Rain lashed the grimy alley, mingling with the ash and acrid smoke pouring from Aster's East Wing. The heat from the inferno was a physical pressure against our backs, even as the icy downpour soaked us to the bone. Cruz hauled me over the slick, graffiti-tagged brick wall, the rough edges tearing at my stolen scrubs. We landed hard in a fetid puddle on the other side, the impact jarring my bruised ribs.
Behind us, the muffled whumpf of secondary explosions vibrated through the ground, punctuated by the shriek of bending metal and the hungry roar of the fire devouring Vivian's evidence – and likely, her hope.
"Move!" Cruz rasped, his voice raw from smoke and exertion. He grabbed my arm, his grip still strong but trembling slightly. The stolen submachine gun felt alien and heavy in his other hand. He scanned the narrow, rain-slicked service lane we'd dropped into. Dumpsters overflowed, spilling rotten food and medical waste. Steam rose from grates. The sirens were louder now, converging from multiple directions – fire trucks, police, and something lower, more predatory. Unmarked SUVs.
He pulled me deeper into the shadows, towards the skeletal outline of a derelict delivery van. We crouched behind its rotting tires, catching ragged breaths. Rainwater streamed down Cruz's face, washing away soot but revealing the pallor beneath, the tight lines of pain around his eyes. He pressed a hand hard against his left side, just below his ribs. Darker stains bloomed across the already wet and filthy scrubs. Not rain.
"You're hit," I stated, my medical training overriding the adrenaline crash. My fingers were already moving, probing the soaked fabric. The bullet had grazed him, tearing a furrow through muscle just above the hip. Not immediately life-threatening, but bleeding freely. Painful. Vulnerable. Infection risk sky-high in this filth.
"Took a ricochet during the tango back there," he grunted, wincing as my touch found the edges of the wound. "Souvenir." He tried for a grim smile, but it faltered. His eyes kept darting towards the burning building, towards the alley wall we'd scaled. "Isabella…" The name was a choked whisper.
The photo. The cracked frame in the pathology lab. His sister, Isabella Cruz, with the same telltale copper rings Vivian was trying to hide. Used as a lab rat for Prometheus under the guise of treating Wilson's. Murdered by the very thing Vivian sought as a cure. The raw, personal fury radiating off him was almost as tangible as the heat from the fire.
"Later," I said firmly, tearing a strip from the marginally cleaner inner layer of my scrubs. I folded it into a thick pad. "Pressure. Now." I guided his hand to press hard on the makeshift dressing.
"We need to get this cleaned and closed. Risk of infection—"
"Infection's the least of our worries, Doc," he interrupted, his gaze snapping towards the mouth of the service lane. Headlights swept across the wet pavement of the main street beyond. Not emergency vehicles. Dark, tinted SUVs moving slowly, deliberately. Hunting. "Archer's cleanup crew. They won't stop."
As if summoned, a beam of powerful light speared down our alley from the direction we'd fled. It swept across dumpsters, probing the shadows. We pressed lower behind the van. The light lingered on the wall where we'd climbed over, highlighting fresh scrapes in the grime and brick. Boots crunched on broken glass nearby, accompanied by the low murmur of radios.
"…thermal signature fading… possible egress point… check the wall…"
Cruz tensed, his finger tightening on the trigger of the stolen gun. His eyes met mine, a silent question: Fight or flight? We were cornered, injured, outgunned.
Then, something glinted in the runoff water near the storm drain beneath the alley wall. A small, rectangular object, its black casing scorched and cracked, partially submerged in the oily puddle. A tiny red LED blinked weakly beneath a film of grime and water. Anya Petrova's recorder.
Hope, cold and desperate, flared. Evidence. Her voice. Her truth.
Cruz saw it too. He gave a minute shake of his head towards the gun. Not fight. Distract.
He reached down, his hand closing not on the gun, but on a fist-sized chunk of broken concrete. With a grunt of effort fueled by pain and fury, he hurled it diagonally across the alley, towards a stack of empty metal drums near the opposite end. It clanged with deafening force in the confined space, echoing like a gunshot.
The probing flashlight beam instantly snapped towards the noise. Shouts erupted. "Contact! Possible movement! West end!"
As the light and the focus of the searchers shifted, Cruz lunged. Not towards the alley entrance, but deeper into the shadows, towards the blinking red light in the puddle. He moved with a predator's grace despite the wound, snatching the recorder from the filthy water in one fluid motion before scrambling back behind the van, pressing the dripping device into my hands.
"Guard this with your life, Doc," he breathed, his face inches from mine, eyes intense. "It's hotter than that Prometheus shit."
The searchers were converging on the drums, their lights focused, weapons raised. It bought us seconds, maybe ten.
"Follow my lead," Cruz hissed. He pointed not towards the main street or the alley entrance where the SUVs prowled, but towards a rusted, padlocked metal door set into the brick wall halfway down the alley. Above it, faded paint spelled "Hudson Med Waste Processing - Access Tunnel."
He raised the submachine gun, not to fire, but to use its heavy stock as a bludgeon. Three brutal, jarring impacts against the old padlock. Metal shrieked, the hasp bent. One more savage blow, and the lock snapped, clattering to the wet pavement. Cruz shouldered the door open, revealing impenetrable darkness and the overwhelming stench of decay and industrial chemicals.
"Go!" he shoved me through the doorway into the choking blackness.
He followed, slamming the heavy door shut behind us just as the searchers' lights swept back towards the van, finding only empty shadows and the broken lock on the waste tunnel door.
Muffled curses and the sound of running boots reached us through the thick metal.
We were plunged into absolute, suffocating darkness. The air was thick, cold, and reeked of formaldehyde, chlorine, and something profoundly rotten. The only sounds were our ragged breathing, the frantic thudding of our hearts, the distant wail of sirens, and the insistent, rhythmic blink… blink… blink of the tiny red LED on the recorder clutched in my hand – Anya Petrova's scorched, rain-soaked testament, still stubbornly alive in the belly of the beast. The hunt wasn't over. It had just descended into the underworld.