Page 37

I wriggled into a vertical shaft, boots scraping the slimy rungs. At the top, a narrow crawlspace led to a dimly lit utility corridor. Kang slid down behind me, landing softly. He held out his hands, and I let him guide me onto solid floor.

We stood in silence, broken only by the drip of water and the distant hum of emergency fans. I wiped sweat—and blood—from my brow. Kang brushed at the cut. “You’re bleeding,” he said, half-smirking.

“Just another hazard,” I replied, heart still fluttering from the brush of his touch.

The corridor wound away in sharp angles, its walls glazed with silver fungus, cables writhing overhead in the EM haze. The pendant’s light stirred the moss, and for an instant the passage glowed with an otherworldly dawn.

But there was no dawn in here—only more twisting corridors. We exchanged a look, the weight of Maven’s warning heavy between us. Reluctantly, we turned deeper into the unknown, searching for any exit that might still be open.

The corridor stinks of armpit and ozone, enough to coat your mouth with every inhale. It’s so narrow our shoulders scrape concrete, the only light the piss-yellow flicker of a dying emergency bulb and the acid blue pulse of my RadShield against my collarbone. The air is thick with static, every step stirring up spores and motes from the moss that crawls the seams. Sometimes the EM haze is so dense you can taste it—old batteries, wet copper, something like the aftershock of a lightning strike.

Kang moves first, clearing corners, body bent low and predatory. I keep pace, boots sticking to the resin-slick floor where a pipe’s failed overhead, dribbling hot condensation down the walls. Every muscle in my body is tight, ratcheted from the adrenaline of the quake, but the real source of tension is him—his constant, flaying glance over the shoulder, the way his fingers twitch on the grip of his sidearm when I get too close.

We hit a section of corridor half-collapsed by the last tremor, forcing us to squeeze single-file through the gap. A sliver of black water runs along the bottom, its surface broken by islands of moss and what looks like the dissolved remains of someone’s hand, each finger-bone articulated in a blue-green foam. The sight is almost beautiful. Almost.

“Careful,” I mutter, mostly for myself. “There’s biofilm on the edge.”

Kang doesn’t answer, just angles his jaw up and edges through. His uniform is cut tighter than regulation, which means every muscle movement is on display—deliberate, calculated, no wasted effort. The tattoos at his wrist are streaked with old blood, but the veins underneath pulse steady as he hauls himself past a snarl of rebar.

We move on. The corridor bends, then splits: one side choked with debris, the other a half-lit trench leading deeper into the belly of the Complex. He waits for me at the junction. “Left,” he says, voice pitched for minimum reflection. “The right wing’s a death trap.”

I nod, but don’t move. The silence between us is getting heavier, dense as the ozone in the air. He studies me—really studies, like he’s tracing the microtremors in my hands or the hitch in my breath. Finally, he says, “Back in the mainframe room. What the hell was that?”

I pretend I don’t know what he means, but his face is pure, cold patience. “You mean the data files?” He shakes his head once, then gestures down the left corridor, forcing me to walk ahead. The blue light from my pendant stains the wet floor, making every drop of condensation look radioactive. “I mean you, Diana. You didn’t even hesitate to run the protocol. You knew the security bypass, the file paths. Even your voice changed.”

I keep moving, but my guts are going cold. “It’s muscle memory,” I say. “You saw the notes. I did this before.” He grunts, then closes in behind, his shadow wrapping around my boots. “Did what, exactly? The video showed you with test subjects. Human test subjects. What was your job here?”

The corridor opens up, just barely, into a maintenance alcove with a bench welded to the wall and a dead vending machine leering at us from the far end. I sit on the bench, knees pressed to my chest, and let the silence unspool. I don’t remember this place, not really, but the way my hand fits the bench, the way my eyes scan the ceiling for the nearest vent—it’s all too familiar.

Kang remains standing, arms folded, blocking the only exit. The flickering blue and yellow light shreds his face into a series of moving planes, all hard edge and hungry eyes.

“Answer me,” he says, soft but lethal.

I shake my head. “I was a scientist. A good one, maybe. But something happened in the Zone. The old me is gone, replaced by whatever this is.” I gesture at my own body, the tics and scars and bruised forearms.

He doesn’t move. “You’re lying.”

My anger is sudden, unbidden. “You think I want this? You think I’d be out here, half-dead, if I remembered how to be anything else?” I push up from the bench, so close my breath fogs against his jaw. “They erased me. They erased everyone who worked in this place. But it’s still in here.” I tap my skull. “It just won’t come out in order.”

He holds my gaze, then leans in until I’m forced back against the wall, pinned by the force of his body and his certainty. His voice is so low it’s a threat. “You’re still running the script. Even now.” I want to tell him to fuck off, but the words freeze on my tongue. Instead, I stare at the webwork of scars on his jaw, the flecks of gunpowder still trapped in his pores.

“What’s your point?” I whisper.

He breathes out, the air hot against my cheek. “You’re dangerous.”

The word hangs between us, charged. I look down. “I know.”

He lets go, stepping back to let the tension leak into the hallway. “Come on. We need to get to get out before the next aftershock.”

We walk side by side now, neither of us trusting the other not to bolt, but also not willing to leave the other behind. The corridor narrows again, this time so tight we’re forced to turn sideways, shoulders grinding against the cold, wet concrete. The lights overhead fade to nothing, leaving only the blue of my pendant to mark the way.

Somewhere up ahead, something thuds—a wet, organic sound, like a fist hitting a side of beef. Kang stops, hand going instantly to the sidearm, eyes scanning for movement. I freeze, all my attention telescoping to the dark. There’s another noise, closer: a rasp, then a scrape, then the unmistakable clatter of bone on cement.

He signals with a raised hand. Wait.

I listen. The next sound is a slow, sucking inhale, followed by a low, animal moan.

“Ghoul,” he mouths.