The cavern didn't settle after the creature withdrew. The air still vibrated as if the earth kept the memory of its weight. Pipes above them groaned, releasing thin threads of dust that drifted onto Aaron's shoulders. Lyra lay weakly against his back, her breathing thinned into shallow intervals that trembled along his spine. He adjusted his stance... small and precise... quietly mapping exits faster than fear could form.
A cold beam of light sliced through the tunnel. Then another. Then six more, crossing and narrowing like a net closing. This wasn't the flicker of dying bulbs or the tired hum of emergency strips. These were surgical beams, controlled and steady. The kind carried by people sent to make sure nothing walked out alive.
Lyra's fingers curled tighter into his jacket. Her pulse jumped once, then steadied under the pressure. Aaron's breathing didn't change. His eyes narrowed only a fraction as silhouettes emerged ahead... helmets, armor plates, rifles held with perfect discipline. Each step fell in a measured rhythm that belonged to a unit raised to erase mistakes.
Then the seventh figure walked forward.
Long black hair. Sapphire eyes. A posture too steady for this dying place, as if the rot and dust had learned to avoid her. She moved with the quiet authority of someone accustomed to entering disasters and deciding who stayed in the ground.
Lysandra Larasvati.
Ghostline's advance commander.
Her gaze locked onto Aaron without the slightest adjustment.
"Aaron," she said quietly. "You're a long way from the place built to restrain you."
All rifles snapped upward, a hard, rehearsed motion... twelve red dots drawing clean lines across his chest and throat. Aaron shifted half an inch, angling his body so Lyra sat deeper behind his shoulder. He didn't blink. Didn't tense. Didn't offer them even the courtesy of fear.
Lysandra raised one hand, and every rifle froze mid-rise, arrested by a single gesture. She stepped closer, her eyes sweeping over him first, then dropping to Lyra's blood-soaked leg. "She's bleeding badly," she murmured, voice calm and exact. "Keep delaying, and she'll lose that limb."
Aaron stayed silent.
"She needs treatment in the next hour," Lysandra added, her gaze never leaving his. "You know I'm right."
Lyra lowered her eyes, heat and panic tangling in her chest. It wasn't Lysandra's presence that unsettled her; it was the way this woman spoke as if she had already dissected Aaron's choices years ago. Every word sounded like confirmation of something she had long suspected.
Aaron finally spoke.
"She's not your concern."
"She's yours," Lysandra answered, stepping closer, her tone almost curious. "And that makes her very interesting."
One of the soldiers risked a breath.
"Ma'am, protocol for Veridine survi..."
"I KNOW the protocol," she snapped, still not looking back.
The soldier went rigid, shoulders locking under the reprimand.
Lysandra's eyes returned to Aaron, assessing and cold. "Aaron… the entire facility is burning for you. Blackthorn, Ghostline, the Board... they're all arguing whether to kill you on sight or drag you back." She let the words hang for a moment. "And yet here you are, carrying a girl."
Lyra felt her heart twist, a dull, helpless ache that had nothing to do with her leg. Aaron didn't flinch at the summary of what hunted him. He reacted only to the subtle shift of her weight against his back.
Lysandra shifted her focus, studying Lyra fully now. "Lyra Veridine," she said, as if confirming a label on a specimen. Her tone carried no surprise, no pity... just certainty sharpened by classified files.
Lyra's breath caught. Hearing her full name spoken down here felt like being stripped open under a clinical light.
"Daughter of..."
Lyra's control snapped.
"Where is my father?"
The question cracked across the metal walls, thin but unstoppable. Ghostline shifted, boots scraping lightly. Even Aaron's posture changed, a subtle tilt that placed more of himself between Lyra and the rifles.
Lysandra watched Lyra with a stillness that felt invasive. Answering looked less like sharing information and more like tearing away bandages. "He disappeared thirty-six hours before the city collapsed," she said at last. "No body. No comms. No trace."
Lyra's lips trembled.
"H-he's… alive?"
"We don't know," Lysandra replied. "But someone with clearance above mine erased his trail. That rarely means death." She tilted her head slightly. "It usually means someone doesn't want him found."
Lyra swallowed hard, her stomach knotting around the thin thread of hope that refused to die. The idea of him being alive somewhere... hidden, manipulated, or weaponized... felt worse than any clean confirmation of his death.
Aaron sensed the change in her breathing, the micro-stutter that revealed how close she was to breaking. He stepped half a foot back... small, controlled, and unmistakably defensive.
Twelve rifles realigned with him in an instant.
Lysandra lifted her hand again, irritation flickering at the edges of her composure as the lasers froze. "Aaron. Don't," she warned quietly. "You won't survive what's deeper in this facility. And she definitely won't."
Aaron answered without delay.
"I'm not giving her to you."
Lysandra's expression cracked... barely. It wasn't quite anger and not quite respect, but something threaded uneasily between the two. "Aaron," she said, her voice dropping. "Lyra isn't just a survivor. She is a missing piece."
Lyra's breath stalled in her chest. Her fingers tightened in Aaron's jacket until her knuckles ached. "What does that mean?" she whispered.
Lysandra opened her mouth to answer...
〈Aaron. Below. Now.〉
the entity cut through his mind, sharp and absolute.
Aaron moved instantly.
