The conduit did not care who crawled through it.
It scraped skin from elbows and palms without discrimination, smeared dust into open cuts, filled mouths with the taste of rust and insulation. Breathing hurt. Moving hurt. Stopping hurt more.
"Keep going," Lysa said.
Her voice carried forward in the cramped space, low and even. That calm had weight now. It was the only thing holding the group together.
Rin's breathing rasped just ahead of her.
Behind, someone sobbed once, then swallowed it down.
The slope of the duct changed almost imperceptibly, tipping upward.
"Our exit should be two junctions ahead," Lysa said. "If the schematics weren't lying."
"If they were?" someone asked.
"Then we die in a metal throat instead of a concrete cell," Lysa replied. "Either way, keep moving."
No one laughed.
The alarms were muted down here, more vibration than sound, a distant, constant shudder in the metal. The facility was still screaming; it just wasn't screaming for them personally anymore.
That felt like a victory.
It wasn't.
Lysa knew exactly how many people had gone into the omega ring with her and Kael.
She knew how many had made it into the ducts.
The difference between those numbers gnawed at her with every meter.
Rin's leg kicked suddenly, catching on a seam.
She hissed, pain flaring.
"You need to stop?" Lysa asked.
Rin shook her head, though Lysa could barely see it in the dim.
"If I stop, I'm going to think about the chair," Rin said. "I'd rather not."
"Then you don't stop," Lysa said.
Simple math.
Cruel math.
The kind that kept people alive.
"Kael should be behind us by now," someone whispered further back.
Lysa didn't answer.
She pictured him in the corridor, lightning in his hands, Mara in front of him with that terrible composure.
She had counted on him to be loud.
She had not counted on how much the idea of his silence would weigh.
"Focus on your hands and knees," she said. "Not on who isn't here."
Rin let out a breath that might have been a laugh, might have been a sob.
"That your therapy style?" she asked.
"It's free," Lysa said. "No refunds."
They reached the first junction.
The duct split in three directions, each marked with a faded code.
Lysa wiped grime off one with the side of her wrist until the letters showed.
M‑SERV‑A3.
Wrong one.
The next: C‑VENT‑B1.
The third: WASTE‑TRK‑E7.
"Waste track," she said. "That's us."
"Seriously?" someone behind her muttered. "We're escaping through the trash again?"
"Welcome to resistance work," Lysa said. "Glory comes with a smell."
She shifted position, leading them into the lower duct.
It tightened around them, forcing shoulders to compress.
Claustrophobia crept in like rising water.
Someone started breathing too fast.
"Slow it down," Lysa said without looking back. "In through the nose, out through the mouth. Match my pace."
She exaggerated her own breaths.
Gradually, the panicked rhythm behind her synced with it.
She did not ask whose it was.
Names made ghosts louder.
They reached a grille.
Faint light seeped through, gray and ugly.
Lysa pressed her face to the slits.
Through the narrow view she saw a cavernous chamber stacked with sealed containers and compactors. The waste processing level. No people in sight, just machines humming their endless cycles.
"Good news," she said. "We're here. Bad news: the drop is about four meters and the floor is unforgiving. We'll have to take it one at a time."
"How do we know it's safe?" someone asked.
"We don't," Lysa said. "We know it's not currently on fire. That's the bar."
She drew her knife and worked it into the grille frame, cutting through the old welds until the metal sagged.
Rin helped her hold it as it came free.
The smell that rolled in was worse than the ducts chemical rot under citrus cleaner.
"Rin first," Lysa said.
Rin stared at the opening.
"Can't argue you're not committed to the theme," she said weakly.
Lysa checked her grip.
"Hands on the edge," she instructed. "Lower yourself as far as you can before you let go. Bend your knees when you hit. If you break an ankle, I'm leaving you there and feeling bad about it later."
Rin swallowed.
"Understood."
She eased herself through.
For a second, only the strain in her arms showed.
Then she dropped.
The thud echoed.
"I'm not broken," Rin called up. "Not more than I was."
"Good," Lysa said. "Move out from under the opening. Next."
They went, one after another.
Each new impact was a small risk, a tiny roll of loaded dice.
They were lucky.
Mostly.
One man landed badly, gasping.
Lysa dropped last, knees absorbing the shock with a jolt that shot pain up her spine.
