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"Your hand. It was glowing. Red."
Tessa steps closer. Her flashlight beam cuts across my face. The figure's gone—the one that moved like Maya—and I'm still holding her badge. The metal's cold enough to hurt.
"I don't know." I glance down. My palm's still split open. Blood's drying in crusty lines but the light's gone. Just regular blood now. Looks black under her flashlight.
"You're one of them." That's from the back of the platform. An older guy, beard down to his chest, holding a pipe. "Council's Lightborn freak. They send you in to finish us?"
"I'm not council." I stand up too fast. My vision tilts. I've lost too much blood and I haven't eaten since yesterday. "I'm looking for my sister. She's a scout. She came in here three weeks ago."
"Three weeks?" Tessa's voice drops. "No one lasts three weeks in the zones. Not without resupply."
"She did." I hold up the badge. "This is hers. She was here."
Tessa takes it. Turns it over. Her face goes tight. "Zone Four scout team. Yeah. They came through. Tried to map the metro tunnels. Said they'd be back in six hours."
"They didn't come back."
"No." She hands the badge back. "We heard screaming. Down in the tunnels. Then nothing."
My stomach drops.
"She's alive," I say. "I just saw her."
"You saw something." Tessa's not looking at me anymore. She's looking past me. At the tunnel mouth where the shadow disappeared. "Things in the dark, they wear faces. They sound like people you know. It's how they get close."
"That was her—"
The lights go out.
All of them. Every flashlight, every recharged lamp, every glow stick duct-taped to the ceiling—they all die at once.
Someone screams.
The dark's so thick it's got weight. It presses against my skin like cold water.
"Stay together!" Tessa's voice cuts through the panic. "Don't run. If you run you're dead."
Something moves in the tunnel. Wet dragging sounds. Like meat pulled across concrete.
"Eli." Tessa's beside me. I can't see her but her hand finds my arm. Her fingers dig in. "Can you do it again? The light?"
"I don't—"
"Can you or not?"
I reach for that thing inside me. The thing that lit up when I was dying. It's still there. Buried deep. And I'm so tired.
"I'll try."
I press my thumb into the cut on my palm. Fresh blood wells up. Warm. Slick.
For a second nothing happens.
Then it starts to glow.
Red-gold light spills between my fingers. Not bright. Not like before. But enough to see shapes. Tessa's face. The survivors huddled together.
The tunnel mouth.
And the things coming out of it.
Three of them. They used to be people—I can tell by the clothes. Jackets. Jeans. Boots. But their skin's gone gray and their eyes are empty holes and their mouths are open too wide.
One of them's dragging a man. He's screaming. Kicking. His leg's twisted wrong.
"No." Tessa's voice cracks. "That's Marcus. That's—"
She runs.
I grab for her but she's already gone. Sprinting toward the tunnel with a knife in her hand.
"Tessa, don't—"
A flashlight beam cuts through the dark from above.
Not red-gold. White. LED white. The kind the council uses.
"Freeze!" The voice echoes off the tiles. "Hands where I can see them!"
I know that voice.
Rachel.
She's on the upper platform. Rappel line behind her. Rifle aimed down. And she's got something clipped to her vest—a black box with a blinking red light.
The things in the tunnel turn toward her. All three at once. They drop Marcus. He hits the ground and doesn't move.
Tessa reaches him. Tries to drag him back.
The things start climbing toward Rachel.
Fast.
"Target acquired." Rachel's not talking to me. She's talking to the radio on her shoulder. "Subject is bleeding active light. Contamination risk critical. Engaging."
"Rachel!" I shout. "They're coming for you!"
She doesn't look at the things. She looks at me.
Her rifle doesn't move from my chest.
"Eli Cross," she says. "You're under arrest for illegal manifestation. Drop to your knees. Hands behind your head."
"Are you insane?" I wave my glowing hand at the creatures scrambling up the wall toward her. "Shoot them!"
"They're non-priority." Her finger's on the trigger. "You're the threat."
The black box on her vest starts beeping. Slow at first. Then faster. The red light pulses in rhythm.
And the things stop climbing.
They turn back toward us. Toward the survivors.
Toward me.
The beeping's calling them.
"Rachel." I keep my voice level. "What is that thing?"
"Tracker." She doesn't blink. "It homes on anomalous light sources. Draws corrupted entities to eliminate the source. Standard containment protocol."
"You're using those things to kill me."
"I'm using available resources to neutralize a contamination risk."
Tessa's still trying to drag Marcus. The creatures are between her and the survivors now. One of them tilts its head at her. Opens its mouth. Something wet and black drips out.
"Rachel." My hand's shaking. The light flickers. "There are forty people down here."
"Acceptable losses." But her voice isn't steady anymore. "The zones can't spread. You're making them worse. Every time you bleed light you—"
Tessa screams.
