The tunnels here had no name. Not officially. Maps stopped long before reaching this depth, and even among the Resistance they were spoken of with a certain uneasy respect — the Underhive, they called it. An old term, dragged out from the war years and kept out of habit. No one built the Underhive. It just happened. Layers of patched service corridors, collapsed metro access, bunker shafts, flood-control channels — whatever wasn't sealed or condemned got reused. Then reused again. No plan. No map. Just the pulse of people too stubborn to die and too dangerous to follow.
No Imperial dared set foot down here — not because of the air, or the dark, or the heat — but because anyone who did rarely found their way back. And because the few who returned were never quite right again.
But those desperate enough still came. Refugees, deserters, or just ghosts who didn't know they were dead yet. Underhive was their home now.
Titania had been walking for quite a while. She passed dimly lit corridors, half-sunken warehouses, makeshift barracks. People of all ages — eating, cleaning rifles, sleeping in shifts. Majority didn't pay her mind, some looked at her with fascination, some - in horror. They knew who she was.
She wasn't Resistance, not by rank. But no one made decisions about blood and steel without checking if her shadow was nearby.
She moved without sound, boots trained to avoid puddles, head low beneath thick cables and bulging pipe junctions. The air was choked — heavy with smoke, sweat, old oil, the sharp bite of ozone. Some passageways were barely more than crawlspaces now. Others opened into collapsed loading zones, where salvaged equipment sat beneath sagging ceilings and lanterns strung by crude wiring buzzed like dying insects.
The Wall of Tears stood at the far end of what might once have been a junction node — ventilation, maybe, or waste sorting — long since repurposed. The concrete had peeled in layers down here, flaked with damp and shot through with mineral stains. Makeshift beams held the ceiling, wires ran across the floor in lazy bundles. Two floodlamps were bolted to opposite walls — one long-dead, the other blinking every few seconds as if still deciding whether to stay lit.
No one knew where this wall came from. It was a huge durasteel slab, breaking the corridor. Some claimed it was a sealed bulkhead, some - that it was brought here as a memorial. At some point it had been stripped bare — no paint, no emblems, no glyphs. Just steel, cracked in places, burned in others. No one knew its origin, or its purpose.
But it wasn't empty. That's where it drew its name.
Pictures covered the surface — old ones. Paper-thin prints that curled at the edges from moisture, warped by heat, stained by smoke. Most were of faces, some smiling, some not. Some drawn by hand, shaking lines in charcoal or broken stylus. There were children in some. Groups of soldiers in others. A few were too damaged to recognize — colors run to brown, edges scorched. Some had notes written on the back, but they were too fragile to move, and no one dared try.
Dozens of candles had been placed along the bottom lip of the wall — some nestled into old soup cans or shattered glassware, others just wax puddles on the floor, guttered and bent. Most had burned out. A few still smoldered — faint orange tips shivering in the air currents. One flame danced near her foot, struggling against its own weight, smoke curling upward. Another had collapsed sideways, leaking melted wax into a drain crack where it mixed with soot and vanished. The scent was thick — oil, tallow, something synthetic trying to mimic vanilla. She could feel it coat her tongue. Shadows moved across the wall every time the light blinked.
Titania didn't speak.
She walked forward slowly, breathing through her mouth, one hand trailing along the rough wall beside her. Her fingers brushed a hanging cable, then the edge of an old flak jacket nailed up like a relic. Beneath it, someone had carved names. Dozens. Some scratched with knives, others scorched in. One simply read:
"HOPE IS HAO."
She stopped beneath that one.
Dripping water. Faint wind. Broken fan trying to turn.
And silence.
Real silence — not the surface kind, where machines wait behind walls, but the kind that clings to the bones of a place long after its last scream.
"You always find the worst places to brood," said the voice behind her.
The Colonel stepped in without preamble. His boots made no sound, but the air changed when he entered — older, denser. He wore no insignia now, just a heavy coat over armor she knew hadn't been cleaned in weeks. His hair was damp. His gloves were cracked. The right side of his collar still showed a burn mark — old plasma scoring. He didn't bother hiding it.
"You could have just sent for me," Titania said quietly, still facing the wall.
"I don't chase you," the Colonel replied. "You come back when you're ready."
She looked at him now — half-turned, the candlelight casting uneven lines across her face. Her eyes were steady. Clear, but tired. Colonel stepped forward, pinning four sheets of papers with names to the wall.
"What is it?" Titania looked at his action in horror. This wall was a memorial. If he was pinning names to it, then...
"Voodoo Boys. Sapphire Eyes. Lux Imperator. Black Eden. Gone."
The words hung, unadorned.
Titania swallowed, hard.
"Two hours ago. Almost simultaneously. No alerts. No distress. Just... off. Grid went black. Beggars confirmed — no survivors."
She frowned.
"They knew where to strike. Voodoo boys were dealing with arms. Sapphire Eyes - funds laudering. Lux Imperator and Black Eden were making those funds"
"Yeah," Colonel exhaled. "Bastards knew where to look."