She straightened, biting down on a curse.
"We don't have long," she said. "Waste conduits run to the surface recyclers. Security won't ignore that forever."
A red light flashed lazily on a nearby console.
Local alert.
Not yet a lockdown.
"We head for the eastern chute," Lysa said, orienting herself. "It feeds into the old industrial drains. From there, we're on home ground."
"Home," someone repeated quietly. "Right."
He sounded like he no longer believed in the word.
Maybe none of them did.
***
Aiden woke up to the sound of dripping.
For one disoriented moment he thought it was the pillar, leaking light.
Then the smell of burnt circuits and metal dust hit him, and the world came back in jagged pieces.
He lay on his side against a wall that hadn't been where he left it. His ears rang. His right hand clenched around something hard enough to hurt.
The sliver.
Its runes glowed faintly, pulsing like a heartbeat.
"Okay," he rasped. "Okay."
He shifted.
Pain flared along his ribs, sharp and immediate.
Not broken.
Cracked, maybe.
He had known worse.
He forced himself upright.
The omega chamber was a wreck.
The central pillar was gone not neatly shut down, not intact.
Where it had stood, a jagged column of fused glass and metal rose like a melted spine. The cables that had fed it were charred, some snapped, some still twitching with occasional, harmless sparks.
Shattered glass littered the floor.
One of the viewing windows had blown inward; broken fragments glittered like ice.
Aiden's stomach clenched.
Guards lay scattered across the room.
Some groaned.
Some didn't.
He saw uniforms.
He saw armor.
He did not see collars.
The modules below were dark.
Doors hung open, some ripped off their tracks by the blast wave.
Silhouettes lay in some of them, too still.
He wanted to go down.
He wanted to check pulses, to pull survivors out by hand.
He did not have time.
"Rian?" he croaked.
Silence.
He turned slowly.
Rian lay a few meters away, half under a fallen support strut.
For a terrifying second Aiden thought he'd been cut in half.
Then Rian coughed, dust puffing up around his face.
"Did we win?" Rian asked hoarsely.
Aiden let out a breath that hurt.
"In a very technical, very temporary sense," he said. "Yes."
"Good," Rian said. "Feels like losing."
Aiden staggered over.
The strut pinning Rian's legs was heavy but not impossible.
He braced, bit back a groan, and lifted one end just enough for Rian to drag himself clear.
Rian hissed as his right leg scraped free.
It hung at an ugly angle.
"Not walking that off," he said.
"Walking is overrated," Aiden said. "We just need you breathing."
Rian snorted.
"Low standards," he said. "I approve."
Aiden helped him sit up against the wall.
"Why are you here?" Aiden asked.
He knew the answer.
He asked anyway.
"Because someone had to be," Rian said. "You didn't think you were the only Orion agent with a conscience, did you?"
"Statistically, I was hoping for two or three," Aiden said. "Nice to meet one."
Rian's mouth twisted.
"Don't give me too much credit," he said. "If they ask, I can still say I came down here to stop you."
"You didn't," Aiden said.
Rian's gaze dropped to the sliver.
"Is that what I think it is?" he asked.
"Every scream this place ever turned into a graph," Aiden said softly. "Enough to make the Board choke on its own encryption."
Rian closed his eyes briefly.
"Then get out," he said. "Because if they catch you with that, they won't bother with collars."
Aiden looked around at the wrecked chamber, at the bodies.
"Some of this is on me," he said.
"No," Rian said. "All of this is on the people who built a tower out of pain and called it necessary. You just kicked it over."
He opened his eyes again, hard now.
"Go," he repeated. "I'll stall whoever comes through that door. Play dumb. Say I found you like this and you ran."
"They'll tear you apart," Aiden said.
"I'm a good liar when the alternative is treason," Rian said. "And if they don't believe me… well. You made sure what happens here doesn't stay here. That's worth something."
Aiden hesitated.
He had dragged a lot of people into this.
He did not want to add Rian's name to the list carved into his bones.
"You don't owe me this," he said.
Rian's laugh was short and ugly.
"I don't owe you anything," he said. "I owe them less."
Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside.
Closer.
Fast.
No more time.
Aiden squeezed Rian's shoulder.
"Thank you," he said.
