The morning light filtering through the cracked window cast sickly shadows across the cramped apartment. Kael methodically checked his scavenging pack, fingers running over each item with practiced efficiency. A rusted crowbar. Half a bottle of purified water. Three energy bars that probably expired before the Convergence.
'Not much to work with... but it'll have to do.'
Behind him, Lyra sat propped against the wall, watching his preparations with eyes that seemed too large for her gaunt face. She'd tried to hide it, but Kael had noticed how she'd barely touched her breakfast ration. How her hands trembled when she thought he wasn't looking.
The red threads writhing beneath her skin were more visible now, mapping poisonous pathways across her pale flesh.
"You don't have to go today," she said softly, voice barely above a whisper. "We could... we could just stay here together."
Kael's jaw tightened. They both knew what that meant. What staying here would lead to.
"I'm going," he said, shouldering his pack. "End of discussion."
Lyra was quiet for a moment, then slowly reached into her pocket. When her hand emerged, she held a simple silver band—their mother's ring, the one piece of their old life she'd managed to keep.
"Take this." She held it out to him with shaking fingers.
"Lyra, no. That's—"
"It always brought me luck." A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. "Maybe it'll work for you too."
Kael stared at the ring, throat tight. Their mother had worn it every day until... until the Convergence took her. It was the last connection they had to who they used to be.
"I can't—"
"You can." Lyra's voice carried an echo of her old stubbornness. "And you will. Because you're going to come back to me, Kael. Promise me."
He took the ring with reluctant fingers, feeling its familiar weight. Warm metal against cold skin.
"I promise."
Lyra nodded, satisfied. "Good. Now go save us both."
Kael slipped the ring onto his finger and headed for the door, not trusting himself to look back. Outside, the Outer Ring's maze of crumbling tenements and scrap-metal shanties stretched endlessly before him.
Somewhere in that urban wasteland lay salvation.
Or death.
'Guess we'll find out which.'
The checkpoint's shadow stretched long across cracked pavement, and Mira was already there when Kael arrived. She crouched beside a rusted shipping container, fingers tracing lines across what looked like a hand-drawn map.
'Early as always.'
"You're late," she said without looking up.
"Five minutes." Kael settled beside her, noting the careful detail in her sketches. "What's that?"
Mira glanced around, then angled the map toward him. "Found something interesting. Medical facility, about three clicks northeast of here."
The building on her map looked substantial—multi-story, with what appeared to be an intact parking structure. Too intact for the Outer Ring.
"Looks promising," Kael said carefully. "What's the catch?"
"Structural damage. Half the east wing collapsed last winter." Mira's finger traced the damaged sections. "Plus, other scavengers won't go near it."
'There's always a reason.'
"Why not?"
"Strange sounds. Movement where there shouldn't be any." She shrugged. "Could be settling debris. Could be something else."
Kael studied the map more closely. Medical facilities meant supplies—bandages, antiseptics, maybe even intact equipment. The kind of valuable salvage that could fetch real coin at the markets.
The kind that might save Lyra.
"What's your assessment?"
"Dangerous but doable. If we're smart about it." Mira rolled the map carefully. "Ground floor should be stable. That's where they'd keep the emergency supplies anyway."
A gust of wind carried the scent of rust and decay from the checkpoint. Beyond the Middle Wall's imposing barrier, the Inner Ring's gleaming towers caught the morning light like accusations.
'Rich bastards probably throw away more medical supplies than we'll ever see.'
"The sounds," Kael said. "How recent?"
"Last report was two weeks ago. Could be nothing now." Mira met his eyes. "Could be worse."
Kael felt his mother's ring against his finger, a cold circle of memory and promise. Lyra's face flashed in his mind—pale, drawn, those red threads spreading like poison beneath her skin.
"We do this smart," he said finally. "In and out. First sign of real trouble, we abort."
Mira's grin was sharp as broken glass. "Wouldn't have it any other way."
She stood, shouldering her pack with practiced efficiency. "Ready to go get rich or die trying?"
Kael rose beside her, checking his gear one final time.
'Hopefully just the first part.'
The medical facility squatted against the horizon like a broken tooth, its upper floors collapsed into twisted metal and concrete. Half the building had simply... given up, leaving a jagged wound against the gray sky.
Kael crouched beside a chunk of fallen masonry, studying the structure through narrowed eyes. Three potential entry points presented themselves—a ground-level door partially blocked by debris, a gap where a window used to be, and what looked like a service entrance around the side.
"Door's compromised," Mira murmured, following his gaze. She pointed to hairline fractures spider-webbing through the concrete frame. "One good tremor and that whole section comes down."
'Cheerful thought.'
"Window?"
"Glass everywhere. We'd announce ourselves to anything inside." She tilted her head, considering. "Service entrance might work. Medical facilities always had reinforced utility access—in case of emergencies."
Kael almost laughed at the irony. Emergency access for emergencies. How thoughtful of the old world.
They picked their way around the building's perimeter, stepping carefully over twisted rebar and chunks of masonry. The service door hung at an odd angle, but the frame looked solid. Mira ran her fingers along the edges, checking for structural integrity with the focused attention of someone who understood how buildings died.
