Chapter 20 · No Safe Answer

The rain had stopped falling.

That was worse than the rain.

Eve Marr crouched beneath the broken archway of Sublevel Nine, one hand pressed against the concrete while the other kept her pistol trained on the dark. Water dripped from the ceiling in slow, patient beats. Each drop struck the flooded floor and widened the circles around her boots.

No acid hissed. No mutated thing shrieked from the service shafts. No distant generator coughed itself back to life.

The silence felt staged.

Cain Rook stood ten feet away with his back to a sealed blast door. His coat was torn across the ribs, and black blood—someone else’s, Eve hoped—had dried along his jaw. He held the stolen black box against his chest. Its blue indicator pulsed through the grime like a small, mechanical heartbeat.

The box spoke in a fractured whisper.

‘Route confirmed. Archive chamber ahead. Authorized access required.’

Eve’s finger tightened around the trigger. ‘You said the archive was abandoned.’

‘I said the district was abandoned.’

‘That is not the same thing.’

‘It is when everything inside is dead.’

The box clicked. A thin line of light crawled across its casing.

‘Correction,’ it said.