The plan unraveled before dawn.
Their escape through the northern aqueducts was ambushed. Enforcers flooded the tunnels, rifles blazing, steam hissing from armored joints. Somehow, impossibly, the Phantom had known their route.
Selene cut through shadows, carving a path of blood. Evangeline screamed commands to machines, turning the Engineer's creations against themselves—until suddenly they froze, their gears locked by a will stronger than hers.
"Elric!" she cried. "He's in me—he's in everything!"
The tunnels became a slaughterhouse. Rebels fell one by one, their screams swallowed by the roar of water and iron. Elric dragged Selene and Evangeline into a collapsing passage, narrowly escaping as the aqueduct exploded in steam.
When they emerged, coughing, bloodied, and broken, the truth settled heavy as the fog:
Someone had betrayed them.
Elric looked at his companions—at Selene's narrowed eyes, at Evangeline trembling in silent horror—and for the first time, doubt gnawed not at the city, but at his own fragile band.