"Stable enough," she decided. "But the floor inside..." She peered through the gap. "Can't tell from here."
Kael slipped past her, testing each step as he entered. The floor held—reinforced concrete designed to support heavy equipment. Smart. His boots found purchase on debris-free patches while Mira followed, her movements precise and economical.
Inside, emergency lighting cast everything in sickly green shadows. Overturned gurneys and scattered equipment painted a picture of hasty evacuation. But deeper in the facility, sealed doors promised better preservation.
"There," Mira breathed, pointing to an intact corridor marked with medical symbols. "Surgical prep. Those rooms would have been sealed environments."
Kael felt a flicker of genuine hope. Sealed meant sterile. Sterile meant valuable.
They moved deeper into the facility, their footsteps muffled by accumulated dust. The building groaned softly around them—not threatening, just... settling. Like an old man's bones.
Then Mira stopped abruptly, one hand raised in warning.
From somewhere in the darkness ahead came a sound that definitely wasn't settling debris.
Something was moving.
The sound came again—a wet, scraping noise that made Kael's skin crawl. He exchanged a look with Mira, her face pale in the emergency lighting.
'Of course something's here. Because this day wasn't complicated enough already.'
They backed away slowly, but the floor beneath their feet had other plans. Age-weakened concrete, stressed by whatever catastrophe had claimed this place, chose that exact moment to demonstrate its structural limitations.
The collapse happened fast.
One second Kael was stepping backward, the next he was falling through darkness with chunks of concrete and a stream of creative curses from Mira. They hit bottom hard—him first, then her landing partially on top of him with an impact that drove the air from his lungs.
Dust settled around them like a burial shroud.
"Still... still breathing?" Mira's voice came out strained, muffled by debris.
"Define breathing," Kael wheezed. He tested his limbs carefully. Bruised, probably scraped to hell, but nothing felt broken. Small mercies. "You?"
"Twisted ankle. Maybe." She rolled off him, wincing. "Could be worse."
Above them, the hole they'd fallen through gaped like a wound. Ten feet up, maybe twelve. Too high to reach, even if they could stack the scattered debris effectively. The wet scraping sound had stopped—either their noisy entrance had scared whatever it was away, or it was being very quiet now.
Neither option felt particularly comforting.
Mira fumbled for her flashlight, the beam cutting through the gloom to reveal their new accommodations. Basement level, probably storage. Medical equipment in various states of decay lined the walls, and water damage had turned everything into a breeding ground for things that belonged in nightmares.
"Emergency exit," she said, playing the light across the far wall. "There—maintenance access."
Kael squinted at the metal grate she'd illuminated. It looked sturdy enough, but the shaft beyond disappeared into darkness. "Think it leads anywhere useful?"
"Better than staying here and finding out what makes that sound." Mira tested weight on her injured ankle, grimaced. "Help me check these supply cabinets first. If we're crawling through maintenance tunnels, we'll want whatever medical supplies survived down here."
Above them, something heavy shifted across the floor they'd fallen through.
The scraping sound resumed.
Kael moved to the nearest supply cabinet, its metal door hanging askew on corroded hinges. Inside, most of the shelves had collapsed, but he managed to extract several sealed packages of gauze and a half-empty bottle of antiseptic that hadn't completely evaporated. 'Better than nothing.'
"Find anything?" Mira whispered, her flashlight beam dancing across another cabinet.
"Medical basics. You?"
She held up a small device. "Portable suture kit. Still sealed." Her beam swept lower, revealing scattered pill bottles. "And... jackpot."
Antibiotics. Real ones, not the black market garbage that killed more people than it saved. Kael stuffed everything into his pack while Mira worked on the maintenance grate. The metal protested with a shriek that made them both freeze.
Above, the scraping stopped entirely.
"Subtle," Kael muttered.
"You want to stay and chat with whatever's up there?" Mira yanked the grate free. Beyond lay a tunnel barely wide enough for one person, disappearing into absolute darkness. "Ladies first."
She crawled in without hesitation, though Kael caught her sharp intake of breath when she put weight on her ankle. He followed, the metal walls pressing close enough to brush his shoulders. Their flashlight beams carved narrow cones through the suffocating blackness ahead.
"How's the ankle?" he asked after they'd crawled for several minutes.
"Manageable." Her voice sounded tight. "These tunnels... they're older than the facility above. Pre-war construction."
The tunnel began to slope downward, and Kael noticed the walls changing from modern metal to aged concrete. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, each drop echoing with hollow persistence.
"Kael." Mira's voice carried a strange note. "My light's dying."
He looked ahead. Her beam had dimmed to barely more than a candle's glow. His own flashlight flickered ominously. 'Of course. Because things weren't interesting enough already.'
"Keep moving," he said. "These maintenance tunnels have to connect to something. Power grid, water systems..."
"Or the old subway." Excitement crept into her voice despite their predicament. "The main lines ran directly under this district."
Behind them, something metallic clanged in the tunnel they'd left. Then again, closer.
Mira's flashlight died completely.
In the absolute darkness, her breathing quickened. "Kael..."
"Right behind you," he whispered, fighting his own surge of claustrophobic panic. "Just keep crawling."