The dust from Rhys’s engineered rockslide settled slowly, a choking cloud of pulverized concrete and ancient rust that coated their tongues and stung their eyes. They had found refuge in a forgotten transit tunnel, a cylindrical artery of pitted plasteel buried deep in the Sump’s unmapped strata. The immediate threat of the mercenaries was gone, replaced by a silence so profound it felt like a physical weight. Here, in the absolute dark, the only sounds were the echo of their own ragged breathing and the slow, rhythmic drip of water from some unseen fissure above.
They were hiding. It was a moment of respite, a pause in the relentless forward momentum of the hunt, and the sudden stillness allowed the internal conflicts to surface like toxins rising in stagnant water. The air was cold, thick with the smell of damp metal and decay. A single emergency light strip, its power cell nearly depleted, cast a weak, sickly green glow down a hundred meters of curving wall, just enough to give the darkness texture.
Silja Valis leaned against the cold, weeping wall, her eyes closed. The strain of the last few hours had carved new lines around her mouth. She methodically disassembled and cleaned a small component from her EMP device, her fingers moving with an unconscious precision. It was a habit, a way to impose a small, fixable order on a world spiraling into chaos.
Jago, the scavenger whose allegiances were as fluid as the Sump’s black markets, had found a slightly drier patch of floor. He pulled out a small, battered datapad, its screen cracked but functional. He was not checking for news; he was watching the fluctuating price of military-grade capacitors, his expression one of detached, professional interest.
Orina Cassel was curled into a tight ball, her pristine Pinnacle tunic now smeared with grime and soaked through at the knees. She shivered, though not entirely from the cold. The psychic silence left by the neuro-dampening field had been a horrifying void, but the return of the Echo’s constant, low-grade hum was no comfort. It was a reminder of the entity she had followed, the ghost she had trusted.
— I unleashed it, — she said, her voice a trembling whisper that was swallowed almost immediately by the tunnel’s oppressive quiet. The words, once spoken, hung in the air between them. — This is my fault.
Silja’s eyes snapped open. Her hands stilled. She had no energy for this, no space for guilt. Guilt was a luxury, a Pinnacle commodity like clean air and shadowless light. In the Sump, you had only consequences.
— No, — Silja’s reply was flat, sharp, and devoid of comfort. — It was already there. You just opened the door.
— I could have stopped. I could have reported it, — Orina insisted, her voice rising with a desperate, pleading energy. She needed absolution, and Silja was offering only a cold, hard accounting. — We could have reasoned with it. It’s Aris Madden’s ghost. It’s in pain.
A harsh, humorless laugh escaped Silja’s lips. — Pain? It’s a program that wants to delete the universe. Pain is an irrelevant variable.
— You don’t know that! — Orina scrambled to her feet, her small frame vibrating with a sudden, furious energy. — You just assume the worst of everything, of everyone! You think everything is a broken machine.
— Because it is! — Silja shot back, pushing herself off the wall. She took a step toward Orina, her pale gray eyes like chips of ice in the gloom. — I told you from the beginning. Systems don’t get fixed. They just break in new, more spectacular ways. We are living in the spectacular part.
The ideological conflict that had been simmering beneath the surface of their partnership finally erupted. It was the core of their bond and the crack that threatened to shatter it.
— So we just give up? Let Corbin have it? Let it overwrite everything because it’s easier than having hope? — Orina’s voice cracked on the last word.
— Hope is a bad strategy, — Silja said, her tone dropping to a low, dangerous calm. — Assuming the worst, planning for it, is what’s kept me alive this long. You don’t reason with a tidal wave. You don’t negotiate with a system crash. You survive it. Or you don’t.
Jago watched them from his spot on the floor, his face impassive. He had stopped checking his datapad. He was a student of systems, too, but his were systems of survival, of shifting loyalties and calculated risks. He saw two leaders tearing their own command structure apart. He saw a team whose core principle—a fragile trust between two opposing worldviews—was failing a stress test. He saw a losing bet.
His gaze drifted from their angry, pale faces to the deeper darkness at the end of the tunnel. An opportunity. A risk. A calculation.
The argument faltered, not resolved, but simply exhausted. The raw emotion left a vacuum in its wake, a silence heavier than before. Orina turned away, wrapping her arms around herself. Silja stared into the darkness, her jaw tight, her own words tasting like ash in her mouth.
In that quiet moment of shared misery, Jago moved.
He did not run. He did not make a sound. He simply rose, a shadow detaching itself from other shadows, and melted back into the pitch-blackness of the tunnel from which they had come. His soft-soled boots, a scavenger’s most valuable tool, made no noise on the grime-slicked floor.
There was only a single, almost imperceptible noise. A tiny scrape of metal on concrete as the buckle on his belt brushed against the curving wall.
Silja’s head snapped around, her senses screaming that something had changed. The space felt emptier.
— Jago?
Silence.
She took a step into the darkness, her hand reaching for a weapon she didn’t have. The weak green light did not penetrate this far. There was nothing. He was gone.
The realization dawned on them both, cold and absolute. The untrustworthy ally they had been forced to accept was gone. He had seen their weakness, their division, and he had slipped away. The betrayal was not a bang, but a quiet, insidious disappearance. They were alone, fractured, and exposed.
A single drop of water fell from a rusted pipe, striking a shallow pool with a sound like a ticking clock. The cold air carried the faint, metallic scent of a world slowly rusting away.
