Jax Harlan dropped the data chip onto the crate like it was worth the two broken ribs it cost him. "Meds first. Then you can pretend you never saw me."
Rico didn't touch it. He leaned back against the dripping bulkhead, knife already out, thumb testing the edge. "Lena's not gonna make it to morning anyway, Jax. Water's poisoned her lungs. You know that."
The words landed like a second punch. Jax had crawled through a collapsed freight tube for three days straight for that chip, scraping past enforcer patrols and half-starved scavs who'd gut you for less. Lena had kept him alive when he was eleven and half-drowned in the same filth now killing her. He wasn't leaving without the antibiotics.
"Cut the sermon," he said. "You owe me."
Rico smiled the way people do right before they sell you out. "Tower boys offered triple if I delivered the next Shroud candidate breathing. You're nineteen tomorrow. Perfect timing."
Jax moved before the last word left Rico's mouth.
The chain in his pocket came out whipping. It caught Rico's knife wrist, jerked hard. Metal teeth bit skin. Rico cursed and lunged anyway. They crashed into the crate, chips and vials scattering across the grating. Jax drove an elbow into the soft spot under Rico's ear. Once. Twice. Blood sprayed hot across his cheek.
Rico got the blade in anyway—low, under the ribs, twisting like he'd practiced on plenty of other runners. Pain flared white-hot. Jax tasted copper and laughed once, short and ugly, because if he was dying here it wasn't going to be quiet.
He yanked the chain tighter, wrapped it around Rico's throat, and pulled until the bigger man stopped kicking. The body slumped. Jax held on a second longer than he needed to, breathing through his teeth, then let go.
He snatched the med pack from Rico's coat. Three vials. Enough. Barely.
The alley lights flickered overhead. Not the usual brownout. Something worse. The air thickened like it was trying to swallow sound. Jax's vision stuttered—edges bleeding black. He thought it was blood loss until a voice that wasn't his own slid into his skull, dry as old bone.
*Finally. A warm body.*
Jax froze mid-step. "Who the fuck—"
The world ripped.
One second he was standing in ankle-deep sludge with Lena's meds in his fist. The next his soul tore loose like meat yanked off a hook. He screamed—actually screamed—and then there was nothing but cold black water closing over him and the distant crash of collapsing stone.
He woke choking on brine that tasted of rust and dead things.
Not Cascade Spire. Not anywhere he'd ever been.
Jax lay on a tilted slab of concrete that used to be a rooftop. Around him stretched a drowned city frozen mid-collapse: towers leaning like drunks, bridges snapped clean in half, barnacles the size of cars clinging to everything. Moonlight—if that was even moonlight—cut through the water above in sickly green shafts. His lungs burned but he wasn't drowning. Not anymore.
He sat up fast. The stab wound was gone. So was the blood. Only the memory of pain stayed, sharp enough to make him check his side anyway.
The voice came back, closer now, amused. *Took you long enough. Most of them cry first.*
Jax spun, fists up. Nothing there. Just shadows sliding across broken glass like they had opinions.
"What are you?" he asked the dark.
*Your new roommate. Call me Kael. Or don't. I've worn worse names.* The shadow thickened, took the vague shape of a man with a broken neck and a grin that didn't reach his eyes. *You're in the Expanse now, meat. First Trial. Survive the temple ahead or your soul gets recycled into the next idiot who pisses off the Shroud. Simple.*
Jax laughed once, the same ugly sound from the alley. "Temple. Great. I just killed a guy for cough syrup and now I get ancient ruins. My week's looking up."
Kael's shadow shrugged. *Most people beg. You're fun. I might not eat you first.*
Boots scraped stone twenty meters away. Two figures dropped from a higher ledge. One was tall, wiry, hair hacked short like she'd done it with a knife. Lightning crawled across her knuckles every time she flexed. The other was smaller, blindfolded with a strip of black cloth, moving like she already knew where every crack in the floor was.
The tall one spotted him and stopped. "New blood. You the loud one who screamed on arrival?"
Jax stayed on the slab. "Depends. You here to kill me too?"
She tilted her head. Lightning danced brighter. "Not yet. Name's Mira. This is Lira. We're three hours into the Trial and the temple's already eaten six others. You any good with that chain, or just decoration?"
Lira turned her blind face toward him like she was reading something behind his eyes. "He's carrying something loud. Echo. Old one. Hungry."
Kael's laugh rattled inside Jax's skull. *She's got good taste.*
Jax looked at the two of them—strangers who hadn't tried to gut him yet—and felt the meds for Lena still clenched useless in his real-world fist. He didn't know if he'd ever get back. Didn't know if Lena was already dead.
He stepped off the slab.
"Jax," he said. "And if we're doing this, we do it my way. No hero shit. No dying for each other. We get what we need and we get out."
Mira's mouth twitched—not quite a smile. "Bossy for fresh meat."
Lira just nodded once, like she'd already seen how this ended and decided it was worth the trouble.
The temple doors loomed ahead, carved with faces that screamed without sound. Something inside roared low enough to shake the water.
Jax rolled the chain across his palm. It felt heavier than it should. Kael's voice purred approval.
*Let's see how long you last before you need me, meat.*
They stepped through.
The doors groaned open like something alive and pissed off. The air inside hit wet and thick, smelling of rot and old blood. Veins of glowing algae lit a hall lined with statues missing their heads.
"Keep moving," Mira said behind him. Her voice was flat, but lightning flickered across her shoulders like she was one wrong word from sparking. "The last group that stopped here got dragged under the floor."
Lira walked silent between them. "They're still down there. Listening."