with dented metal mailboxes. It was a perfect choke point. A kill box.
They took up positions on either side of the entrance, flattening themselves against the wall, their backs to the cold plaster. They were concealed in shadow, two predators waiting for their prey.
Now, all they could do was wait.
The minutes stretched into an eternity. Every creak of the ruined building, every gust of wind whistling through the broken doors, made their muscles tense. Kai listened, his hearing sharpened by his stats, trying to catch any sound from Ben's side of the building. Nothing.
Finally, a distant, muffled CRUMP echoed through the vast space, followed by a faint, acrid smell that began to drift through the air.
The diversion.
Almost immediately, the second floor erupted in a cacophony of shrieking, chittering rage. The Gnawer pack, roused by the sound and smell, was in a frenzy. The sound of dozens of them scrambling and clawing at the floorboards above was like a hailstorm of bone. They were moving, the entire horde, towards Ben's distraction.
Kai and Elara exchanged a tense look. The plan was working.
A few seconds later, they heard it: the soft, inquisitive clicking of a few stragglers on the ground floor. A small group, separated from the main pack, drawn not by the main lure, but by the faint, residual scent of the living. Of them.
Three Gnawers appeared at the far end of the lobby, their pale, eyeless heads swiveling, their long limbs moving in a jerky, unnatural crawl. They sniffed the air, their gaping mouths letting out low, questioning whines.
Kai met Elara's eyes and gave a single, sharp nod. He stepped out from behind the wall, deliberately scuffing his boot on the tiled floor.
The sound was small, but in the relative quiet, it was a gunshot.
All three Gnawers' heads snapped in their direction. They let out a unified, hungry shriek and charged, their spindly legs a blur of motion as they raced across the lobby.
"Now!" Kai yelled.
He and Elara ducked back into the mailroom corridor. It was a terrifying gamble. They were baiting the trap with themselves, trusting that the narrow confines would be their salvation. The first Gnawer hurtled into the corridor, its mind focused only on the prey before it, completely blind to the trap it had just entered.