Lyric woke up to the sound of static. Not in their head—that was still a dull throb—but real, physical static coming from Rook's radio scanner.
"You're up," Valerius said.
He was sitting near the subway door, staring out of a crack in the rusted metal. He hadn't slept. He looked worse than before—pale, eyes rimmed with red, shivering slightly in the canvas coat.
"How long?" Lyric croaked, sitting up. The shoulder wound felt stiff, like the skin was too tight for the muscle underneath.
"Three hours," Valerius said. "Almost 0400."
Rook was curled up on a pile of seat cushions, snoring softly.
"The rats stopped moving," Valerius noted, nodding toward the dark window. "About ten minutes ago. They went deep. They know something is coming."
As if on cue, the single flickering bulb that hung from the ceiling of the cavern outside—visible through the crack—sputtered.
It buzzed once, loud and angry, and then died.
Total darkness fell over Sector 8.
"And there it is," Valerius whispered. "Phase One. Power cut."
Rook snorted in his sleep and woke up. "Whazzat? Who's there?"
"Wake up, Rook," Lyric said, kicking his boot gently. "They pulled the plug."
Rook sat up, rubbing his eyes and clicking on his flashlight. The beam cut through the dusty air of the subway car.
"They cut the main grid?" Rook asked, yawning. "That's gonna piss off the crime lords in Sector 4. The grow-lights for the memory moss need 24-hour power."
"That's the point," Valerius said, standing up and swaying slightly. "They want chaos. They want the Underground fighting itself so they don't have to."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the glass shard. It glinted in the flashlight beam, a jagged piece of the prison he had escaped.
"We need to move," Valerius said. "But first, I need a live wire. Is this subway track completely dead?"
Rook shook his head. "The trains don't run, but the Third Rail is still part of the emergency sensor loop. It carries data back to the surface so the Guild knows if the tunnels collapse."
"Perfect," Valerius said. "It's hardwired to the grid."
"What are you going to do?" Lyric asked, standing up and testing the ceramic sword's weight. The stiffness in the shoulder loosened up with movement.
"I'm going to scream," Valerius said grimly. "Open the door."
They stepped out into the pitch-black cavern. The smell of rot was stronger now that the ventilation fans had likely stopped too.
Far above, in the darkness, red lights blinked. Drones. Hundreds of them, hovering like a swarm of angry wasps waiting for a signal.
"Don't shine the light up," Lyric warned Rook. "Keep it low."
They scrambled down the pile of tires to the subway track. It was a rusted ribbon of steel disappearing into the gloom.
"There," Valerius pointed to a thick, insulated cable running alongside the track. "The junction box."
He knelt in the mud. He used the glass shard to unscrew the faceplate of the box. Inside, copper wires hummed with a faint, low-voltage vibration.
"Okay," Valerius said, taking a deep breath. "This is going to hurt. If I pass out, drag me. Don't wait for me to wake up."
"Val, maybe we don't—" Lyric started.
"We need cover to move," Valerius interrupted. "This gives us ten minutes of blindness. Get ready to run."
Valerius took the glass shard—coated in the conductive fluid from the tank—and jammed it directly into the cluster of live wires.
ZAP.
A spark of blue electricity arched from the box to Valerius's hand.
Valerius didn't pull back. He grabbed the shard tighter.
His back arched. His jaw clamped shut. A vein in his temple bulged.
"Valerius!" Lyric stepped forward.
"Don't touch him!" Rook yelled, grabbing Lyric's good arm. "He's grounding the current! If you touch him, you break the loop!"
Valerius wasn't just conducting electricity. He was conducting data. His eyes rolled back in his head, showing the whites.
For five seconds, nothing happened.
Then, the sound began.
It wasn't a noise in the cavern. It was a noise coming from the drones above.
A high-pitched, mechanical shriek echoed from the ceiling. It sounded like a thousand microphones getting too close to a thousand speakers.
SCREECH.
The red lights above began to erratic.
Drones spun out of control. Some crashed into each other, exploding in balls of fire. Others just dropped out of the air, smashing into the trash mountains below.
CRASH. BOOM.
"It's working!" Rook yelled over the noise of falling metal. "He's jamming the command frequency!"
Valerius gasped and ripped his hand away from the box. He fell backward into the mud, panting. Blood trickled from his nose.
"Go!" Valerius wheezed. "Go now!"
Lyric grabbed Valerius by the collar of the coat and hauled him up. He was dead weight for a second, then his legs found purchase.
"The Old Tunnels!" Lyric shouted to Rook. "Where are they?"
"This way! Past the collapsed platform!"
They ran.
Debris rained down around them—pieces of drones, spinning rotors, chunks of rock dislodged by the crashes. It was chaos. The darkness was lit up by sudden, violent explosions of lithium batteries.
"Watch out!" Lyric shoved Rook aside as a drone smashed into the ground right where he had been standing, spraying sparks.
"Thanks!" Rook yelled, scrambling up.
They reached the end of the subway line. A massive concrete wall blocked the way, marked with a faded skull and crossbones.
"Here!" Rook pointed to a hole in the concrete, barely three feet wide, jagged and dark. "Breach point. This goes into the Pre-City sewers."
"Ladies first," Rook said, gesturing to the hole.
Lyric pushed Valerius toward it. "Get in."
