Jennifer slammed into the locked door hard enough for the metal to rattle inside its frame.

Pain shot through her shoulder.

She barely noticed.

Another bang came immediately after, her fist colliding against the steel with a sharp crack.

Then another.

"How?" she whispered to herself.

The word came out strangled.

Humiliating.

How could she have let that happen?

Her breathing turned uneven as she paced once before kicking the door violently.

"YOU’LL REGRET CHOOSING HER, ADRIAN!! MARK MY WORDS!!"

Her voice echoed brutally through the isolated corridor outside.

She gripped the bars of the small window and looked out just in time to catch Adrian and Lila disappearing around the corner.

"I COULD’VE MADE YOU INTO A GOD!!"

Nothing.

No hesitation.

No glance back.

They vanished from sight completely.

Jennifer cursed under her breath and yanked the walkie-talkie from her waist hard enough to nearly rip the strap free. She pressed the button immediately.

"The patient is making a break for it," she snapped.

Static crackled.

Then—

"Permission to kill, ma’am?"

Jennifer froze.

For a second, the only thing in the room was the sound of her breathing.

Then—

"No."

The word came out instantly.

Cold.

Sharp.

Controlled.

"Permission to seriously injure is granted, however," she continued. "But you do not, under any circumstances, injure any part of his brain. Understand me?"

Silence answered her for half a second.

"Respectfully, ma’am, you can’t expect me to promise—"

"I’ll kill you," Jennifer interrupted calmly, "if I find out you fucked anything up."

The line went dead quiet.

"...are we clear?"

"...Crystal, ma’am."

Jennifer lowered the walkie slowly.

Her hand was shaking.

She shoved it back onto her belt before pacing again, faster this time, panic leaking through the cracks in her composure.

Not panic over the escape.

Panic over losing him.

—

"So you have around two options."

The man behind the desk adjusted his glasses before scribbling something down onto a clipboard.

The room smelled stale.

Concrete walls.

Buzzing fluorescent lights.

Bill sat across from him with his arms folded, expression hardening more with every word.

"You and your people can serve time for terrorist and paramilitary activity," the official continued, "or we remove you from the sector entirely."

Bill frowned.

"Kick us out?"

The man nodded once.

"We just got here."

"And yet you’ve already managed to make yourselves a problem."

Bill leaned back slowly in the chair.

The metal creaked underneath him.

"...How many years we looking at?"

"Around five for each member," the man replied. "You being the leader will receive the full force of the sentence. Ten."

Silence settled over the room.

Then Bill smiled.

Not because anything was funny.

Because it wasn’t.

"You people really think this place survives another ten years?" he asked quietly. "That’s optimistic."

The official frowned.

"There’s always the second option."

Bill’s smile faded slightly.

His fingers tapped once against the armrest.

Then—

"...What about the kid?" he asked. "How much is he getting?"

The official raised an eyebrow.

Before he could answer, the walkie on his hip suddenly crackled violently.

He picked it up immediately.

"What?"

The voice on the other side came through distorted and angry.

"Underground sector breach. We need more soldiers down here now. The patient and the woman are making a break for it."

The official frowned immediately.

"More soldiers? It’s one kid."

"Then get your ass down here and see for yourself."

The line cut dead.

And Bill—

Bill smiled.

Slowly this time.

Like he’d just heard something that made perfect sense.

—

The first soldier died before he even got the chance to raise his weapon.

The AK-47 kicked violently against my shoulder as the burst tore through his chest and slammed him backward into the concrete wall.

Blood painted the white surface instantly.

The hallway exploded into noise.

"CONTACT!!"

Gunfire erupted almost immediately.

Lila ducked beside me as bullets ripped through the corridor, sparks flying from exposed pipes overhead.

I grabbed the dead soldier by the vest and yanked his body in front of me just as another volley came down the hallway.

Rounds punched through him instead.

His corpse jerked violently with each impact.

Useful.

Still useful.

I shoved the body forward hard enough to knock another soldier off balance before firing again.

The AK barked through the corridor.

Short bursts.

Controlled.

A soldier near the back screamed as rounds shattered his knee.

Another caught one through the throat.

Too slow.

All of them too fucking slow.

"FALL BACK—!"

The rest scrambled behind cover.

I grabbed Lila’s wrist immediately.

"Move."

We ran.

Boots slammed against concrete as alarms screamed overhead now, red emergency lights replacing the cold white glow from before.

Everything looked infected.

Drenched in red.

