The shriek from the fifth floor was a physical thing, a summons that vibrated through the glass of the window and up into the marrow of their bones. Below, the street was a turning tide. A thousand pinprick red dots on a map made real, all their hateful attention now fixed on their building. Their tomb.
And the new shapes at the edge of the city… they were closer now. Close enough for Leo's phone to catch the glint of something that wasn't flesh or leather. Something that looked like forged, blackened steel.
Arthur was muttering a low, frantic litany. "Probability of surviving a full-scale assault… 0.03 percent. Successful escape… 1.2 percent. The numbers… they're collapsing."
The world had narrowed to this one, terrible moment.
"We have to go," Maya's voice was a low, urgent command. She was already moving, pulling them back from the window. "Now. Back to the tunnels. It's the only chance we have."
"One point two percent is not a chance," Arthur croaked, his face ashen.
"It's better than zero," she snapped back.
The retreat was a blur. A chaotic, desperate scramble back through the silent, paper-strewn labyrinth. They didn't bother with stealth. They ran. They burst into the stairwell, the heavy fire door slamming shut behind them with a hollow boom. They plunged downward, their footsteps a frantic, echoing drumbeat.
First floor. Utility closet. Gateway. They scrambled through, one after another, their breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. Maya was the last one through. She slammed the iron bolt home, the sound of grinding rust a final, defiant act. They were back in the echoing dark. Safe. For now.
They stumbled back down the long catwalk, their phone lights bobbing like frantic fireflies. The brilliant, steady glow of Ben's floodlight was a beacon of impossible safety.
They burst into the circle of light, collapsing onto the cold concrete. The survivors, who had been huddled in a restless sleep, started awake.
"What is it? What happened?" Chloe demanded, her face pale with a dawning dread.
"They called them," Leo gasped, leaning against the tunnel wall. "The Taskmaster… it built a signal booster. It called for reinforcements."
"A rally point," Arthur said, his voice a hollow shell. "They're all coming here. The entire city."
Ben was already at his tablet, his fingers flying. "He's right," he breathed. He turned the tablet so they could all see. The map was a sea of red. The dots were flowing into the building, a rising tide of crimson. The ground floor was already a solid mass. "And the larger signals… they're closing in. [Entity Class: Ogre]… [Entity Class: Berserker]…" New names. New nightmares.
"So this is it," Chloe said, her voice flat. "We're trapped."
"No," Maya growled. She was pacing the small, illuminated circle, a caged tiger. "This tunnel is a choke point. We can hold this. For a while."
"But we can't hold it forever," Arthur countered. "Our supplies are limited. Their numbers… are not."
A new, heavy silence fell. It was a siege. A slow, grinding, unwinnable war of attrition. Leo's mind raced. He looked at the faces around him. The terror. The grim determination. The crushing responsibility. He had told Arthur he was the guy who had to fix this. But how? He couldn't fight an army. He couldn't conjure food from thin air.
His gaze fell on Ben's tablet. On the map. A tiny, fragile island of green in a sea of red. And then he saw it. The tunnels… they were a network. A web that stretched for miles under the city.
"Ben," Leo said, his voice low and urgent. "The tunnels. Where do they go?"
Ben tapped the screen, pulling up a public works map. "The old subway lines and maintenance corridors. They connect most of the major buildings downtown."
A new path. Not up. Not down. Out.
"Can we get to them?" Leo asked, his heart starting to beat a little faster.
Ben traced a line on the screen. "Our catwalk intersects with the main subway line in half a mile."
"Is it clear?" Maya demanded.
Ben zoomed in. The tunnels on the map were… empty. A long, dark corridor of black. No red dots. No signals.
"It's… a dead zone," he murmured. "There's nothing there."
"A safe path," Chloe breathed.
"Or a trap," Maya countered. "Why would it be empty?"
"I don't care," Leo said, his voice firm. "It's a chance. It's the 1.2 percent Arthur was talking about." He looked at the faces around him. At the sixteen souls depending on him. It was an insane gamble, a flight into an unknown, silent darkness. But it was better than waiting for the tide to rise. He met Maya's gaze, then Chloe's, then Ben's. The decision was made. They were players. And players didn't wait for the game to come to them.
"We're not holding this position," Leo announced, his voice echoing in the tense air. "We're abandoning it." He pointed down the dark, waiting tunnel. "We're moving out."