"War," Rook repeated, staring at Valerius. He kicked a rotten trash bag. "We're sitting in a pile of medical waste and banana peels, and you're talking about war. Can we maybe talk about a shower first?"
"Priorities, Rook," Valerius said. He tightened the belt of Lyric's canvas coat around his waist. He was still shivering, his lips a pale shade of blue. "The Guild doesn't handle breaches gracefully. They handle them with fire."
Lyric leaned against the brick wall, teeth gritted. The adrenaline was crashing hard. With the heat of the incinerator gone, the damp cold of the alley was seeping into the shoulder wound where the bolt had hit during the climb.
"We can't stay here," Lyric said, clutching their arm. The shirt was stuck to the skin with dried blood. "This is a drop zone. If the incinerator cycles again in an hour, this whole alley gets sprayed with hot ash."
"You're hurt," Valerius said, stepping closer. He reached out to check Lyric's shoulder.
"I'm fine," Lyric flinched away. "Just a scratch."
"It's bleeding through your shirt," Valerius said, his voice dropping into that annoying, authoritative big-brother tone. "And you're freezing. Take the coat back."
"Keep it," Lyric snapped. "You're the one who was a popsicle ten minutes ago. If you pass out, I'm not carrying you."
Rook looked between the two of them. "Okay, family drama, pause. We are in Sector 8. The Dumps. The good news is, nobody comes down here because it smells like death. The bad news is… well, it smells like death. And the locals eat people."
"Locals?" Valerius asked, eyes scanning the shadows.
"Scavengers. Ferals. People who got their memories wiped so many times they forgot how to talk," Rook explained. "We need a hideout. A 'Blind Spot'."
"Do you have another stash down here?" Lyric asked.
"No," Rook said. "But I know an old subway car about half a mile east. It's buried under a landslide of tires. It's tight, but it's dry."
"Lead," Lyric said.
The trek through Sector 8 was grotesque.
The ground was a slurry of mud and unidentifiable sludge. Mountains of garbage rose on either side of them like canyon walls—broken electronics, rusted machinery, and plastic waste from the city above.
Lyric walked with the ceramic sword drawn, eyes darting at every noise.
Rats the size of dogs scurried over the mounds. In the distance, strange howls echoed off the cavern ceiling.
"So," Rook whispered, stepping over a puddle of neon-green liquid. "Why you? I mean, no offense, Valerius, but why put you in the Keter box? Usually, they just wipe people and toss them in the Slags."
Valerius walked with a limp, his bare feet wrapped in rags they had scavenged from the trash pile.
"They couldn't wipe me," Valerius said quietly.
"What do you mean?" Rook asked. "Everyone can be wiped."
"Not me," Valerius said. "I have a… condition. Hyper-thymesia. It's rare. My brain doesn't just store memories; it hard-codes them. Biological write-protection."
Lyric glanced at him. "That's why you remembered me. In the lab. Even after they drilled you."
"They tried to extract the data," Valerius said, touching the side of his head. "They drilled. They used chemical scrubs. They used shock therapy. But the memories always grew back. Like weeds."
"So you're a backup drive," Rook muttered. "A living hard drive that can't be formatted."
"Exactly," Valerius said. "And because I worked for the Guild… I saw things. Things they wanted gone. Political assassinations. Market manipulation. The origins of the Memory Plague."
Lyric stopped walking. "The Memory Plague? The thing that makes people need to buy memories?"
"It wasn't a plague, Lyric," Valerius said, his gray eyes hard. "It was a product launch. The Guild engineered it to create demand. And I have the proof in my head."
Rook stopped too. He looked sick. "They… they made us sick on purpose? My sister died because of that."
"I know," Valerius said softly. "That's why they locked me in the Vault. They couldn't kill me because the data is too valuable, and they couldn't wipe me. So they buried me."
A low hum vibrated the air.
Lyric looked up.
Far above, near the cavern ceiling of the Underground, lights were moving. Searchlights.
"Drones," Lyric hissed. "A swarm."
"They're scanning the grid," Valerius said. "They're looking for bio-signatures."
"We need to get underground," Rook said, panic rising. "The tire pile. It's just ahead."
They scrambled up a hill of loose rubber tires. It was treacherous footing; every step shifted the pile.
"There!" Rook pointed.
Buried deep in the mound, only the rear door visible, was a rusted subway carriage. It looked ancient, crushed under the weight of the city's waste.
