The flickering waveform on Kaelen's dead console was a ghost from a world he could no longer hear. He traced the jagged lines of Jax's corrupted message with a trembling finger, his mind desperately trying to translate light into sound. "...alive... find me... the under-city... the old roots..."
Anya stood behind him, her breath catching in her throat. The words on the screen were a sucker punch of hope, painful and exhilarating. "The under-city," she whispered. "The old metro lines, the foundations below the Derelict Sector. It's a maze. A warren."
Kaelen turned to her, his eyes wide and pleading. He pointed at the screen, then at his ears, and finally at her, a silent, desperate question.
"We'll find him," Anya vowed, her voice hardening with resolve. "But we can't go in blind. You're grounded, Kaelen. You can't hear an ambush coming."
He shook his head violently, grabbing a datapad and typing with furious speed. "I don't need to hear. The resonance. Jax's bio-signature. I can see it. I can build a tracker, visualize the acoustic landscape. I'm the only one who can."
He was right. Without the city's constant sonic blanket, the unique, low-frequency thrum of a Lycan would stand out like a beacon on a spectrograph—if one knew how to look.
Meanwhile, in the deep shadows of a collapsed metro tunnel, Jax drank from a contaminated drip, his body a map of fresh scars. The feral state had receded, leaving a grim, primal clarity. He remembered the explosion, the fall, the crushing weight. He remembered his pack. The need to return was a physical ache, but a deeper instinct held him back. He was being hunted. He could smell the cold, sterile scent of Aethel-Arms hunters on the stale air. He was the prize, the last true specimen of Project Lycan. To lead them to his pack would be a death sentence. He had to draw them away.
He tipped his head back and let out a long, low howl. It was not a cry for help. It was a challenge. A lure.