And in the hollow dark of the tunnels, with Nessa’s small hand in mine, I whisper to the air:
“Come back to us.”
The words vanish into the dust, swallowed by the endless hum of the earth.
CHAPTER 23
VAEL
The undercity stinks of rust, ozone, and old secrets. Every step I take echoes against the skeletal bones of this world—pipes like veins, wires like tendons, walls too narrow for second thoughts.
I move through the gloom like a shadow chasing itself. No tech. No trace. Just me, a pack of decoy emitters pulsing in five directions, and the burn of Rynn’s tears still hot on my collar.
“They can’t track what they can’t catch,” I said.
Now I have to prove it.
I take the low routes—ventilation spillways, overflow shafts, old flood tunnels that haven’t seen life since the last war dried up funding. There’s comfort in the decay. It’s honest. The Alliance forgets places like this exist. Which is why they make the perfect graveyard.
I don’t plan to die here.
But someone else might.
By the time I hit the decommissioned hydroport, my lungs are dusted in filth, my scrambler collar’s flickering, and my cybernetics itch with static. I duck into a side chamber, an old maintenance berth with a half-collapsed roof and rebar vines hanging like teeth.
I check the sensors. Nothing.
Then I hear the click.
It’s not loud. Just the soft shift of a boot sole against grit. But it cuts through me like a blade.
I pivot, duck, and roll.
The wall explodes behind me as a kinetic bolt slams through it.
I come up in a crouch, knife drawn.
And there she is.
Tall. Pale. Human. She’s wrapped in body armor scavenged from six systems, every inch of her radiating kill-mode. A scar curves under one eye. Her hair’s shorn close. Her mouth twists into a grin like she’s chewing glass.
“Hello, Vael,” she purrs.
I know that voice.
“Sylva,” I growl.
She tilts her head, mock-sweet. “Didn’t think you’d recognize me. Thought the explosion scrambled your memory.”
“It did,” I say. “But some mistakes stick.”
She laughs. “Still bitter I left your squad behind on Marnak?”
“You didn’t leave us,” I snap. “You sold us out.”
“Oh, semantics.”
She lunges.
