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"You're not going down there."
Kane's voice cut through the dark hallway before I even touched the door. I froze, hand halfway to the brushed steel handle. The entire penthouse had been black for twenty minutes now—no grid, no backup, just emergency lights throwing long red shadows across the marble.
I didn't turn around. "You don't get to tell me where I go."
"I do when the city's under lockdown and you're about to walk into the one place that'll get you killed."
Now I turned. He stood at the far end of the hall, still wearing the torn shirt from the wedding disaster. Blood dried black down his left sleeve. His face was half-lit, half-shadow, and I hated how my pulse kicked up just looking at him.
"The hunter had an EmberSaint badge," I said. "My brother worked EmberSaint security before he vanished. You think I'm just gonna sit upstairs and wait?"
"I think you're gonna get yourself taken if you go poking around without knowing what you're walking into."
"Then tell me."
Silence. Just the hum of the emergency generator somewhere deep below us.
"Tell me," I said again, stepping toward him. "You want a wife on paper? Fine. You want me to play the part? Done. But if my mom's name is burned into whatever the hell you've got going on down there, I'm not staying in the dark."
Kane's jaw worked. For a second I thought he'd grab me, drag me back to the locked bedroom, keep me contained like some liability he couldn't afford. Instead he moved past me, close enough that I caught the scent of smoke and copper and something wild I couldn't name.
He pressed his palm to the steel door. It clicked open.
"Stay behind me," he said. "Don't touch anything. Don't talk to anyone unless I clear it first."
"I'm not a child."
"No. You're a reporter with a death wish and a mouth that's gonna get you hurt." He stepped through. "Now move."
I followed.
The stairwell went down. And down. And down. The emergency lights barely reached, just enough to see the metal grate steps and the concrete walls sweating moisture. The air got colder with every floor. By the time we hit what I guessed was sub-level six, I could see my breath.
"How deep does this go?" I asked.
"Deep enough that the city pretends we don't exist."
"We?"
Kane didn't answer. The stairwell opened into a tunnel. Not sewer. Not subway. Something older. The walls were carved stone, rough and black, lit by strings of salvaged bulbs that flickered every few seconds. People moved in the shadows—quick, careful, watching us pass.
No. Watching him.
A woman stepped out from a side passage, older, gray braid down her back, sleeves rolled up over scarred forearms. She looked at Kane, then at me, and her expression went flat.
"You brought her below."
"She's got questions," Kane said. "I'm done lying."
"Your father lied for twenty years and kept us breathing."
"My father's dead. I'm not him."
The woman's mouth thinned. She looked at me again, longer this time, like she was weighing whether I'd run or scream or sell them all out for a headline.
"She looks like her," the woman said quietly.
"I know."
"Like who?" I cut in. "Who do I look like?"
The woman didn't answer. She just turned and walked back into the dark.
Kane kept moving. I grabbed his arm. "Who?"
He stopped. His skin was hot under my hand, hotter than it should've been. I let go.
"Your mother," he said. "You look like your mother. And everyone down here remembers what she did."
My stomach dropped. "What she did?"
"Come on."
He led me deeper. The tunnel opened into something bigger—an old cistern, maybe, or a station from some subway line the city buried decades ago. There were people here. A lot of people. Families, kids, someone cooking over a propane burner. Tarps strung up like walls. A makeshift clinic in the corner where a woman with glowing veins stitched up a man's shoulder.
Glowing veins.
I stared.
"Don't," Kane said, low. "Don't make it a story. Not yet."
"What are they?"
"People the city threw away. People who changed and got hunted for it." He looked at me. "People your mother tried to save."
I couldn't breathe. "My mother was a social worker."
"Your mother was a lot of things."
He pulled me past the main cluster, toward a smaller passage blocked by a steel grate. He keyed in a code. The grate slid open. Inside was a vault door, old bank-style, scratched and dented like someone had tried to break in more than once.
Kane spun the dial. Three turns, four, back one. The lock thunked open.
"This is everything she left," he said. "Everything she didn't want EmberSaint to find."
He pulled the door wide.
The vault was small. Shelves lined with file boxes, USB drives, stacks of notebooks bound with rubber bands. And in the center, on a metal table, a cassette recorder. Old. The tape inside was halfway through.
There was blood on the rewind button.
I walked in. My legs felt distant, like they belonged to someone else. I reached for the recorder.
