Zane was perfectly still, a statue made of terror jammed between two slabs of fallen brickwork.
He didn't breathe or move, only watched.
The three Exterminators stood in the centre of the ruined street. They were clean, silent, and moved as one, their black-and-silver armor gleaming in the sick green pre-dawn light.
They were hunters.
Zane's heart was a cold hammer in his chest.
The lead knight, the one who had knelt, stood up, his faceless helm swivelling and scanning the street.
Zane felt the motion like a physical touch. He had nowhere to run because the sewer grate was twenty feet away, across an open, rubble-strewn street.
He couldn't fight them since Silas, a one-woman murder storm, had been scared of them.
He was a rat and they were exterminators. The name was literal.
He had to hide.
The leader's helm swivelled again, slow and measured, passing over Zane's hiding spot, and then it snapped back.
The black, narrow eye-slit of the helm was aimed directly at him.
Zane's blood turned to ice.
He couldn't see the knight's eyes, but he fucking knew he had been spotted.
The knight took a single, measured step toward the rubble pile.
[...Anomaly is hiding. Flush it...]
Zane heard the thought, cold and clear as glass. It wasn't despair; it was a command.
The other two knights raised their spears, fanning out. They were going to sweep the rubble, walk right up to him, and skewer him like a piece of trash.
Fuck.
No.
Zane's panic was a scream in his skull.
He thought of Silas—Control your stink—and of his power—the battery. The cold, dense stone of souls sitting in his gut.
He needed the Umbral Cloak.
Last time, it was a violent eruption, a bonfire he couldn't control.
This time, he couldn't afford a bonfire, only a shadow.
He focused on the cold stone in his stomach, ensuring the hunger wouldn't gorge, and did what Silas said: he siphoned.
He pictured a single thread of power, cold and grey, being pulled from the battery, and wrapped it around himself, willing the shadows to live.
There was no explosion or rush.
Instead, the dark crevice he was hiding in just got darker.
The grey light of dawn seemed to bend around the edges of the rubble, refusing to touch his skin. His filthy rags didn't turn black; they just lost their colour, blending into the darkness.
It wasn't invisibility, but camouflage. He was a chameleon made of gloom.
He felt the battery in his gut shrink. A tiny amount, but it was a constant drain. He was learning.
The lead knight was ten feet away and had stopped.
His head was tilted, and he was confused.
[...Signature faded. Cloaking? The vulture is adapting...]
The knight raised his spear, knowing he wasn't going to guess, but was going to stab.
Zane pressed himself back against the cold, wet brick. He was trapped, fucked, and going to die.
"Oi!"
A voice, a slurred, drunken shout came from the other end of the street.
"Wha'... wha's all this shiny shit?"
Zane risked glancing towards the voice.
A man, a resident Sump-dweller in rags that made Zane look clean, had stumbled out of a collapsed doorway. He was swaying, holding a half-empty bottle.
He was drunk, stupid, and about to be very, very dead.
The three knights' heads snapped toward the new noise.
[...Civilian. Non-asset. Irrelevant...] the leader thought.
The drunk man took a swig from his bottle and was feeling brave.
"I... I said... wha's all this f-f-fuckin'..."
The lead knight made a single, sharp hand gesture.
One of the other knights turned and stalked toward the drunk.
"Curfew," the knight's voice boomed, metallic and cold from his helm. "Disperse."
"Fuck you!" the drunk screamed and hurled his bottle.
It shattered harmlessly on the knight's gleaming silver breastplate.
The knight didn't even flinch, raising his spear.
This was it. This was Zane's only chance.
The lead knight and the third one were still watching the confrontation—keeping them in a momentary, fatal distraction.
Now.
Zane kept the Umbral Cloak active, not standing up or running.
He slithered.
He pushed himself out of the rubble on his hands and knees, a patch of darkness moving through the pre-dawn gloom. He stayed low, using the piles of trash and broken brick as cover.
Twenty feet.
The drunk man screamed—a wet, choked sound.
Fifteen feet.
Zane's muscles were burning from the crouch. The drain on his battery was making him light-headed.
Ten feet.
He was at the sewer grate. The gap was horribly narrow.
He heard a heavy thud as the drunk's body hit the ground.
"Fuck it."
Zane dropped the cloak, all stealth gone. He dove for the hole, shoving his head and shoulders through the gap.
CLANK!
The lead knight's head snapped back at the sound.
"The vulture! He's running!"
Zane felt a sharp pain as the jagged metal of the grate tore at his back. He didn't care.
He kicked off the wall and tumbled through the hole.
He fell five feet into pitch blackness.
SPLASH!
He landed hard in a foot of cold, fast-moving water that stank of ammonia and rust.
He was in. He was in the sewer.
He scrambled to his feet, his heart trying to beat its way out of his throat.
He looked back through the grate.
The lead knight was standing where he'd been hiding. He looked at the rubble, then at the sewer grate.
He slowly walked over, a black silhouette against the sickly green sky.
He stopped at the grate and looked in.
Zane was twenty feet back in the tunnel, but he felt that faceless gaze land right on him.
The knight didn't try to follow, knowing he was too big in his armor.
He just stood there, watching.
Then, he raised a gloved hand to his helm.
[...Anomaly has retreated into the Underside. Sector 6-Gamma. Containment is breached. Alerting the Sanctum. Purge squad requested...]
The knight lowered his hand, turned with military precision, and marched away, his two companions falling into step behind him.
They left the drunk's body in the street without a second glance.
Zane was alone.
He slumped against the cold, slimy brick wall of the sewer tunnel.
The water rushed around his ankles. It was pitch black.
He'd survived. He'd used his power smartly. He'd escaped.
He should have felt relieved.
He didn't.
He felt the last of the power from his battery gutter out. The Umbral Cloak had burned through half of it, and the rest had just faded, wasted.
The cold stone in his gut was gone.
The void opened up.
The hunger came in an instant this time.
It wasn't a slow creep, but a fucking avalanche. The convulsions started in his stomach immediately—a violent, tearing agony.
He'd escaped the Exterminators.
He was trapped in the fucking Underside, miles from the surface, in total darkness.
And the worst withdrawal of his life was just beginning.
He clutched his stomach, slid down the slimy wall, and screamed into the rushing darkness.