CHAPTER 43: THE CHASE [3]

Ethan leaned his shoulder against concrete, Shadowstep cooling in his blood, the Exo-Spike Gauntlet fading back into bone.

With sweat beading down his face, he looked at his companions.

Kara looked frightening, she looked like she was ready to burn the world. Holt was more reserved than usual, quiet but alert. Mira? She was pale, the wind trembling between her fingers.

Reid looked weak but was still standing, while Jonas smiled like a man who’d lost and found his life twice today. Travis was shaking, but his eyes were bright with something that wasn’t fear anymore.

The city growled softly in the background.

Even up here, they could still hear Pike’s voice drifting faint from somewhere above, closer than it had any right to be.

"Run them. We don’t stop until their legs do".

"They can’t escape me".

Hearing that voice, Ethan silently clenched his fists in hate. ’I’ll kill you!’ He thought with deep hatred simmering inside of him.

Since the apocalypse started, he’d faced so many dangers alone and survived all of them. With the group, he faced even more dangers, but none of them gave them as much trouble as Pike and his group were giving them.

Remembering just how close Jonas came to dying filled him with rage.

Ethan hated the man.

’To think it’s humans that would give us more problems than the monsters in the apocalypse... the irony’. He smiled wryly.

He took a deep breath and looked west where the streets tunneled into the maze that wore the sun.

"We’re not dying here," he said as much to himself as to Pike, to the ruins, and to the thing that lived under both. "Not tonight," he muttered.

The thirty seconds that Holt promised came and went like a held breath.

"Time’s up," he said, eyes never leaving the dark depths of the alleys. His rifle rested easy in his hands, but Ethan knew his magazine was down to its last five rounds.

They resumed their escape, pushing west again.

Jonas leaned heavy on Travis, his body still refusing to obey, and Reid walked as if each step stole a piece of him. Mira wove gusts through their path to scatter dust and mask their trail.

The city didn’t sleep.

Every street leaned inward, its foundations broken by the Rift shock. Glass crusted the edges of windows in jagged blooms, and when the wind whistled through them it sang like teeth grinding.

The sky between towers looked bruised, lit faint by the bleeding Rift.

"Eyes sharp," Holt muttered. "This is where the city bites hardest."

Above, Major Pike had not seen them yet but he moved with the certainty of a man who believed the map was already drawn. He knew their general location and that was what he worked with.

His cohort swept rooftops and fire escapes in perfect rhythm, leapfrogging in squads of four.

Their boots crunched glass with soldierly precision.

"Contact within three blocks," he said, binoculars pressed to his scarred face. "Westbound rabbits. Box from north and south, herd them to the railyards."

"Yes, Major". His soldiers obeyed without question.

He smiled thinly. The city wasn’t just his ground, it was his rifle, his trap, and his cage. These survivors just hadn’t realized it yet.

No one survives this city. It was either him, or nobody else.

The group eventually stumbled into a stretch of open ground. Tracks ran rust-red across the street, half-buried under rubble. Ahead of them, the twisted skeleton of a train lay on its side, windows open like jagged mouths.

"The metro connects here," Holt said. "South tunnels run beneath, it’ll be safer than here in the open."

"Safer?" Kara snorted. "Down there it’s a grave".

Just after Kara spoke, a hiss echoed, then...

DING!

~----~

[You have encountered a pack of Glass Serpents – F Rank]

~----~

Their shapes uncoiled along the railcars.

Their scales were crusted with crystalline growths that caught the dim light. They slithered across steel like water, heads lifting, tongues snapping glass shards.

"Serpents," Mira whispered. "And a lot of them".

This time, Ethan’s Wheel flickered, hovering just at his periphery.

"Cut through fast," Holt said, chambering a round into his rifle. "Before Pike’s men close the net."

With grim determination, they ran.

The serpents struck, jaws snapping, glass shards spraying from their tongues, and they were forced to protect themselves.