Valerius crawled through. Rook followed. Lyric took one last look back at Sector 8.
The Dumps were burning. The crashed drones had started fires in the trash piles. The smoke was thick and black. Through the smoke, Lyric saw the shadows of the scavengers—the Ferals—creeping out to loot the wrecked machines.
"War," Lyric muttered.
Lyric ducked into the hole.
The silence in the Old Tunnels was instant and heavy.
As soon as they were through the thick concrete, the noise of the explosions muffled to a dull thudding.
The air here was different. It didn't smell like garbage or ozone. It smelled like ancient dust and dry earth.
Rook clicked his flashlight on. The beam revealed brickwork that was crumbling, held together by calcified moss. The floor was uneven stone.
"Welcome to the past," Rook whispered. "These tunnels were here before the Guild. Before the Memory Plague. Some say they go all the way to the mantle."
"We don't need the mantle," Valerius said, leaning against the wall and wiping the blood from his nose with his sleeve. "We need the surface."
"You okay?" Lyric asked, checking him.
"Headache," Valerius muttered. "Like an icepick. But the Warden heard me. I felt it pull back. It didn't expect a signal from inside its own network."
"Did we blind it?"
"We poked it in the eye," Valerius corrected. "It's blinking. We have maybe twenty minutes before it resets the encryption keys and brings the drones back online."
"Then we climb," Lyric said.
They moved deeper into the tunnel. The path sloped upward, but it was steep.
"So," Rook said, trying to keep the mood light despite the terrifying darkness. "What's the plan when we get to the surface? Walk into Guild HQ and ask to speak to the manager?"
"We find a safe house," Lyric said. "Somewhere the Architects can't find us."
"There is no such place," Valerius said. "But there are places they don't look."
"Where?"
"The Memory Markets," Valerius said. "The legal ones. On the surface. The Guild monitors the illegal trade underground, but they ignore the licensed shops because they pay taxes. If we can get to a public terminal, I can upload the data I stole."
"You have data?" Rook asked. "I thought you just had a glass shard."
"My brain, Rook," Valerius tapped his temple. "I have the logs. The names. The proof that the Guild manufactured the Plague. If we broadcast that to the news feeds… the city riots. And in a riot, we can disappear."
Lyric stopped.
The tunnel ahead split into three.
"Which way?" Lyric asked.
Rook shined his light down the left tunnel. "Dead end. Collapsed."
He shined it down the right. "Water. Flooded."
He shined it down the middle. It was clear, but the floor was covered in something white.
"Bones?" Lyric asked, stepping closer.
"Small bones," Rook said, his voice trembling. "Rats. Thousands of them."
"Something ate them," Valerius observed. "Recently."
Lyric drew the sword. The silence of the Old Tunnels suddenly felt predatory.
"Whatever ate them," Lyric whispered, "is in the middle tunnel."
"Maybe we take the flooded one?" Rook suggested.
"No gear," Valerius said. "Hypothermia kills us in ten minutes."
"Middle it is," Lyric said. "Stay behind me."
They stepped onto the carpet of small bones. Crunch. Crunch. The sound echoed loudly.
Lyric raised the flashlight.
Twenty yards ahead, the tunnel widened into a chamber. And in the center of the chamber, hanging from the ceiling, was a shape.
It looked like a cocoon. Made of… wire?
Lyric squinted. No. Not wire.
"Hair," Lyric whispered, feeling bile rise in their throat.
It was a massive cocoon woven from human hair. And it was pulsing.
"What is that?" Rook squeaked.
"I don't know," Valerius said, stepping back. "But it's not Guild tech. This is something feral."
The cocoon shifted. A long, pale limb unfolded from the mass. It had too many joints.
"Back," Lyric said, pushing them. "Slowly."
The limb touched the floor. A face appeared from the hair-nest. It was a human face, upside down, but the eyes were stitched shut with copper wire.
"It's a Weaver," Rook hissed. "I thought they were myths! Mutants that harvest… parts."
The Weaver opened its mouth. No tongue. Just a metallic click.
Click-click-click.
From the shadows of the tunnel behind the cocoon, three more clicks answered.
"They hunt by sound," Valerius realized. "The bones… they crunched."
Lyric looked down at their feet. They were standing on a sea of dry, brittle bones. To move was to make noise. To stay was to die.
"Rook," Lyric whispered. "Do you still have those EMP grenades?"
"Yeah, but these things are organic! EMP won't hurt them!"
"No," Lyric said, watching the Weaver slowly descend. "But it will make a really loud noise."
Lyric pointed down the left tunnel—the collapsed dead end.
"Throw it down the left tunnel. Max timer."
Rook understood. He pulled the pin, counted to two, and lobbed the grenade into the darkness of the collapsed tunnel.
It clattered.
The Weavers snapped their heads toward the sound.
BOOM.
The explosion echoed like thunder in the tight space. The Weavers shrieked—a horrible, high-pitched sound—and scuttled rapidly toward the explosion, attacking the noise.
"Run!" Lyric yelled.
They bolted through the middle chamber, sprinting past the swinging hair-cocoon, crushing bones under their boots. The Weavers were distracted, tearing at the rubble in the dead end.
They made it to the other side, diving into the upward slope of the tunnel.
"Don't stop!" Lyric urged. "Go! Go!"
They ran until their lungs burned, climbing higher and higher into the dark.