"How?"
"They're not kicking in doors anymore. They're taking us apart piece by piece — from the inside. Someone helps them burn the idea of resistance so cleanly no one remembers it was ever real."
Titania looked back at the wall. The picture nearest her was barely a photograph anymore — just blurred shadows and a hand-drawn name.
"Not all ideas die so easy," she said.
The Colonel didn't answer.
She took a slow breath. Then said it:
"There's a rumor. From the beggars."
"I hear a lot of rumors."
"This one's spreading. Fast. No source. No demands. No video. Just... Whispers."
He looked at her now.
"They're saying Hao Fernamy's alive."
The Colonel exhaled. His face didn't change, but something in his shoulders tightened.
"They say he's back."
"That's not possible," the Colonel said flatly.
"Maybe," she replied. "But they're acting like it is. No way they would stir a pot for no reason."
He didn't answer at first. Then said quietly:
"He is dead, Titania."
"We never found the body."
"We found enough."
Her eyes locked with his. Nothing theatrical — just certainty.
"There was more than flesh under that mask. Something they couldn't shoot. Even if he's dead, the idea isn't. And that's the part they'll never kill."
The Colonel didn't stop her. She stepped past him, boots silent, coat brushing the edge of a scorched candle as she passed. The wax cracked but didn't fall.
Only once she was gone did he step closer to the wall, eyes settling on a single photograph — three soldiers posing with a flag. The middle one wore a mask. The one on the left was him. The rest of the image was too damaged to recognize.
The names didn't glow. They didn't pulse. They didn't sing. They just waited — etched in cold polymer, backlit by the weak amber strips fed by an aging generator four levels above. The kind of light that didn't warm anything. Just made the darkness easier to name.
He read the top row. Then the second. Didn't blink.
The footsteps behind him were soft. Not sneaky — just hesitant. The way someone walks when they know they're about to say something that won't land well.
"Sir?"
The Colonel didn't turn immediately. He didn't have to.
"Speak, Delrin."
A younger voice. Local accent. One of the mid-tier ops leads — smart, careful, not particularly brave. But not stupid, either.
Delrin stopped two meters back. Hands at his sides. Not folded. Not armed. Just... unsure.
"Is it true?" he asked.
The Colonel waited.
"About the... You know."
The Colonel's shoulders rose — not quite a shrug. More like a breath lifted and didn't bother coming down.
Delrin hesitated.
"I'm not questioning command," he added quickly. "It's just—people are talking. People are saying things. About the new orders. About... how no one's seen who they're really from. People are still questioning Titania's loyalty to the cause, and now this..."
The Colonel turned, slow.
Delrin swallowed. Too late to backpedal.
The older man stepped forward once. Just enough for the light to catch the scar along his jaw.
"What are you trying to say?"
"She used to be theirs. One of the Empire's own. Not a traitor — just... left behind when they trimmed the ranks. That kind doesn't always stop fighting. They just pick a different flag."
"She's not flying anyone's flag," the Colonel said quietly. "She just remembers who threw her away."
He stepped closer — not threatening. Just deliberate.
"If you think that makes her dangerous, you're right. Just not to us."
Delrin gave a faint nod — not agreement, just the kind you give when you know no one's changing their mind — then stepped backward into the dark. No salute. No goodbye. Just the sound of boots fading into cable and steam.
The Colonel waited a moment longer before turning back to the wall.
He touched the edge of the picture with two fingers, hesitated, then drew his hand back as if it burned.
His voice was barely a whisper.
"...Maybe ideas can't be killed. But they surely can be burned."
Far above the tunnels, beyond the ash and rust, the city still pretended to sleep. The screen faded slowly, its blue glow softening into the dark reflections on the window glass, leaving only the hum of the building's ventilation system and the faint echo of the announcer's voice still bleeding through Cain's mind — calm, cold, deliberate — a promise of peace sharpened into warning. The silence that followed wasn't restful. It sat like dust in the corners of the room. Heavy. Unmoving.
Then the door buzzer gave a single pulse — short, soft, unmistakable.
Cain didn't move right away. His eyes lingered on the screen as it went black, leaving the room lit only by stray flickers of citylight bleeding through the frost-lined window, and the faint telemetry still pulsing across the cracked lens of the mask on the table.
The casing was open, the black shell glimmering in faint light. He reached forward, closed it carefully, slow enough not to make a sound, latched the edge, and nudged the case beneath the table with his foot, like hiding a mirror you weren't ready to look into.
The pistol stayed where it was, just beside the cup he hadn't touched in an hour.
He picked it up and moved to the door without turning on a light. Cain didn't look through peephole. He just pressed the muzzle to the door — right about where someone's chest would be — and moved to the side, from potential line of fire.
"Who's there?"
"It's me. Cain, it's Kasmina."
Cain pulled back, dropped the pistol into the pocket of the coat on the rack, and opened the door.
She stepped in without hesitation and wrapped her arms around him, close and certain. Not urgent. Not performative. Her face pressed against his neck, her breath warm, her coat surprisingly dry after the street. Her fingers curled gently into the folds of his jacket, like she wasn't sure if he was solid or just something left behind in memory.