Kara’s spear cracked one’s skull, shards exploding across the gravel. Mira’s wind caught another mid-lunge and smashed it against a railcar. Holt fired twice, his clean shots cutting through glowing eyes.

Ethan hit Shadowstep.

The world dulled, his steps turning silent as he blurred past a lunging serpent, Gauntlet blooming around his fist. He struck once, shattering its head against the tracks as crystalline scales burst like shrapnel.

But there were too many.

Jonas growled as one coiled around his waist, teeth biting into his ribs.

And once again, Travis was forced to heal as he shoved both hands against Jonas’s side, light flickering. "Not now, don’t you dare!" He hissed as he forced Vital Surge into him just enough to keep him moving.

Reid tried to lift his rifle but his arms shook too badly.

Kara tore the serpent off him with a snarl and impaled it, pinning it to the ground until it stopped twitching.

They broke through in a storm of glass and blood, leaving writhing Serpents on the rails behind them, but they didn’t stop to finish the job.

They soon arrived before a stairwell that dropped into the earth, its sign still clinging to rusted brackets.

[SUBWAY – WEST LINE]

"Down," Holt said. "We have no choice."

And once again, they plunged into the dark.

The tunnels were worse than the streets.

Glass veins webbed the walls, pulsing faint with Rift light. The tracks glistened, slick with moisture that smelled like rust and acid. Every sound echoed as if the tunnels themselves wanted to rat them out.

Ethan’s skin crawled. The Wheel spun faintly, not offering, just watching.

"Stay tight," Holt muttered. "Stay vigilant".

Above, Pike leaned over a rooftop map scribbled with chalk. He jabbed a finger at the west line entrance.

"They’ve gone to ground again," he said. "Good, it’s easier to flush rats from a hole than hunt them in alleys. Squad Four, seed resonance charges along the south line and drive them north."

"No matter what they do, they’ll never escape our grasp".

"Yes, Major."

"And Four?" Pike’s gray eyes glinted. "If you get line of sight, don’t waste ammunition. Hit their kneecaps, make them crawl".

"Keep them till I get there".

A ripple of laughter answered, low and cruel.

The group pressed deeper, the dim glow of Mira’s wind-light leading the way. The further they went, the more the tunnels warped.

Glass spikes jutted from the walls, bending the light into fractured mirrors. Ethan saw himself in shards, gaunt, blurred, eyes too tired and too sharp.

Then the echoes began.

Footsteps ahead, footsteps behind. They heard the scrape of claws, but never where the sound matched the shadow.

"I hate tunnels," Ethan growled softly.

Then, a howl cut through the dark, deep enough to rattle their bones.

The system whispered.

DING!

~----~

[New Threat Detected: Echo Maw – E Rank]

~----~

That... made them pause.

Shapes rippled in the glass, mouths blooming in reflections as rows of teeth appeared where walls should be and eyes blinked in cracks that weren’t there.

Mira staggered, clutching her head. "It’s in the wind...!"

"Don’t listen," Holt snapped. "Don’t listen! Look at the floor, follow me".

With his enhanced environmental senses, he was able to tell the nature of enemy that they faced immediately. The Echo Maw hunted them in whispers, reflections twitching closer with every step. It was a monster with illusion powers that directly attacked the mind.

They followed Holt’s suggestions without questioning.

The tunnel ahead forked, going left and right. Both walls shimmered with glass, and both echoed full of laughter and growls.

They hesitated.

Ethan’s Wheel spun violently, choices flickering as his pulse accelerated. He knew they had seconds before the Echo Maw revealed itself and struck. And above, faint through the tunnels, Pike’s voice carried down like steel on stone:

"Run them north, into the teeth!"

Desperation ate at them.

They staggered at the fork, trapped between the monster in the glass and the soldiers above.

The city was closing around them, suffocating them.

And Ethan’s hand hovered over the Wheel, knowing his next choice might be the difference between survival and being swallowed whole.