He wondered to himself as he laid back on the bed, locking his arms behind his head, if she ever thought of him when she killed. If it was ever his face in the back of her mind in the moments when she didn’t know if she would make it home.
He hoped she did.
Chapterfive
Close Calls
ShaderaKaelslidintothe maintenance tunnels with her breath locked in her throat, the entry hatch sealing behind her with a cough of carbon and dust. The world above—its petty clamor—was snuffed in an instant, replaced by the bone-deep silence of concrete. She pulled on her night vision, let her eyes adjust, and swallowed the dread that rose up in anyone who knew what the tunnels were built for. Not just the movement of Veyra patrols, but the drainage of blood, sewage,life.
The city’s bowels were a place things went to die.
She moved in the dark as vermin scattered around her, boots sinking into a silt that was half mud, half industrial ash. The beams overhead dripped a steady rain of black water, each droplet a cold needle along her collarbones. She drew her silenced pistol with one hand, and kept the other wrapped tightly around the strap of her gear pack.
She counted the steps. Every fifty brought a new sensor in the tunnel wall, infrared eyes, milky behind spiderwebbed glass. She moved through the dead zones quickly, breathing through the balaclava covering her face.
It wasn’t the rats that bothered her, but the way they seemed to track her progress, eyes bright as carbide, never scurrying far. Like the city itself, they watched for weakness.
She passed underneath the first checkpoint between the Boundary and the Cardinal rings with no issues, and ahead of schedule, the glow from her wristwatch painting every drop of sweat a dull red.
Veyra patrol schedules were precise, and tonight the overlap was slim—just three hours, the foot traffic replaced by remote inspection drones too lazy to sweep for warm bodies.
This is where the trouble would come.
The section of tunnel running under the Cardinal was where the city’s micro-gangs camped. They knew if you made it this close to the Heart without dying, you had something worth stealing.
She heard them long before she saw them—a rattle of dice, a whisper of laughter that cut short as she neared. She slowed her approach, pulling a blade from her thigh with her free hand, letting the darkness shroud her and counting their voices. Two, maybe three. A hot chemical reek leaked from behind the bulkhead.
She waited for a lull in their bravado, then stepped into the alcove, pistol raised, knife hidden behind her back.
The nearest one—a Boundary man by the looks of his tattoos, all bones and buzzed scalp—lunged at her with a rusted shiv, screaming. She sidestepped, and buried her blade under his jaw. The body went limp, eyes bulging in the dark as she eased him to the floor without sound.
The second man bolted toward her, gun raised and ready to fire. But he was too slow, too high off Boundary spice. She fired once, the bullet final, catching him directly between the brows. The last of them—an older, wary man—just sat there, hands visible, shivering.
“Get out,” Shadera said, voice low. “If I see you down here again, I’ll cut you open and feed you to the rats myself.”
He vanished, leaving the stench of terror and piss behind him. She stepped over the bodies, collecting anything useful off them, then pressed on without a second thought.
This is why Shadera was feared throughout every corner of this city, even by those that did not know her name. Because when it came time to kill or be killed, she did not hesitate.
She wasn’t afraid to die, and if she was honest with herself, she probably welcomed the idea. That’s what made her lethal, what made her Jaeger Nolin’s greatest weapon.
Shadera took a right when the corridor split into two without looking up from her watch. The tunnels were ingrained in her brain, every line and crosshatch burned in by repetition and study. So far, it had only taken her sixty minutes. She would pass into the Heart soon, and would need to find somewhere safe to hide until night, when she’d make the kill.
The tunnel sloped upward to the Heart’s center. Here, the walls were lined with titanium shielding, the air colder and more antiseptic. Even the rats had learned to keep their distance. She found the utility alcove she’d marked weeks ago, pried open the panel, and pulled herself onto the ledge of the elevator shaft.
This was where most people died trying to sneak into the Heart. Either from the fall, or being crushed by the elevator itself if you couldn’t get out of the way. But Shadera was not most people. It was a vertical climb, handholds slick with what she hoped was only condensation.
Her fingers tightened the straps of her pack as she holstered her gun and began the climb to the top. She scaled quickly, her boots never slipping as she moved like a spider across a web.
She paused halfway up, listening.
Far above, the faint groan of industrial fans. Below, a sudden clatter—metal singing against metal. The ladder underneath her fingers began to vibrate and her breath stilled.
The sound grew louder—a mechanical whine that scraped against her bones. The elevator was coming, fast and merciless as a guillotine.Shadera’s pulse quickened, a heady rush as she climbed at a rapid pace, forcing her limbs to go faster.
Panic erupted in her chest. A rare spike of fear lancing through her stomach—not the controlled adrenaline of a kill, but the animal terror of being crushed like an insect.
The shock of it made her legs pump harder.