Cain didn't move right away.
Her grip didn't loosen. She just stood there, pressed against him like she had never left.
"I'm glad you're alright," she whispered. "I didn't know if you made it out."
Cain's hands came to rest lightly on her back — not awkward, not cold, just delayed. The kind of contact that used to be familiar, now drawn from muscle memory more than will.
She didn't let go — not of him, and not of whatever she was carrying in silence.
"When the shooting started," she said, still against his collar, "I just... Ran. I thought I could call for help, I really did. But everything locked down so fast. I couldn't even call you, I tried."
Cain said nothing. He wasn't angry. Just tired. Tired of rooms where silence carried more weight than answers.
"I really did," she repeated, softer now.
She stepped back slowly. Her hands lingered a moment near his chest, then dropped away. Her face hadn't changed — still composed, still careful — but something behind her deep blue eyes looked unguarded. Like someone who hadn't slept, but didn't want to admit it.
"I tried" She said.
"Yeah, you did." Cain replied. He wanted to believe it was not her fault, everything happened too fast. But he couldn't shake a feeling of being betrayed. Kasmina opened her mouth. Closed it. Then nodded.
"I didn't know what to say," she admitted.
"You left," he said, voice steady. "In the middle of the table. While I was still talking about the wine."
"I know."
"You said bathroom."
"I was going to."
"But you didn't."
"I couldn't." She met his gaze now. Held it. "Cain... you saw what happened."
He gave the faintest nod.
She stepped past him into the apartment.
She slipped off her boots without looking, one hand on the wall for balance, and placed them neatly by the door. She moved like someone who still remembered where everything was. As if the space itself had never let her go.
Her coat came off next — not folded, just draped across the back of the chair she always used. Beneath it, her dress clung to her like memory — black, close-fitting, not decorative, not careless. Her long legs moved without hesitation, her silhouette cast briefly against the window as she passed the light.
There was something in her scent — faint beneath the usual perfume. Not smoke. Not sweat. Something synthetic. Something acrid and scorched. Cain noticed it, but paid it no mind.
Cain watched her as she sat down in his chair, and his eyes instinctively darted to case right next to her, under the table.
"I don't want explanations," he said. "I just want the truth."
She paused. Not because she was choosing her words — but because she was choosing which ones to leave out.
"This is the truth," she said, after a pause. "I left to try to help. It didn't go the way I thought it would. And after that... It was already complicated, you know it. "
He looked down. Then back up.
"Tea?"
"You don't have tea."
"No," he said. "But I have something beige and bitter that swears it's close."
She almost smiled. Not quite. The corner of her mouth rose. Fell again.
"That sounds about right."
Cain turned back to the counter, pulled two chipped mugs from the cabinet — the same ones they always used — and filled the kettle from the tap. The hiss of rising steam softened the air between them, clean and quiet. He stirred the powder without looking. It clumped like always, slow to dissolve, reluctant to be anything more than it was.
He set one mug in front of her. Then sat down.
Neither of them reached for it.
Outside, the city murmured — rails in the distance, cables humming in the walls, old air slipping through window seams. Kasmina looked at the mug. Then at him.
"I am glad you called me back from that hospital," she said. "I was worried."
"So was I, but you didn't pick up"
Silence hung heavy in the air.
"If you want, I can go." She said, softly.
He didn't answer right away. Cain leaned back in the chair, arms folded across his chest. The room was cooler now. But the silence had softened.
"Don't vanish like that again," he said.
"I won't," she replied. A pause. "Not unless you ask me to."
Then her phone buzzed.
Short. Low. No screen light — just a soft tremor across the table. Cain's eyes darted towards it, it felt all too familiar. Kasmina looked down. She didn't move at first. Then picked it up with two fingers, read something, and turned the screen face-down again.
Kasmina sighed.
"I'm sorry," she said, already rising. "I have to go."
He turned toward her, but didn't get up. Kasmina was already standing.
"You promised not to vanish"
She nodded, already stepping into her boots.
"I won't ."
There wasn't tension now. Just the shape of it, floating between them, not quite ready to land.
She pulled on her coat, tucked her hair free from the collar, and glanced around the apartment — not wistfully, not for effect. Just a look. Like she was measuring whether this moment would stay exactly where it was once she left.
"I'll call," she said. "Soon. And this time I'll mean it."
He watched her at the door.
"Do you want me to say I believe that?"
"No," she said. "Just don't change your number before I try."
She stepped into the hallway. The door clicked shut behind her — not rushed. Not soft. Just final.
Cain stood still for a moment, listening for footsteps. There were none. As he returned, a single message was on his screen, sent by Alan:
"Something is stirring. I need to speak with you."
Colour drained from Cain's face.
This was too much to be a coincidence. Another mysterious call - and she left him again.
But for now, Alan took the priority. Whatever happened, it was important enough for Krosa Police to reach out to Earthborn consultant of theirs.