Slush... slush... grrrk.The grinding sound of thick rubber wheels forcing their way through knee-high sludge and black wastewater echoed endlessly through the narrow cylindrical tunnel. The darkness inside the sewer felt unnaturally dense and solid, as if it possessed physical mass capable of crushing the air from their lungs. The tactical flashlight mounted on Sloane’s shoulder could only cut through about fifteen feet of darkness ahead of them, its beam washed thin by the pale haze of methane gas rising from the rotting water below.Seated rigidly in his tactical wheelchair, Elias Vancroft kept his body stiff. The military-grade nylon harness binding the chair to Sloane’s back tightened every few seconds whenever she strained to drag him over piles of industrial waste, twisted metal scraps, or animal carcasses clogging the sewage flow.“Hah... hah...”Elias’s breathing began to quicken unevenly. It sounded heavy and broken inside his mask helmet, like a damaged respirator strugglin

PRAANG! BLAAAM!The deafening crash of shattering glass followed by the heavy slam of flesh hitting concrete shattered the silence inside the courtyard of the Vancroft Steel Factory. The sound echoed through the cold metal walls, marking the fall of a life that had just been violently taken by Kael’s bullet from atop the tower.Thirty meters below ground, surrounded by waste and darkness, Elias stopped breathing for a moment. His right hand gripped the armrest of his tactical wheelchair so tightly that his knuckles turned white. The black Ghost Rot veins along the left side of his face swelled within seconds, throbbing wildly like a poisonous spiderweb greedily draining the life from its host.Elias did not waste a single second.His necrotic static signal shot forward like an invisible black arrow, piercing through the rusted sewer grates, cutting across layers of compact soil and thick concrete foundations before slamming directly into the sniper’s corpse that had just landed above

Darkness, thick, absolute.The void crashed over Elias the instant Sloane disappeared through the narrow grated opening in the concrete ceiling. The final trace of light, a faint glow reflecting off Sloane’s clothing, vanished and left him embraced by the suffocating darkness of the sewer tunnel. Not a single particle of light could penetrate this underground labyrinth. Elias sat frozen in his wheelchair, a monument of silence amid the flow of filthy water. His hands gripped the armrests so tightly that his knuckles turned white and trembled beneath his black rubber gloves. Around him, the silence felt crushingly dense, as though the moss-covered curved concrete walls were slowly shrinking inward, preparing to crush his fragile shell.The only proof he was still alive was the mechanical rhythm of the ventilator unit mounted behind his chair. Its steady pulse now sounded like the heartbeat of something dying, struggling desperately to pump the last remnants of clean oxygen into his har

THUD! THUD! THUD!Inside Elias’s head, the sound of his own heartbeat crashed like iron hammers. Less than three minutes of oxygen remained in his tank. Every breath felt thinner than the last, forcing his chest to heave violently.Ninety meters.Elias’s invisible necrotic wave tore through the darkness, climbing upward through the concrete ceiling of the sewer tunnel, through the steel factory’s foundation, past the smelting furnace, until it pierced the catwalk floor of Gideon’s throne room.His brain signal spread like an aggressive spiderweb, probing every inch of the room in search of a “dead source,” a corpse with an intact brain.Nothing.The guards downstairs had already had their heads destroyed by Gideon’s lieutenant. In the throne room above, Gideon had no fresh corpses.Upstairs, the iron-masked Executioner had just raised his sledgehammer to shoulder height. The weapon sliced through the air, preparing to crush the ribs of the helpless Sloane sprawled across the floor.“E

Inside the pitch-black sewage tunnel, Elias’s head hung limply against his chest. His heartbeat was slow, almost inaudible. His consciousness had been violently ripped away from the throne room, drowning in the void of hypoxia. But the human body possessed a brutal instinct for survival.As Elias’s brain began to suffocate, his jaw spasmed violently in a reflexive seizure. His molars bit down into the silicone lining of his oxygen mask, crushing a small red chemical ampule that Sloane had planted there for absolute emergencies.KRAK! PSSSHHH!Pure oxygen gas made from chlorate chemicals blasted straight down Elias’s throat. It tasted bitter, hot, and corrosive. But it reignited the dying cells in his brain like gasoline poured onto burning embers.Elias’s eyes snapped open wide, staring into the darkness. The Ghost Rot veins across the left side of his face flared painfully once more. He had less than five minutes before the chemical ampule ran dry.“I’m... not finished yet,” Elias ra