Lila’s breathing sounded ragged beside me.

Not weak.

Angry.

Like she wanted to kill every person in this building with her bare hands.

We turned another corner.

Three more soldiers.

One saw me and hesitated.

That was enough.

People always hesitated around things they feared.

And they were terrified of me now.

I saw it in his eyes.

Not because I was dangerous.

Because Jennifer’s reaction told them I was valuable.

Valuable things changed people.

Made them uncertain.

Careful.

He aimed for my leg instead of my chest.

Mistake.

I fired first.

The recoil punched through my numb arms as the burst folded him instantly. The second soldier tried dragging his wounded friend back behind cover.

Another mistake.

I shot through both of them.

Lila grabbed the third before he could run.

Her hand slammed over his mouth violently as she drove Jennifer’s knife underneath his jaw.

Warm blood spilled over her wrist.

She let his body drop immediately afterward.

No pause.

No satisfaction.

Just movement.

We kept running.

Somewhere overhead, metal doors began slamming shut throughout the sector.

Containment.

They were trying to box us in.

Smart.

But not smart enough.

I knew how people thought when they were scared.

Especially organized people.

They became predictable.

Funnels.

Kill-zones.

Controlled exits.

Everything designed to make you panic and run exactly where they wanted.

So I stopped running toward the exits entirely.

Lila noticed immediately.

"Adrian—"

"Trust me."

We cut through a side corridor instead.

Darker.

Narrower.

Storage sector maybe.

The alarms sounded quieter here.

The further we moved, the less soldiers we saw.

Because they were all waiting ahead.

Exactly where they thought we’d go.

Lila looked at me strangely while we moved.

Not confused.

Studying me.

Like she was trying to understand what the lattice had actually done.

Truth was—

I didn’t know either.

My thoughts felt colder now.

Cleaner.

Like my brain had stopped wasting energy on panic.

But underneath that—

Something uglier kept trying to surface.

Something that wanted this.

The violence.

The efficiency.

The simplicity of it.

I ignored it.

A loud metallic crash echoed nearby.

Voices followed immediately afterward.

"They went this way!"

I looked around quickly.

Storage cages.

Maintenance doors.

Exposed steam pipes overhead.

Then I saw it.

A valve wheel.

I fired once at the pipe beside it.

Steam exploded through the hallway instantly.

Scalding white pressure engulfed the corridor as soldiers screamed blindly somewhere inside it.

One stumbled out clutching his face.

Lila shot him immediately.

Another fired wildly through the steam.

The bullet nearly clipped my shoulder.

I grabbed a loose chain hanging from one of the cages and yanked hard.

The entire storage rack toppled sideways directly into the corridor.

Metal crashed violently.

More screaming.

Blocked path.

Bought time.

We ran again.

My chest burned now.

Not from exhaustion.

From adrenaline.

From whatever they’d partially integrated into me.

It felt alive underneath my skin.

Like electricity searching for somewhere to go.

Ahead, another security door began lowering from the ceiling.

Too fast to reach normally.

Lila saw it.

"Shit—"

I sped up instantly.

Not toward the center.

Toward the side controls.

A terrified technician stood frozen there.

Hands shaking over the emergency panel.

I pointed the rifle at him.

"Open it."

"I-I can’t—"

I shot the wall beside his head.

Concrete exploded across his face.

"OPEN IT."

He hit the override immediately.

The door jerked upward halfway.

Enough.

I shoved Lila through first before diving after her myself.

Gunfire erupted behind us a second later.

Rounds slammed into the metal as the door crashed shut completely.

Silence.

For half a second.

Then—

A laugh escaped Lila.

Breathless.

Unstable.

She looked at me with blood smeared across her cheek and something dangerously close to pride in her eyes.

"You’re fucking insane."

"Yeah," I muttered.

I looked ahead.

And stopped.

Lila’s smile vanished immediately.

The corridor in front of us opened into something massive.

Not another hallway.

Not another sector.

A city.

Underground.

Huge concrete structures stretched beneath the earth under artificial lights. Walkways connected buildings overhead while hundreds of people moved below completely unaware of what had just happened nearby.

Markets.

Homes.

Children.

An entire hidden civilization underneath the sector.

And every single person in it had just looked up at the sound of the alarms.

Then at us.

Then at the blood covering our clothes.

A voice suddenly thundered overhead through the intercom system.

"ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS. THE LATTICE HOST HAS BREACHED CONTAINMENT."

The entire underground city went still.

Then people started running.