The ground convulsed beneath Ghostline's boots. Pipes ruptured along the ceiling, sending rust and water streaming down. Concrete swelled and split with a sickening crack, like something beneath it had been waiting for permission to breathe.
Then something massive slammed upward.
A mutated arm... thick, webbed with bulging black veins, skin stretched too tight... punched through the floor. This wasn't the nine-foot aberration they had seen before. This was a different one. Two-point-eight meters of refined brutality, built at the biological edge where strength and speed stopped being human.
Ghostline reacted in perfect, ruthless training.
"CONTACT! ENGAGE... ENGAGE!"
Rifles erupted in controlled bursts. Muzzle flashes stuttered across the cavern. Shells clattered and spun. The beast dragged itself up, its jaw half torn, throat mangled, but its eyes were very much awake.
Lysandra fired twice, both shots burying themselves in its shoulder.
"AARON! MOVE! TAKE THE GIRL!"
Aaron pivoted, bolting for the narrow service shaft with Lyra locked against his back. The creature lunged after them, but Ghostline cut across its path, a temporary human barricade. It tore through them with terrifying efficiency.
One soldier hit the wall hard enough to leave a smear. Another vanished under a descending knee. A third screamed as a huge hand closed around his head and squeezed until the sound stopped.
Lysandra kept firing, every round aimed at joints, nerves, and exposed structure. It wasn't panic. It was calculation. But the beast simply absorbed the damage and kept advancing, ripping holes through her formation one body at a time.
"AARON!" she shouted again. "RUN!"
He didn't look back. He didn't need to. The sounds behind him... the impacts, the ruptured breaths, the grinding of bone... told him everything he needed to know.
Lyra clung to him tighter, teeth pressed into the inside of her cheek. Every jolt sent fire up her leg, pain lancing cleanly through muscle and nerve. She swallowed the sounds that wanted to escape. She would not make him split his focus.
The corridor narrowed, forcing him lower. Ray ducked under a rusted beam, slid past split wall panels, and burst into a small, abandoned lab.
Shattered monitors clung to dead screens along the far wall. Chemical stains discolored the concrete in irregular patterns. A thick, reinforced pillar stood near the center, solid enough to take weight if the ceiling gave in.
He set Lyra down gently against it. Her breathing shook in shallow bursts, sweat gathering at her hairline and trailing down her temples.
"Ray… don't leave me," she whispered.
"I'm not leaving," he said.
〈She's fading. Pulse unstable.〉
the entity warned, clinical and unhurried.
Aaron tore open an old med cabinet. The door ripped from its hinges and crashed to the floor. Broken glass slid around his boots in a bright, useless scatter. He sifted quickly, fingers rejecting anything cracked beyond use, until he found gauze, sterilizers, and a semi-functional injector.
He dropped to one knee beside Lyra.
"This will sting."
"It's fine…" she breathed, each word wrapped around pain. "Just… stay close."
He cleaned the wound with steady, exact motions, clearing debris and old clotted blood. Lyra gripped the floor, nails scraping lightly against concrete. She didn't scream. Didn't plead. She just forced her lungs to keep working as pain surged and receded in brutal waves.
When Ray took hold of her ankle to set the angle properly, her breath hitched sharply, a tiny, strangled sound escaping before she could stop it.
"S-sorry…" she whispered.
"You don't need to apologize."
"It's embarrassing… reacting to everything you do…" Her voice wavered, then steadied. "You're too calm. Even here. Even now."
Aaron paused for a fraction of a second, a microscopic fracture in his otherwise seamless composure. "You're doing better than most would," he said.
Lyra let out a small, exhausted laugh that almost wasn't there.
"Can't tell if that's praise… or another warning."
"…Both," he replied quietly.
Her gaze warmed, something fragile and bright threading through the pain. A faint smile touched her lips, too tired to fully form but stubborn enough not to die.
"Aaron… can I… call you Ray now?"
"Why?" he asked.
"Because it feels like… you're the first safe thing I've had in years." Her voice shook... not with sentimental excess, but with the weight of a truth she wished were lighter. "And I… want something that's mine to call you."
He held her eyes a beat longer than usual, the silence between them turning almost tangible.
"…If that's what you want," he said.
Lyra's smile softened, the tension in her shoulders easing just enough to show she'd heard what she needed.
"Thank you… Ray."
The ground trembled again.
Not from Ghostline's disciplined advance and not from the apex beast wrecking its way through their line. This was different... slower, more deliberate. The vibration carried the sense of something that didn't chase footsteps or sound, but followed scent and heat and the residual mark of fear.
Ray rose, placing himself fully between Lyra and the doorway. His silhouette cut the glow from the hallway into sharp edges. He didn't look back at her. He didn't have to. She could feel the way the air around him changed when danger came close.
Her breath stalled.
A silhouette appeared in the entryway... bent, heavy-shouldered, arms long and wrong. Something dangled from its hands: splintered bones, gripped like tools rather than leftovers. It stood there for a second, just breathing, as if tasting the room.
Lyra's eyes widened, terror dropping like a stone through her chest.
Ray exhaled once, the sound low and steady. Calm. Ready. Lethal.
〈Ray. This one kills slowly.〉
The creature stepped forward.
Ray stepped forward faster.
And hell continued beneath the earth.