The sounds of the raid on Das Gewirr faded behind them, swallowed by the hiss of steam and the rhythmic drip of foul water. Heavy bootsteps on the concrete floor above were replaced by the frantic scuffing of their own worn soles on rusted metal grating. They plunged deeper into the under-levels, a world of pipes and forgotten machinery that sweated a constant, hot humidity. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and decay, a familiar perfume of sanctuary turning into the stench of a trap. They were running.
They scrambled down a final iron ladder into a junction where four massive tunnels converged. A single service light, caged in thick, grimy glass, cast a sickly yellow pall over everything. The air was a visible fog of hot vapor, condensing on their skin and clothes. Zora leaned against a wall, her breath coming in ragged gasps, one hand pressed to her wounded shoulder. Ansel immediately pulled a small scanner from his pack, his face grim in the device’s green glow.
"We run," Ansel Stern said. His voice was flat, stripped of all emotion. It was the voice of a man stating a law of physics. He didn’t look at any of them, his eyes fixed on the schematics of the tunnels scrolling on his screen. "Go to ground. Deep. There are sectors down here the Ministry hasn’t mapped since the last collapse. We can disappear for months. Years, if we’re smart."
It was the logical move. The only move. It was the strategy of the rat, the ghost, the survivor. It was what they had always done.
"And let them keep using your face to kill people?" Zora’s voice cut through the steam, sharp and accusatory. She wasn’t looking at Ansel. She was staring at Sineus, her eyes burning with a furious, disappointed fire. The question hung in the hot, wet air, aimed like a weapon. It wasn’t a question of strategy. It was a question of honor.
Sineus felt the weight of her gaze. He looked away, at his own wavering image in a puddle of oily water on the floor. The flickering reflection was distorted, his face a mask of grime and exhaustion. For a half-second, the face in the water wasn't his. It was the fanatic from the broadcast, eyes wide with a madness he had never felt. The lie was following him. It was living in his shadow.
Ksenia Morozova, ever the voice of reason, stepped between them. She held up a datapad, its screen glowing with charts and numbers. — Ansel is correct, from a tactical standpoint, — she said, her tone as cool and sterile as the Ministry’s architecture. — I’ve run the probabilities. Our chances of survival decrease by 40% if we engage a superior, unknown force directly. Evasion gives us time. It allows us to analyze the data we acquired. A blind attack is suicide.
Her logic was a cage. A perfect, well-built, and utterly sensible cage. Run. Hide. Analyze. Survive. It was the litany of the resistance, the prayer of the hunted. It was how you lived to fight another day. But the days just became more of the same. More running. More hiding. Sineus thought of the Volkov Codex, of the shimmering ink and the dead man’s furious words. You cannot erase a lie. That only feeds the void. Running was a form of erasure. It was letting the lie stand. It was conceding the truth.
He looked at his team. Ansel, the weary guardian, already polishing his useless compass, a man who had run so many times he had forgotten how to stand. Zora, the firebrand, clutching a knife against a world of drones and memetic warfare, ready to die for a beautiful, pointless gesture. Ksenia, the strategist, who could map their retreat to the millimeter but couldn't plot a path to victory because the data said it was impossible. They were broken. They were reacting. And the system, the smiling, placid monster behind it all, was counting on it. It had predicted this. It had flushed them from their hole, and now it was herding them into a deeper one.
The price of survival was to let Voss keep the narrative. To let him use Sineus’s face as a mask for murder, to let him turn the very concept of truth into another one of his products. The cost of Ksenia’s logic was their soul.
Sineus slammed his open palm against a massive, rust-caked steam pipe.
The clang echoed through the junction, a sharp, metallic scream that made the others flinch. The pipe shuddered, dislodging a shower of rust flakes that rained down into the puddles below. The debate was over.
"No," Sineus said. The word was quiet, but it had the density of forged steel. He looked at each of them, his gaze holding them in the sudden silence. The hissing of the steam seemed to quiet, listening. "We don’t run. We don’t hide. We hunt the counterfeit."
A new energy moved through the space. The oppressive heat of the tunnel felt different now, not like a tomb, but like a forge. Zora’s head came up, her eyes wide with disbelief, then dawning respect. Ksenia’s face remained a mask of calm, but her fingers stopped moving on her datapad. She was recalculating. Ansel sighed, a long, slow exhalation of a man who knew he was being asked to walk into another fire, but would do it anyway.
— We find who did this, — Sineus continued, his voice dropping, becoming colder, more absolute. He was no longer asking for consensus. He was giving them a purpose. The price of this choice was their safety, what little they had left. He was trading their chance to survive for a chance to matter. — And we cut their fingers off the switch.
He looked down at his reflection again. The oily water showed only his own face now, stripped of doubt. The wavering image was gone, replaced by a hard, clear certainty. He had made the choice. He had chosen the fire. The team was no longer four fugitives running in the dark. They were a hunting party. And their war had just begun.
