The entrance to Subline Zero wasn't marked.
It waited in the bones of the city like something ashamed of what it used to be — buried beneath maintenance layers, its existence unacknowledged by every public grid or Scorpio-maintained archive. They found it behind a false freight elevator beneath a power substation tagged for decommission. The access panel looked welded shut.
But Dekra knelt and pressed two fingers to the cold alloy.
"Try to remember it," Aya whispered.
"I'm not remembering," Dekra muttered. "I'm guessing."
She tapped in a code she claimed came to her in a dream.
The elevator opened with a sigh that sounded like something old giving up.
A cold rush of ancient air rolled out — dry, stale, charged with static and old dust. The kind of air that hadn't been touched in years but still carried the scent of decisions.
They descended in silence.
The lift groaned, its cables whispering against oxidized wheels.
