Chapter 21:
The Map of Ruin
The bunker hummed with tension, a living thing that vibrated through the concrete floor and up into my bones. It wasn't just the machines—though Vex's jury-rigged equipment did rattle and whine with alarming frequency—but the people. The quiet, desperate energy of two dozen souls preparing for what might be their final night on earth. The air tasted of static and sweat, thick with the musk of unwashed bodies and the acrid bite of fear.
I sat hunched over the makeshift table, my spine protesting the hours spent bent over HelixMed's crumbling schematics. The paper was brittle beneath my fingers, yellowed with age and stained with the ghosts of a hundred coffee rings. Each crease told a story. Some engineer's frustration, some technician's last-ditch effort to make sense of the madness. Now it was our turn to trace those faded lines with shaking fingers, searching for salvation in the ruins of the very system that had doomed us.
Vex's console sparked suddenly, a shower of blue-white sparks cascading to the floor. She cursed, slamming her palm against the side of the machine with enough force to make the holographic display flicker.
"Piece of shit," she muttered, her voice raw from too many hours without sleep. The glow from the screens painted her face in harsh angles, highlighting the dark circles beneath her eyes. She looked like death warmed over, but then again, we all did.
The hologram stabilized, casting its eerie blue light over the assembled group.
Sarin loomed over my shoulder, his massive frame blocking what little warmth the bunker's struggling heaters provided. I could smell the blood on him, copper and salt, from where his stitches had torn during our last run. He hadn't complained. Sarin never complained.
"Northern sector's got three viable nodes," he rumbled, tapping the display with a finger thick enough to crush bone. The hologram rippled at his touch. "If we hit them in sequence—"
"Sequence won't matter if the Shepherd's got Antlers crawling through those tunnels," interrupted Reyes, one of the few remaining Null operatives. His hands shook as he spoke, the tremors that had started after his last encounter with an infected never quite fading. "We need diversion teams. Sacrifices."
The word landed like a stone in still water. Around the room, shoulders tensed. No one wanted to say it, but we all knew. Some of us weren't coming back.
From the darkest corner of the bunker, where the shadows clung like tar, came a weak cough. Nia. She'd curled herself into a ball against the wall, her arms wrapped tight around her knees. The veins beneath her skin pulsed erratically, their crimson glow dimming with each passing hour. When she lifted her head, the light caught her eyes just right, making them shine with an unnatural sheen.
"He'll be watching the main channels," she whispered, her voice rough as sandpaper. "But the old emergency bands... those he might miss."
Vex snorted, adjusting her goggles. "Might. That's reassuring."
I traced the path on the schematic again, my finger leaving a faint smudge on the aged paper. The relay network was a thing of beauty—or had been, before the collapse. HelixMed's crown jewel, designed to blanket the entire city in their miracle cure. Now it would deliver the killing blow. The irony tasted bitter on my tongue.
"If we trigger the secondaries first," I said, mostly to myself, "we could use them as stepping stones. Build the pulse gradually until—"
"Until it's strong enough to burn out the hive's core," Vex finished. She tapped a command into her console, and the display shifted, showing a wave of blue light radiating outward from multiple points. "In theory."
Sarin crossed his arms, the movement making his wound weep fresh blood.
"Theory gets people killed."
"Everything gets people killed," Reyes shot back, his voice cracking. "At least this way it might mean something."
The room fell silent. Outside, the wind howled through the ruins, a mournful sound that set my teeth on edge.
Nia uncurled slowly, her movements stiff and painful-looking. The veins in her arms flared as she shifted, casting a sickly red glow across her hollow cheeks. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper, but it cut through the silence like a knife.
"I can get us inside."
Every head turned. My stomach dropped.
"No," I said immediately, the word tearing from my throat before I could stop it.
Nia met my gaze, her eyes too bright in her gaunt face. The infection had made the whites nearly translucent, the veins beneath glowing faintly.
"You know I'm the only one who can," she said softly. "The hive... it recognizes me now."
Vex exhaled sharply through her nose.
"Even if you get past the outer defenses, the pulse will fry anything connected to the network." She paused, her fingers tightening around the edge of her console. "That means you too, kid."
Nia's smile was thin and humorless. "I was dead the moment the first vein lit up."
No one argued. The truth of it hung between us, ugly and unavoidable.
I wanted to scream. To overturn the table, to smash Vex's precious console to pieces. My hands clenched into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms hard enough to draw blood. The pain was sharp and clean, a welcome distraction from the hollow ache spreading through my chest.
Sarin broke the silence, his voice cutting through the tension like a blade.
"We'll need to move fast. Hit the relays in sequence." He leaned over the map, his finger tracing paths as he spoke. "Team Alpha takes the northern nodes. Bravo, the east. Catara and Nia head straight for the hive once the pulse initiates."
Vex cracked her knuckles, the sound obscenely loud in the quiet bunker. "I'll stay here and monitor the signal. Make sure it doesn't collapse before it reaches the core."
I looked around at the faces gathered in the flickering blue light, Reyes with his shaking hands, Sarin with his bleeding side, Vex with her exhausted eyes. People who'd lost everything, who'd watched their world crumble around them, still fighting for a tomorrow they might not see.
My throat tightened. When I spoke, the words tasted like ash.
"Then we move at first light."
The bunker hummed with quiet purpose, with the electric charge of impending action. Outside, beyond the reinforced doors, the city waited, rotting and silent.
And beneath it, deep in the dark, the hive stirred.
Somewhere in the distance, a relay tower crackled to life.