A skull landed back through the door less than an hour later.One of the fifth stages tossed it into the cage without much ado, the way someone might toss back an empty container, and it rolled to a stop near the bars in the dim light before anyone fully understood what they were looking at.Mia's scream went through the stone chamber before her brain had even finished the recognition her eyes had already made.It was Derrick's.Zoe caught her before she reached it, wrapping both arms around the girl and turning her face away, but there was no unseeing it for anyone else in that room. The boys collapsed into a heap against the wall, the oldest holding the youngest so tightly it looked like he was trying to fold him out of existence, and the sound that came out of both of them wasn't crying so much as something torn loose and raw, the kind of grief that didn't have a bottom yet.Ray sat frozen for a long moment, staring at what remained of a man who had spent his last hours in this ca

The hold bought them exactly as much time as Ray's body could pay for, and no more.While the fifth stage stood frozen at the bars, Saul threw himself at the iron door, working at the same hinge Jane had studied earlier.He hope the earlier gunfire trap had weakened something in the surrounding frame. Jane joined him a second later, both of them pulling with everything they had, the metal groaning under the strain but refusing to give."It's not moving," Saul grunted. "This thing's built stronger than the surface door ever was.""Keep trying," Ray managed, blood still running freely from his nose, his whole body shaking with the effort of holding the connection. "I can't…." His voice cracked. "I can't hold much longer."He was right to be afraid of that. A second later, the fifth stage's frozen stillness shattered all at once, its whole body lurching forward with a violence that came from breaking free of something rather than simply moving. Ray's control snapped like a pulled th

Nobody slept that night, not really. The cage sat in a kind of heavy, wordless quiet, broken only by soft crying that came and went in waves.Ray spent most of the dark hours simply sitting with his back against the stone, replaying every choice that had led them into this place and finding no version of it he could have done differently.There was silence.It was Saul who broke the silence first, sometime past what felt like midnight.His voice was low and thoughtful in a way that pulled Ray's attention despite the exhaustion dragging at every part of him."I've been thinking about the sound," Saul said. "The one that thing used on us, the frequency.""Try not to think about it," Zoe murmured from nearby. "I'd like to forget it, personally.""That's not what I mean." Saul shifted closer, careful not to wake Mia and her brothers, who'd finally cried themselves into a rough, fitful sleep against Priya's side. "My ability's always worked with sound. Hearing things nobody else can hear

Ray had felt it coming before anyone said a word.Something in the rhythm of the passage outside had changed after the sleeping woman collapsed in the corner of the cage and more footsteps than usual.They moved with an urgency that hadn't been there in the earlier feedings, voices layered together the way the fifth stage spoke when they moved as one mind instead of many."They know," Ray said quietly, gathering the others close. "They know what Saul did and they're not sending a handful this time.""How do you know that," Peggy asked, though the fear already climbing his voice suggested he believed it without needing proof."Because that's what I'd do," Ray said. "If something in my cage had just found a way to fight back, I wouldn't send four again. I would send everything."He looked around the cramped stone room and at Saul, still pale, still recovering from the cost of holding that woman under for thirty straight minutes.He looked at Jane, she was weapon-less but sharp-eyed as

The hardware store cellar turned out to hold more than Ray expected.A door at the back, that was hidden behind a stack of collapsed shelving, opened into a wider space beyond it, and the moment Jane pushed through.A woman's voice rang out sharp with alarm before recognition softened it into something else entirely."Jane? Jane, is that actually you?"Jane froze mid-step, squinting into the dim light of the space beyond, and whatever exhaustion had been sitting on her face broke apart into something Ray hadn't seen from her before."Ferris," Jane breathed. "I thought you were dead."The woman came toward them, weapon lowering slowly as she confirmed who she was looking at.She had the same hard, capable bearing Jane carried, the look of someone who had served alongside her once in a life that felt impossibly far away now."I thought the same about you," Ferris said, pulling Jane into a quick, fierce hug before stepping back to look at the rest of the group crowding in behind her. "Y