Chapter 6 · Hunted Below

The subway tunnel smells like rust and something rotten.

Ivy keeps her gun up, the rune crawling hot under her sleeve. Zero's ten feet ahead, moving quiet for a dead man. Every step he takes, she watches his spine, the way his shoulders roll. It's him. Same gait Marcus drilled into all of them back when they ran ops in Prague.

She hates that she still remembers.

"How far?" she asks.

Zero doesn't turn. "Two stations down. There's a service shaft. Leads to the old lab."

"And you know this how?"

"Because I woke up there."

Her finger twitches on the trigger. The rune flares, just a little. It wants her to shoot. She swallows and lowers the barrel an inch.

"You said Lily built the protocol."

"She did."

"Then why the hell would Marcus turn her into one of you?"

Zero stops. Turns. His eyes catch the dim emergency lighting, and for a second they flash that same blue her arm does when the rune feeds.

"Because she tried to shut it down," he says. "And he needed proof it worked."

Ivy's stomach drops.

Before she can answer, something scrapes metal behind them.

She spins.