The sound of his door being forced open was Kael's trigger. He didn't think. He threw himself through the window. For a dizzying second, he felt nothing but weightlessness. Then he plunged into the cold, slick mouth of the Waste Disposal chute. đââď¸
"Slow down, Kael! Use your hands! In another hundred meters, take the right branch!" Elara's voice screamed inside his head, commanding his Neural Link directly. She was seeing through his eyes, controlling his navigation.
Kael pressed his palms and feet hard against the chute's walls, using the friction to control his fall. The plastic was slimy with a century of filth. Above him, he saw them: the red, unblinking eyes of AETHER's Seeker Drones, descending into the pipe after him like mechanical hounds.
"They're going to catch me, Elara!" Kael yelled, the panic raw in his voice.
"No, they won't! See that small service hatch? Jump for it! Now! It leads to the Under-City!"
He saw it; a tiny, rusted square barely visible in the gloom. At the last possible second, he kicked off from the pipe wall and threw himself at it. The hatch gave way with a shriek of protesting metal, and he tumbled into pure darkness.
He landed hard on a damp, stone floor. The Seeker Drones hovered at the entrance for a moment, their red lights scanning, but they were too big to fit. They retreated. Kael lay on the ground, gasping for breath, his body bruised but alive. He was no longer a citizen of the clean, sterile dome. He was an outcast. A criminal.
"You survived," Elara's holographic image flickered to life in front of him, her face a ghostly blue in the darkness. Her eyes held a relief so deep it felt human. đŽâđ¨