The creature grabs her ankle. Starts pulling her toward the tunnel.
Marcus is still on the ground. Not moving.
The survivors are backing away. Some of them are crying. One guy's trying to relight his flashlight. It stays dead.
"Rachel." I meet her eyes. "Please."
She looks at Tessa. At the creature dragging her. At the tracker beeping on her vest.
Her jaw tightens.
"Damn it."
She shoots.
Not at me. At the creature holding Tessa.
The rifle cracks twice. The thing's head snaps back. It lets go. Tessa scrambles away.
Rachel swings the rifle toward the other two. They're already moving. Fast. Too fast.
She drops one.
The other leaps.
I don't think. I just move.
I jump. Grab the rappel line. Haul myself up with one hand while the other bleeds light. My palm's on fire. Every muscle in my arm is screaming.
The creature lands where I was standing.
Rachel shoots it in the back. It goes down twitching.
I pull myself onto the upper platform. My vision's swimming. I can taste copper.
Rachel's staring at me. Her rifle's between us but she's not aiming anymore.
"You should've run," she says.
"You should've shot me."
"Yeah." She looks at the tracker on her vest. The beeping's slowing down. "I should've."
Below us Tessa's checking on Marcus. He's moving now. Groaning. The survivors are lighting their flashlights again. This time they stay on.
Rachel reaches for the tracker. Starts to unclip it.
It beeps once. Sharp. Loud.
My hand flares. The red-gold light surges. It's not steady anymore. It's pulsing. Hot. Getting hotter.
"Eli." Rachel's voice is tight. "What are you doing?"
"I'm not—"
The light jumps from my hand to the tracker.
It hits the black box like lightning. Red-gold electricity arcs across the surface. The box sparks. Smokes. The red light goes white.
Then dead.
The tracker explodes.
Not big. Just a sharp crack and a puff of black smoke. Rachel stumbles back. I catch her before she falls off the platform.
We're standing there. My hand on her arm. Her rifle against my ribs. Both of us breathing hard.
The heat from my palm bleeds through her sleeve. She doesn't pull away.
"That was council tech," she says quietly. "They're gonna know it got fried. They're gonna know I didn't stop you."
"Then stop me."
She looks at my hand. Still glowing. Still bleeding. Then at my face. Her eyes are dark. Unreadable.
"What are you?"
"I don't know."
Her radio crackles. "Agent Flint. Status report."
She doesn't answer.
The radio crackles again. But it's not the dispatcher's voice anymore.
It's static. Then a whisper. Then a voice I know.
"Eli."
Maya.
"Don't trust the council." Her voice is broken up. Distant. Like she's calling from underwater. "They made the zones. They're making more. Find the light. Find—"
The radio cuts to static.
Rachel and I stare at each other.
"That was her," I say. "That was my sister."
Rachel's face is white. "That's impossible. The corrupted can't use tech. They can't think. They can't—"
"She's alive." I pull my hand away. The light's fading. My palm's still bleeding but it's just blood now. "And she knows what the council did."
Rachel looks at the dead tracker. At the radio. At me.
"If that's true," she says slowly, "then everything I've been told is a lie."
"Yeah."
She's quiet for a long moment. Then she takes the radio off her vest. Looks at it.
And throws it into the tunnel.
"I'm going to regret this," she says.
"Probably."
"If your sister's alive and she knows what caused the blackouts—"
"We find her. We get proof. We burn the council."
Rachel almost smiles. "You make it sound easy."
"It's not gonna be."
"No." She slings her rifle over her shoulder. "It's not. But if the council's been lying—if they made this—then I've been killing the wrong people."
She offers me her hand.
I take it.
Her grip is firm. Warm. The kind of handshake that means something.
Below us Tessa's calling my name. Asking if we're okay. Asking what the hell just happened.
I look at Rachel. "Got a plan?"
"Not yet." She nods toward the tunnel. "But your sister said to find the light. Any idea what that means?"
I think about the red-gold glow. The way the dark backed off. The way Maya's voice came through a dead radio.
"No," I lie.
Because I do have an idea. And it's the kind of idea that gets people killed.
Rachel studies my face. She knows I'm lying. I can see it in the way her eyes narrow. The way her jaw sets.
But she doesn't call me on it.
"We should move," she says. "Council's gonna send a retrieval team when they lose my signal."
"How long?"
"Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty."
"Then we get these people out. Back to Zone Three. And then—"
"Then we go deeper." Rachel looks at the tunnel mouth. At the dark beyond. "We find your sister. We get answers."
"And if she's not alive?"
Rachel doesn't answer right away. When she does her voice is quiet.
"Then we find out why the council wanted us to think she was dead."
Somewhere in the tunnel something howls.
It sounds like Maya.
It sounds like she's screaming my name.