CHAPTER 42: THE CHASE [2]

DING!

~----~

[Zone Shift: Underground Artery]

[Threat Density: Moderate ~ High]

~----~

"Lights," Holt murmured.

They didn’t have many.

Kara cracked a glowstick that leaked a sickly green. The color painted them as prey but not having it would’ve done the same; walking blind in the dark not knowing what was out there was basically suicide.

They reckoned that maintaining their vision was the better option.

Mira kept a low wind running to push old dust aside, and to keep spores from settling if spores decided to exist.

And then, they continued moving.

They made it halfway down the platform before the first metro-born predators showed themselves.

~----~

[You have encountered a pack of Rail Gnawers – F Rank]

~----~

These weird monsters looked like a combination of a rat and a worm with steel whiskers and a taste for copper. They popped from a maintenance hatch in a slick of sound.

"Don’t stop!" Kara warned, spear angling. "If we stop..."

"...we meet their cousins," Holt finished the sentence for her.

Taking aim, he put a round into the first. It folded, but two more already scissoring through the light, hitting the spear and rebounding off Kara’s shin with a thunk that should have hurt but didn’t.

Ethan’s Wheel pulsed, hungry. He let it feed just enough, then...

DING!

~----~

[Improvisation Draw Activated!]

...

He slammed his palm down.

...

[Improvised Gear: Shock Tile – F Rank]

Adhesive charge that electrifies a 3 meter square area for 12 seconds.

~----~

As soon as the tile materialized, Ethan slapped it under the lip of the platform and dragged Reid’s boot over it as they crossed, then...

BZZZT!

The first Rail Gnawer hit it and convulsed, dying within seconds. The rest paused; monsters of the apocalypse could feel fear after all.

They learned a new rule briefly and went looking for a different dinner.

Watching them leave, Ethan sighed in relief. They were almost to the far stairs when Holt suddenly stiffened. "Stop."

Ethan froze. "What?"

"Listen," Holt said.

They listened. Far down the tunnel, something big moved.

Not Pike’s men, not a train, but a drag like iron on stone and a wet hush as something huge made room for itself where there shouldn’t be room.

Mira swallowed. "Rank?"

"Don’t know," Holt said, apprehensive. "I don’t want to know".

Behind them, boots hit the top of the metro stairs, quickly followed by shouts and then the cold crack of Pike’s voice. "Into the pit, finish it underground!"

The choice wasn’t theirs.

"Let’s take the North tunnel," Ethan said. "We’ll lose them in the bends".

"Or we’ll die there," Kara said.

"Or die here," he countered.

With a sigh, Kara moved. They ran for the tunnel mouth.

As they moved, the platform behind them lit up with muzzle flashes.

BAM!

A bullet scored stone beside Ethan’s head.

Without hesitation, he hit Shadowstep and the world went muffled again, light slewing off his shoulders. He grabbed Jonas’s belt as he passed and yanked him a foot into mercy.

Holt hauled Travis, while Kara bodily lifted Reid for three savage steps and put him down without stumbling. Mira sent a wedge of wind behind them to attack and if not, distract their pursuers.

They plunged into the tunnel.

The tunnel stank of wet iron and something that wasn’t rot but wanted to be. The glow stick threw a crooked pool of green on a wall scabbed with glass extrusions.

Behind them, the noise from the stairwell was a complicated argument of boots, curses, and the safety clicks of men who hadn’t forgotten their training.

A hiss answered from ahead.

DING!

~----~

[You have encountered a pack of Pipe Adders – F Rank]

~----~

’Not again!’ Ethan thought, exasperated.

Shapes uncoiled along the tunnel wall. These predators were long, dull-looking eels with metal-bright eyes.

They didn’t strike. Instead, they pulsed, bodies bulging faintly, and Ethan realized too late what they carried.

"Grenades!" He shouted.

The adders spat!

Resonance charges arced in slow, hateful curves towards them.

Mira’s hands blurred instinctively as wind intercepted two and shoved them sideways into the dark.

Bam!

Holt shot a third mid-flight as it popped like a rotten egg. One hit the ceiling and rippled through the tunnel as tiles shattered and dust geysered around them.

"Go!" Kara coughed, dragging Reid forward with gritted teeth.

They stumbled forward into a wedge of black, the glowstick failing.

Above, distant and thin, they could hear Pike’s orders drop like pins. "Teams two and four, descend. The rest hold the crown. Do not let them breach the west side exits, make sure they stay forever underground".

"Exit?" Travis whispered, head down, and voice shredded. "There’s an exit?"

"There will be if we make one," Ethan said.

They moved, rounding a bend where they found a steel gate chained across the tunnel. It was a maintenance barrier welded shut.

Kara set Reid against the wall and tested the chain. It didn’t rattle. "Can you...?"

"Yeah," Ethan nodded.

He called the Gauntlet.

Spines kissed his knuckles, then he muttered. "Overload."

All it took was two hits.

The first made the chain remember that it wanted to be links, not a bar. The second made it forget how to be either, then it crumbled.

The gate screamed as it snapped. Mira’s wind caught the echo and shredded it to scraps before it could run down the tunnel to men who listened for such things.

Holt was not the only Awakened who could listen to the environment.

"Go," Holt urged. "They’re close".

They pulled through the gap into the maintenance artery.

There, the ceiling dropped low as moisture dripped like a clock. Jonas brushed a pipe with his shoulder and hissed, but his feet didn’t stop. Travis’s breath sawed; Reid moved because not moving wasn’t an option at this point.

Not moving meant dying.

Behind them, boots hammered in the tunnel.

Ahead, the maintenance corridor forked. Holt didn’t pause. "Right," he said. "Then up two, then left, then up one, then into..."

"Into what?" Kara asked.

"Into light," Holt said. "Maybe."

They grimaced but with no better option, they ran into the dark toward Holt’s maybe.

Behind them, Pike’s men reached the gate and found it broken.

For a second, there was silence then the Major’s voice, as patient as gravity reverberated. "They’re rabbits, and Rabbits only run one way".

"Stay on them. I want eyes on the surface at west lot in three minutes."

Ahead, Ethan’s group climbed a ladder that looked like it had never wanted a human hand. The hatch above was stuck at first, but then it yielded with a rusted bark after Ethan applied force to it.

Ethan shoved it wide and squinted into dusk; the day had bled out without asking. They spilled into a sunken delivery court.

There, dumpsters lay on their sides like dead beetles. And among them, there was a mural of a smiling child preserved under grime, silently watching them with a thousand cracks for pupils.

"Can we rest?" Travis croaked, clearly exhausted.

"Thirty seconds," Holt allowed, already watching the mouths of three alleys and the lip of the court. "Thirty seconds, then we move."