Garrick’s fingers slipped off Ethan’s jacket. His hand dropped back onto the wet concrete.Ethan stood still for a second. Beside him, Silas leaned his shoulder against the curved wall, watching the black tunnel. Below the catwalk, water rushed through the culvert.“He won’t make it three miles,” Silas said, tapping two fingers against his thigh. “He’ll bleed out before sunset.”Ethan looked down. Garrick was shaking. His chest moved in short, broken gasps, his good hand clamped around his shattered arm.“We will take him back to Barek,” Ethan said.Garrick looked up. “You’re turning back?”“It is only half a mile.” Ethan crouched and looped Garrick’s arm over his shoulder. “Barek’s got emergency supplies you would need.”They moved back down the pipe. Ethan took Garrick’s weight. Silas walked ahead, scanning the dark. Every twenty yards, Ethan read the air. He smelled sulfur from a drainage vent. He kept them on the dry ledge.Ten minutes later, they stepped through the archway into

The service corridor sloped steadily upward into bedrock, leaving the transformer station far behind.Inside Ethan's mind, the Copy System operated without pause. Situational Awareness and Survival Instinct mapped every turn of the secondary tunnel. He calculated the strength of the stone arches. He tracked the faint vibration of high-voltage conduits humming behind the brick."We're entering the Sector 5 drainage perimeter," Silas said. Low. "The main tracks run two hundred yards to our left. Right under the sluice gate."Ethan kept his eyes on the dark. "How far to the sub-station?""Less than a mile. If the scouts haven't sealed the hatch, we'll hit the vent grid before midnight."Ethan didn't answer. In his pouch, his fingers touched his knife handle.The tunnel opened into a massive concrete gallery where three rail lines converged under iron pillars. High overhead, steel girders spanned the ceiling, their rivets crusted thick with white salt.It was ghoul territory.Silence held

Nomy lay still on the dusty concrete floor of Sub-station 5. Her wrists were bound behind her back with coarse hemp rope.Ethan watched her through the gap in the iron door. The yellow firelight from the metal drum caught the bruise on her cheekbone. Ten feet away, three boundary scouts sat on wooden crates. Long iron-tipped spears leaned against the rusted switching banks.Beside Ethan, Silas pressed his back to the damp wall. Barek held his pry bar ready. Ira stood two paces back, hiding her oil lantern behind her so the glow wouldn’t spill through the crack.“Where’s Leon?” Barek whispered.Ethan focused Situational Awareness through the gap. No other captives by the fire. An arc torch casing lay near the northern exit ramp, its battery housing cracked open. Empty.“He ran, I guess,” Ethan said.Inside the chamber, the lead scout stood up. A broad man with a scarred jaw and a copper-edged brass badge on his collar. He picked up his spear and spat into the fire pit.“This girl’s use

Ethan held his breath by the observation hatch of Research Sub-level 2. His eye was pressed to the glass.“What’s inside?” Silas whispered.“Vats,” Ethan said. “And an iron cage.”Ethan put his palm flat on the steel door and pushed the latch up. The lock disengaged with a thud. The door swung open.They stepped into the vault.Blue lamps hung from the ceiling. On the west wall, three living survivors floated in glass cylinders filled with green fluid. Copper cables pulled pale blue threads from their chests into a brass manifold.Across the room was the cage.Inside the steel bars sat a ghoul. Four thick chains bound it to the floor. A brass ring was locked around its skull. Its dark hide was covered in bone plates.When they entered, the creature raised its head. Its pale eyes burned with a cold, sharp alertness as it evaluated them.Barek stepped forward. His grip tightened on his iron pry bar. “It’s a monster. We have to kill it before it breaks loose.”Barek raised the bar over h

Barek jammed his pry bar into the lower latch of the first glass cylinder. He leaned on it until the seal popped with a wet hiss.Green fluid surged over the threshold, splashing across the concrete of Research Sub-level 2. Silas stepped forward and caught the first captive by the shoulders as her mask slipped off. Ira and Nomy moved to the other two vats.Ethan didn't help with the cylinders. He stayed crouched by the open iron cage, looking at the pile of gray ash between the dropped chains.Ethan reached out. His fingers hovered above the ashes. His passives read the dust, but neither ability could identify it. The ghoul had just burned out and collapsed into dead mineral with no energy left."The seals are broken on all three," Silas called out. He helped the second captive sit on a blanket. "Pulses are steady. They're breathing."Barek wiped green fluid off his forearms with a rag. He stepped up beside Ethan and glared at the empty cage. "The monster burned itself to the cinders