The System That Hates Its Owner

Chapter 5: Going Back

"Building's compromised," the hunter said into his comm, backing away from the tremor's dust cloud instead of toward it. "Structural collapse risk, can't confirm the child's still…"

"She's still up there," Ethan said. "The light didn't go out because she moved. It went out because the power did."

The hunter rounded on him, chest heaving. "You don't know that."

"I know she was crying two minutes ago and nobody but me heard it."

Another tremor rolled through, smaller this time, and somewhere behind them a second alarm joined the first … a containment breach klaxon, different pitch, closer than it had been a minute ago. The hunter's comm crackled with a dozen overlapping voices, none of them about the child.

"Command's not clearing anyone to re-enter," the hunter said. "Not with the barrier down. I go in there off protocol, I lose my license. Maybe worse."

"So don't go in."

"And leave her?"

"You said it yourself … protocol. I'm not on your payroll. Nobody revokes anything from me for going in there."

The hunter opened his mouth like he had an argument for that too, then closed it again, because he didn't.

Ethan didn't answer. He was already moving.

"Hey..." The hunter reached for his arm and missed. "Are you insane? You're powerless, you don't even have registered gear, you'll die in there before you reach the second floor…"

"Then I'll die on the second floor instead of standing here listening to you explain why you can't."

He didn't wait to see the hunter's face. He ran.

The building's entrance hung open where the tremor had knocked the door half off its frame, a black rectangle full of settling dust and the smell of scorched wiring. Ethan had delivered to worse buildings than this … buildings that should have been condemned years before anyone bothered to post the notice … but always in daylight, always with an exit plan, always alone with nothing on his back that ticked.

The case. He'd forgotten it was still strapped to him.

He didn't have time to think about that either. Every dispatch job he'd ever taken had taught him one rule above all others … know your exit before you need it. He'd broken that rule the second he'd stepped through the doorway, and some part of him noted it anyway, filed it away like all the other lessons, in case he lived long enough to use it.

The stairwell was dark except for the thin beam of his phone's flashlight, cutting through dust that hung in the air like it hadn't decided whether to settle yet. The first flight held. The second groaned under his weight in a way that made him take the last three steps two at a time, driven more by instinct than by any plan.

"Hey!" he shouted, voice bouncing strangely off the concrete. "Is anyone up here? I'm coming to you, just make some noise!"

Nothing. Then, faint, from somewhere down the third-floor hallway … a small, hiccupping sob.

"Keep talking," Ethan called. "I can hear you. I'm almost there."

He found her in the third apartment on the left, door already ajar, a girl small enough that she'd wedged herself into the gap between an overturned bookshelf and the wall like she was trying to disappear into it. Six, maybe seven. Tear-streaked, dust in her hair, one shoe missing.

"Hey," Ethan said, crouching low, keeping his voice as steady as he could make it. "Hey, it's okay. I've got you. What's your name?"

"Lily," she managed, between breaths that hadn't caught up with her yet.

"Lily. I'm Ethan. We're going to walk out of here together, okay? Nice and slow."

She didn't move. Her eyes were fixed on something past his shoulder, out the window, out where the smoke from two blocks east had turned the sky a color it had no business being.

"Lily. Look at me, not the window."

"It's getting louder," she whispered.

Ethan hadn't noticed it building until she said it … a low sound under the alarms, under the shouting from the street below, something that didn't belong to any of the noises a city this size was supposed to make. It rose and fell like breathing, if breathing could shake glass.

He scooped her up before he let himself think too hard about what that sound might belong to. She was lighter than he expected, arms locking around his neck with a grip that told him she wasn't planning on letting go until someone made her.

"Hold on tight," he said. "We're going now."

The stairwell felt longer going down than it had going up, every step a negotiation with a structure that groaned under two people instead of one. He hit the ground floor breathing harder than the distance should have earned him, Lily's face pressed into his shoulder, the case on his back knocking against his spine with every stride.

The street outside had changed in the few minutes he'd been gone.

The hunter who'd refused to go in was still there, but he wasn't looking at Ethan. He was looking past him, past the building, toward the source of the breach two blocks east … where a shape was moving through the settling smoke that was too large, too wrong, to belong to anything that should have been walking Eclipse City's streets.

Ethan didn't get a clean look at it. He didn't need one. The sound it made when it saw them … when its head turned, slow and deliberate, in the exact direction Ethan was standing … was enough.

A roar tore down the street loud enough to rattle every window still intact on the block, loud enough that Lily's grip on his neck went from tight to desperate, loud enough that the hunter beside him finally stopped shouting into his comm and simply froze.

Ethan stood there, a child in his arms, someone else's hazardous cargo strapped to his back, and absolutely nothing between himself and the thing now closing the distance at a speed no unarmed, unawakened man had any business surviving.