The darkness was absolute. It was not the gentle dark of a city at night, softened by the glow of distant arcologies. It was a perfect, devouring black, the kind that existed before light was invented. Ksenia Morozova felt it as a physical pressure against the viewport of the maintenance car. The only reality was inside: the low hum of the jury-rigged fusion cell, the green lines of the tunnel schematic on her datapad, and the shallow, pained breaths coming from Zora.
Ansel Stern piloted their stolen machine, his knuckles white on the controls. The car was a blunt instrument, a tool never meant for speed, now hurtling through the secret artery of the Ghost Line at 450 kilometers per hour. He had called it a coffin on rails. He was not wrong. Ksenia’s objective was simple: get them to Prague. The obstacle was the 1,600 kilometers of unmonitored, decaying tunnel between here and there. And whatever was hunting them.
Zora was propped up in the corner, her face pale and slick with sweat in the dim cabin light. Sineus was beside her, changing the pressure bandage on her shoulder with a quiet efficiency that seemed at odds with the raw power she knew he possessed. The wound, a gift from a Pacifier Frame’s ricochet, was deep. The smell of ozone and cooked flesh still clung to the air, a sharp counterpoint to the scent of rust and damp concrete.
— Core temperature is climbing, — Ansel’s voice was flat, a statement of fact, not a complaint. — We maintain this speed, we might make it to Prague. We also might melt into a puddle of very sad atoms somewhere under Poland.
— We don’t have a choice, — Ksenia said, her eyes fixed on the datapad. Her own reflection stared back, a pale oval against the glowing green lines of the map. It was a face she barely recognized, stripped of her archivist’s uniform, stripped of certainty. All that was left were the variables.
Then a new variable appeared. A proximity alert flashed on her screen. It was not a Ministry signal. It was tighter, more efficient, a needle of data in a haystack of noise.
— We have company, — she announced. The calm in her own voice surprised her.
Behind them, in the absolute dark, twelve points of light ignited. They were not the clumsy, bureaucratic red of Ministry Shepherd Drones. These were sharp, cold, and blue. They moved with a fluid, predatory grace, like sharks cutting through black water. Sleek, black chassis designed for speed and silence.
— MemTech, — Sineus said, his voice low. He had seen them before, at the Neptune Platform. Voss’s private hounds.
They were closing the distance. Fast. Ksenia’s datapad updated their velocity. Five hundred kilometers per hour. The drones were faster than the maintenance car. They were faster than anything the Ministry used. They were the physical manifestation of a corporate budget that dwarfed a small nation’s GDP. Running was not an option. The math was simple. The conclusion, terminal.
— Ansel, can you give me more power? — Ksenia asked, her fingers flying across the surface of her datapad, pulling up the detailed schematics of the Ghost Line she had acquired from Mila’s network.
— I can give you a catastrophic core failure, — he grunted. — That’s about all that’s left in the tank.
— That might be enough, — she said.
Her eyes scanned the schematics. The Ghost Line wasn’t just a straight tube. It was a forgotten circulatory system, full of junctions, service spurs, and, most importantly, pressure regulation systems. Relics from an age of ambitious, failed infrastructure. She found it. A major intersection three minutes ahead. A vertical shaft, a wind tunnel, designed to equalize air pressure between the deep tunnels and the levels closer to the surface. A violent, permanent updraft.
— Ansel, I have a plan, — she said. Her voice was level, the voice of an archivist presenting a finding. — It requires you to do something reckless.
— My specialty, — he muttered, not taking his eyes off the forward viewscreen, which showed nothing but black.
— In three minutes, there is a service junction. Designation 7-Gamma. We need to take the hard right turn into the spur. The drones will follow. The spur passes directly under a primary ventilation shaft. Their flight model is designed for linear pursuit, not for sudden, extreme environmental shifts.
— A wind tunnel, — Sineus said, understanding immediately.
— Exactly. The cross-draft will be more than their stabilizers can handle. But to make the turn, we’ll need a burst of speed we don’t have.
Ansel’s fingers danced over his console. — I can divert power from life support and inertial dampeners. It’ll give us a ten-second burst. It will also feel like we’re being torn apart. And the core will likely burn out. We’ll be running on fumes after that.
This was the price. The choice to fight back with the environment meant sacrificing their only means of escape. A few seconds of speed for their lives, paid for with the rest of their journey.
— Do it, — Sineus said. It was not a debate. It was a consensus reached in the space of a heartbeat.
Ksenia watched the distance marker on her datapad count down. Two kilometers. One. The blue lights of the MemTech drones were larger now, filling the rear viewscreen. They were close enough to see the flawless, aerodynamic design. No dents, no scratches. Perfect corporate death machines. In the reflection on her screen, the blue lights flickered, merging with the green lines of her map, a beautiful, terrifying overlay of problem and solution.
— Five hundred meters, — she called out. — Stand by.
— Diverting power now, — Ansel said.
The low hum of the cabin intensified to a painful, vibrating roar. The lights flickered. The inertial dampeners, the invisible force that kept them from being turned into paste against the back wall, died with a soft chime. Ksenia felt her own weight triple. Her datapad felt like a slab of lead in her hands.
— Hard right on my mark, — she commanded, her voice strained. — Three. Two. One. Mark!
Ansel slammed his hand down on the controls. The car lurched violently to the right, a brutal, bone-jarring maneuver. Ksenia was thrown against the wall, her head cracking against a metal panel. The world went white with pain for a second. The car screamed as it scraped against the outer wall of the service tunnel, showering the darkness with a brief, brilliant cascade of orange sparks. The G-force was a physical weight, crushing her into her seat, making it impossible to breathe.
Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over. The car settled, its speed dropping dramatically. The roar of the overcharged core died, replaced by a worrying, sputtering cough.
Behind them, there was a sound. Not one sound, but twelve. A rapid series of percussive impacts, like giant metal birds hitting a window at impossible speeds. A chorus of crunches, whines of dying engines, and then, silence.
Ksenia pulled herself upright, her head throbbing. She looked at the rear viewscreen. It was black. The twelve blue lights were gone. Her datapad confirmed it. Proximity alerts: zero. The flickering reflections of the enemy were extinguished. All that remained on the screen was her own face, pale and steady.
— Status? — she asked, her voice hoarse.
— Core is shot, — Ansel reported. He sounded exhausted. — We’re running on battery. We have maybe two hours at minimal speed. Not enough to reach Prague. But enough to get to the next access point.
Zora let out a long, shuddering breath. Sineus was checking Ksenia’s head for a cut. She waved him off. The pain was a distant, unimportant signal. They were alive. They had won. It was a small, ugly victory, bought with their only reliable mode of transport. A proactive choice that left them more vulnerable than before.
The absolute darkness of the Ghost Line returned, wrapping around them like a shroud. The only sound was the quiet hum of the damaged car, coasting on borrowed time through the secret veins of the world.
The steady, rhythmic pulse of the maglev track beneath them was a quiet reassurance. The darkness outside the viewport was a perfect, unbroken void.
Ksenia looked at the datapad, at the name of their contact in Prague, a name provided by Mila. It was their only hope.
Now they had to trust a stranger.