"Don't make me regret it," Rian replied.
Aiden turned, looking for an exit not currently on fire.
The side maintenance door they had used earlier hung crooked, half‑blown off its hinges.
He slipped through the gap, every movement sending knives through his ribs.
Behind him, he heard Rian draw a ragged breath, then shout:
"Captain! In here! The pillar it blew he got away—"
The lie hurt Aiden more than the injuries.
He kept moving.
***
In the waste level, the eastern chute loomed like a steel throat, segmented doors half open as the system cycled.
"Wait for the rhythm," Lysa said.
Conveyor belts clanked somewhere inside, carrying compacted blocks toward incinerators or recyclers, depending on the Board's shifting priorities.
If they mistimed the jump, they would end up as part of the sorting.
"Two at a time," Lysa said. "Land on the belt, stay low, don't fight the movement. There's a manual override hatch forty meters in. If we don't reach it, we cook."
Several people looked pale at that.
Rin just nodded.
"Less talking, more not‑dying," she said.
Lysa almost smiled.
"On three," she said to the first pair. "One. Two. Now."
They jumped.
For a second, nothing.
Then she saw them reappear, silhouettes riding the belt deeper into the chute.
They didn't fall.
That was something.
They sent the next pair.
The third.
Rin stepped up beside Lysa.
"I go with you," she said.
"You go with him," Lysa said, nodding at a wiry man with narrow shoulders and a blank expression. "He's got balance. You're still shaking."
"I'm fine," Rin said.
"You're alive," Lysa said. "Don't confuse the two."
She put a hand on Rin's back and guided her to the edge.
"Jump," she said.
Rin jumped.
The belt swallowed her.
Lysa watched until she saw Rin move slow but moving toward the faint outline of the override hatch.
Good.
Not good enough.
Nothing tonight would be.
She was about to go herself when a siren changed pitch overhead.
A deeper, slower note, vibrating in her gut.
Lockdown.
"Of course," she muttered.
Metal shutters began to slide down over the chute mouth.
"Last two!" she shouted to the remaining escapees. "Now or never!"
They didn't hesitate.
They leaped as the gap narrowed, barely clearing the lip.
Lysa exhaled.
She'd saved… some.
Not enough.
The shutters slammed down, sealing the chute.
No more escape that way.
Not for her.
She was suddenly, acutely aware of how quiet the waste level had become.
Too quiet.
Footsteps approached, measured and unhurried.
She turned.
Mara stood at the far end of the chamber, flanked by two Orion agents and a handful of regular security. Their armor was scuffed, dust‑streaked. None of them looked victorious.
They looked tired.
Mara's gaze flicked to the sealed chute, then back to Lysa.
"Creative," she said. "Using the trash line."
"Fitting," Lysa said. "Considering what you feed into your labs."
One of the security officers stiffened.
Mara didn't flinch.
"You're Lysa," she said. "Network cell leader. Former systems engineer. Twice arrested, never processed."
"You've done your homework," Lysa said. "I'm flattered."
"It's my job," Mara said.
They regarded each other across the stained concrete, between dead machines and sealed exits.
Lysa noted details automatically.
The way Mara's shield band hummed slightly hotter than the others, tuned for stronger impacts. The micro‑tremor in her fingers that said she'd already used more power today than she planned. The fine dust in her hair, the faint red at the rims of her eyes.
Tired.
Dangerous.
"Where's Kael?" Mara asked.
Lysa raised an eyebrow.
"Which answer terrifies you more?" she asked. "That he's dead, or that he isn't?"
Mara's jaw tightened.
"You're not as funny as you think," she said.
"Most people aren't," Lysa said. "Doesn't stop them trying."
Mara took a step closer.
"Whatever you think you achieved tonight," she said, "you also killed people who had nothing to do with what happens in the labs. Techs. Guards. Support staff."
She nodded at a smear of blood on the floor that didn't look like it came from a Deviant.
"They chose to work here," Lysa said.
"Some did," Mara said. "Some didn't. Some were reassigned. Some were told they were helping keep the city safe. Reality doesn't care about who signed which form. They're still dead."
Lysa shrugged, though the weight of each lost life pressed against the back of her skull.
"I won't pretend I'm sorry they're not standing between us and the exit anymore," she said. "Regret is a luxury for people who didn't walk past those modules every day and call it order."
