The steel door of the data hub crashed open.
Two figures stood in the doorway against the dust-choked light. The first was a big, burly man in his fifties, a worn shotgun held with easy, practiced weight, his eyes doing a soldier's sweep — the room, the console, the files in Ethan's hands, Ethan. The second was a girl about his age, a switchblade in her fist, her gaze going from the wreckage to the man to Ethan without missing a thing.
Ethan knew them both before either of them spoke. The recognition hit him like a physical thing — faces from the other life, from a game he'd played a thousand years ago, standing in front of him in dust and blood.
Joel. Ellie.
"Who the hell are you?" The man came forward a step, the shotgun rising to Ethan's chest. "And what are you doing here? This place is dead."
Ethan forced his heart to slow. Calm. Careful. The shotgun's barrel didn't waver a millimeter, and this man would put a hole in him without a second thought and sleep fine. Every word from here had to be weighed.
"I could ask you the same thing," Ethan said. "This place was already a mess when I got here. Whoever did this just finished."
Joel's eyes narrowed. "Don't play smart with me, boy." He took another half-step, and the shotgun's barrel didn't move an inch off Ethan's chest. "Last I checked, this was a Firefly post. What are those files? You stealing intel?"
"He's just a kid, Joel." The girl's voice was steady, her switchblade held low but ready. Her eyes kept moving — Ethan's face, the glowing console, the destruction. "And look at this place. Whatever happened here, it just finished. Nobody else is here."
Joel's jaw worked. The girl hadn't lowered her switchblade, and her eyes kept moving — Ethan's face, the glowing console, the destruction around them, always coming back to the files in Ethan's hand. She was reading the whole room the way Ethan read a forest. It would have impressed him if it weren't aimed at him.
"A kid looting a Firefly base right after a raid," Joel said. "Seems convenient. You with FEDRA? Or just a lucky scavenger?"
"Not FEDRA." Ethan kept his voice flat. "My parents worked for the military. Disappeared in the chaos in Houston. Never came back." He gestured at the dead consoles. "I heard rumors the Fireflies had data. About the outbreak. About what happened to my parents. I found this place a few hours ago and tried my luck. This raid was just good timing for me."
Ellie's gaze sharpened on him. "Your parents? Scientists?"
"Something like that." Ethan held her look. "Top secret. Then gone."
Joel scoffed. "Everyone's got a sob story, kid." The shotgun came up a fraction. "Drop the files. Slowly. Hands where I can see them."
Ethan started to lower the files — and a low, guttural moan rolled out of the corridor, followed by the hollow clicks of a Clicker and the frantic shuffle of Runners. Close. Too close.
Joel's head snapped toward the doorway. "Damn it. We got company."
Ellie spun, blade up. "Runners! And a Clicker — a pack, coming fast!"
Ethan was already moving. A heavy server rack lay overturned near the doorway, half-blocking it, leaving a narrow gap. He threw his shoulder into it and it ground across the floor, screaming on concrete, narrowing the entrance to a shoulder-width slot. Dust boiled up, thick in his throat.
"Chokepoint!" he shouted. "Funnel them! Don't let them spread!"
Joel hesitated half a second — then he was at the slot, shotgun booming, dropping the first Runner that squeezed through. The reports hammered the small room, rattling the dead consoles. Ellie stood beside him, her switchblade flashing, cutting down anything that got past the gun. Another Runner lunged through, claws raking the doorframe, then the Clicker, its fungal head twitching toward the sound of the shots.
One Runner found a gap, fast and low, and went straight for Ellie while she was turned. Her blade swung short. The infected's claws were inches from her throat —
Ethan's hunting knife left his calf sheath and spun end over end through the dusty air and buried itself in the Runner's skull with a wet crack. It crumpled at Ellie's feet, twitching once, still.
Silence, except for the settling dust and three people's breathing.
Ellie stared from the dead infected to Ethan, then down at the empty sheath on his calf. "Who is this kid?" she breathed.
Joel turned from the doorway, his shotgun dipping a fraction as he looked at the knife in the Runner's head, then at Ethan. He said nothing. The gun stayed up, but something in his face had shifted — suspicion, still, but something else under it, a recalculation happening in real time behind tired eyes.
"Where'd you learn that, kid?" he said at last. "That ain't something you pick up in a QZ."
Ethan walked over, worked the knife free, wiped it on the Runner's rags, and sheathed it. "My grandpa," he said. "He lived in the woods. Taught me things."
Ellie was still watching him, wide-eyed. "You move different. Like you know where everything is before you look."
Ethan shrugged. "Just pay attention."
Joel ran a hand over his tired face. "Alright, woods kid. This place is a slaughterhouse. We're getting out of here, and you're coming with us. I got questions, and I don't leave loose ends." The command in it was absolute. He looked at the bodies on the floor, at the dark corridor beyond, and his voice dropped. "Where's the quickest way out of this hellhole?"
Ethan turned toward the far wall, where the maintenance access ran behind a collapsed partition. He'd mapped it from the Firefly schematics on the way in — a service crawl, then a utility tunnel that cut under the perimeter fence. It would be tight, and it would be dark, and it beat every other option the building had.
"Follow me," he said.