"Evie."
I looked back. Kane stood in the doorway, his face unreadable.
"Once you hear it," he said, "you can't unhear it."
"Good."
I hit play.
Static. Then a voice I hadn't heard in sixteen years.
*"If you're hearing this, I'm already gone."*
My mother's voice. Hoarse. Shaking.
*"They're coming for me tonight. Marcus found the samples. He knows I copied the files. I should've run, but I can't leave them—Kane's people, the ones below. If I run, EmberSaint will bury them all."*
I gripped the edge of the table. Kane didn't move.
*"Evie, baby, if you ever find this—don't trust anyone from EmberSaint. Not Marcus. Not the board. Not the charity wing. It's all cover. They're not curing the changed. They're harvesting them."*
A crash in the background. A man's shout.
*"They're in the building. I'm leaving this with Kane. He's—he's the only one who kept his word. If he's still alive when you hear this, he's the only shot you've got."*
Her breathing hitched.
*"But Evie, listen—don't trust Kane. Not completely. Not unless he's already killed me. Because if I'm dead and he's still standing, it means he made a choice. And you need to know what it cost."*
Another crash. Closer.
*"I love you. I'm sorry I couldn't—"*
The tape cut to static. Then a man's voice, cold and smooth.
*"Rebecca. Put down the recorder. Let's talk about this."*
Marcus Vale.
My mother gasped. A scuffle. A wet thud.
Then silence.
I stood there, tape hissing in the quiet, my mother's last breath hanging in the air like smoke.
Behind me, Kane said nothing.
I turned. Slow. My hands were shaking.
"Did you kill her?"
His face was stone. "No."
"Did you let her die?"
His jaw tightened. "I got there ten minutes too late."
"Then what choice did you make?" I stepped toward him. "What did it cost?"
Kane met my eyes. For the first time since I signed that contract, I saw something crack in him. Something raw.
"I chose my people over hers," he said. "She wanted me to evacuate the tunnels that night. Get everyone out before EmberSaint locked down the grid. I said no. I said if we ran, they'd hunt us into the open and slaughter us all. So I kept them below. And I sent her up alone to buy time."
My chest felt like it was caving in.
"She bought you three hours," he said quietly. "I used it to move every single person in these tunnels to a deeper site Marcus couldn't map. Sixty-three people. Twelve kids. Your mother saved them all."
His voice didn't waver.
"And Marcus put a bullet in her head the second she wouldn't give me up."
I couldn't move. Couldn't speak.
"So yeah," Kane said. "I made a choice. And your mother died for it. You want to hate me, go ahead. Everyone else down here already does."
I looked at him. Really looked. The scar down his jaw. The exhaustion carved into every line of his face. The way he stood like he was holding up a roof that never stopped falling.
"They don't hate you," I said. My voice came out rough. "They call you their king."
"Same thing."
I turned back to the recorder. Hit rewind. My mother's voice spooled backward, distorted and strange.
"Don't trust Kane—unless he's already killed me."
I stopped the tape.
"She knew," I said. "She knew you'd choose them."
"Yeah."
"And she told me to trust you anyway."
Kane didn't answer.
I picked up the recorder. Held it. My mother's blood was still on the button, rust-brown and permanent.
Behind us, footsteps. Fast.
The woman with the gray braid appeared in the vault doorway, breathing hard. "Kane. We've got movement topside. EmberSaint trucks. Six of them."
Kane's head snapped up. "Where?"
"Surrounding your building. They're not hiding it this time."
I looked at Kane. His face had gone cold again, unreadable.
"They're coming for you," I said.
"No." He looked at me. "They're coming for you. You've got her face and her name on a marriage license. Marcus just figured out what I've been sitting on for sixteen years."
He stepped into the vault, grabbed a file box, shoved it into my hands.
"You want the truth?" he said. "It's all in there. Every test. Every name. Every body Marcus buried." His voice dropped. "But if you run with it, he'll kill you before you hit print."
"Then what do I do?"
Kane looked at me. His eyes weren't human anymore. Not quite.
"You stay with me," he said. "And you let me be the monster everyone thinks I am."
The lights flickered.
Somewhere above us, glass shattered.
And my mother's voice, still spinning in my head, whispered the last thing I didn't want to hear.
*"Don't trust Kane—unless he's already killed me."*