Mara's gaze was steady.
"Do you think you're the only one who saw it?" she asked.
Lysa's heartbeat stumbled once.
There it was.
The crack.
"Congratulations," Lysa said softly. "You noticed the cages you've been guarding."
"Noticed," Mara said. "And did what I could inside the system I had. Pushed for oversight, for limits, for permanent records. Do you know how much harder you made that today?"
Lysa almost laughed.
"Your system was never going to fix what it built," she said. "You don't reform a collar by polishing it."
"You blew up the control," Mara snapped. "You can't just walk away from that."
"Neither can you," Lysa said. "Not anymore."
They stood in the humming quiet, waste processors still dutifully sorting trash a level below as if the world hadn't shifted.
Lysa could hear her own pulse in her ears.
This was not the confrontation she wanted.
She wanted time.
Debate.
Sharp words in safe rooms.
What she had was concrete and guns and the knowledge that the Network's only chance of surviving the night depended on some of them not walking out.
Mara raised her hand slightly.
Her agents lifted their weapons.
"Don't," Lysa said.
"Then surrender," Mara replied. "If you come in alive, you might still have a chance to argue. If you don't, the Board will paint you as a monster, and everyone who died here will be your fault on every broadcast."
Lysa's laughter was low and tired.
"You really think they won't, regardless?" she asked.
Mara's silence was its own answer.
Lysa felt a strange calm settle over her.
Fear had burned out somewhere between the labs and the ducts.
All that was left was calculation.
"If I surrender," she said, "do you let them go?"
She nodded toward the sealed chute.
"They're already gone," Mara said. "By the time I can get a team topside, they'll be into the old drains. After tonight, every scanner in the city will be tuned to Kael's signature and anyone near him. My reach is not infinite."
It was not the answer Lysa wanted.
It was the only honest one she'd heard all night.
"Where is he?" Mara asked again.
Lysa considered lying.
She considered telling the truth.
In the end, she did neither.
"You're asking the wrong question," she said. "You should be asking what you're going to do when those files hit the feeds. When every parent with a Deviant kid sees what you built under their streets."
"That will cause panic," Mara said.
"Good," Lysa said. "Panic means they finally understand something is wrong."
Mara's jaw tightened.
"You're willing to burn the city to fix it," she said.
"I'm willing to admit it's already on fire," Lysa said. "You're the one standing there with a badge and a hose full of gasoline."
For a moment, their eyes locked.
Lysa saw exhaustion, doubt, and a core of iron that wouldn't bend the way she wanted.
Mara saw a woman who had chosen, repeatedly, to drag chaos into order and call it justice.
Neither of them was wrong.
Neither of them was right.
"Last time," Mara said quietly. "Surrender."
Lysa thought of the people in the ducts, riding conveyor belts toward a future that would only be marginally less hostile than the present.
She thought of Kael, half feral and half trying not to be, throwing himself at Orion lines because she had asked.
She thought of Aiden somewhere above, carrying a sliver heavy enough to break a city.
"No," she said.
She dropped her knife.
Not as surrender.
As distraction.
It clattered on the concrete.
At the same instant, she kicked the nearest waste bin hard enough to send it rolling, metal shrieking.
Every gun twitched toward the noise.
Lysa moved the other way.
Her hand snapped out, slamming down on the emergency flush for the chute beside the sealed one.
The system, already strained, obeyed without thinking.
A blast door blew inward from the pressure imbalance, venting scalding, chemical‑laced steam across the room.
Visibility vanished.
Someone screamed.
Shots cracked, wild.
Lysa dove sideways, lungs burning as the fumes bit.
She didn't expect to make it to an exit.
That wasn't the point.
She wanted to force Mara to choose between pursuing her and sealing the level, between one enemy and the dozens already slipping into the city's underbelly.
In the boiling haze, she heard Mara shout orders, voice raw.
"Seal level! Vent the chamber! Get masks on, now!"
Lysa smiled once into the choking fog.
"Reality check," she whispered to no one.
Then the steam took her, and the waste processors kept humming, and somewhere far above them, people who had never seen the inside of Twelve‑North went on eating dinner under clean lights, unaware that something under their feet had cracked in a way it couldn't be un‑cracked again.