Rook grabbed the handle of the door. "It's jammed!"
Lyric sheathed the sword. "Move."
Lyric didn't use the power—too tired, too risky. Instead, Lyric kicked the door near the hinges. The rusted metal groaned.
"Together," Lyric said.
Valerius stepped up, ignoring his bare feet. On the count of three, they both slammed their shoulders into the door.
Crunch.
The door flew inward. The smell of stale air and old fabric hit them.
They piled inside just as the searchlight swept over the hill of tires outside.
Rook pulled the door shut, plunging them into darkness.
"Flashlights," Rook whispered.
They clicked them on. The subway car was tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. The seats were rotted, but it was dry.
"Okay," Rook exhaled, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. "We're safe. For five minutes."
Lyric sat on a dusty bench, finally letting the pain show. They hissed, gripping the shoulder.
"Let me see it," Valerius ordered. He didn't ask this time.
Lyric unbuttoned the top of the dirty shirt and pulled it aside. The wound was ugly—a deep gash where the bolt had grazed the muscle. It was swollen and purple.
"It's infected," Valerius said, examining it closely. "Trash chute bacteria. We need to clean this, or you lose the arm."
"I have the med-kit," Rook said, digging into his bag. "I have antiseptic foam and some synth-skin patches."
"Give it here," Valerius said.
Lyric gritted their teeth as Valerius cleaned the wound. The foam stung like acid.
"Talk to me, Val," Lyric said, trying to distract from the pain. "You said war. What does the Guild do next?"
Valerius applied the patch, his hands steady despite his own exhaustion.
"They lock down the Underground," Valerius said. "They can't send an army down here without starting a riot, but they can starve us out. They'll cut the power. They'll cut the water filtration. They'll block the trade tunnels."
"A siege," Rook said quietly.
"Yes. They will squeeze the Underground until the people turn on us," Valerius said, finishing the bandage. "Bounties will go up. Every scavenger, every broker, every friend you have down here will be offered a lifetime of happy memories just to tell the Guild where we are."
Rook looked away. "Even Tiny? Even Finch?"
"Everyone has a price," Valerius said. "Especially when they're desperate."
Lyric pulled the shirt back on. The arm throbbed, but it felt cleaner.
"So we have no allies," Lyric said. "We have no resources. And we have the most powerful organization in the world trying to kill us."
"We have one thing," Valerius said. He reached into the pocket of the canvas coat—Lyric's coat—and pulled out something small.
It was a piece of glass. A shard from the stasis tank he had been trapped in.
"This glass," Valerius said, holding it up to the flashlight beam. "It's coated in the conductive fluid from the tank. It still has a resonance."
"So?" Rook asked.
"So," Valerius smiled, a grim, dangerous smile. "The Guild uses a hive mind, right? The Warden. It connects to everything."
"Yeah?"
"If I can get to a transmitter," Valerius said, "I can use my brain—my un-wipeable, hyper-dense brain—to send a feedback loop up the chain. I can't kill the Warden. But I can make it scream."
Lyric looked at the shard, then at Valerius.
"You want to counter-attack," Lyric said.
"I want to blind them," Valerius said. "If we blind the Warden, the searchlights go off. The drones go dumb. And we can move."
"Move where?" Rook asked. "There's nowhere left to run."
Lyric stood up, testing the shoulder. It held.
"We don't run," Lyric said. "We go back up. We go to the source."
Rook stared at them. "Back up? To the City?"
"If they lock down the Underground, we die down here," Lyric said. "The only place they won't look for us is right under their noses. We're going to the surface."
"How?" Rook laughed nervously. "The elevators are guarded. The shafts are watched."
Lyric looked at the tilted floor of the subway car.
"We climb," Lyric said. "We find the Old Tunnels. The ones from before the city was built."
Rook groaned and put his head in his hands. "More climbing. I knew it. I knew climbing was in my future."
"First," Valerius said, pocketing the glass shard. "We rest. Four hours. Shifts. I'll take first watch."
"You're barely standing," Lyric argued.
"I slept for three days in a tank," Valerius countered. "I'm wide awake. You two sleep. We move at 0400."
Lyric looked at Valerius. He looked frail in the oversized coat, barefoot and pale, but his eyes were burning with a terrifying intelligence.
"Okay," Lyric said. "Wake me if the rats get ambitious."
Lyric lay down on the hard, tilted floor, hand resting on the hilt of the ceramic sword.
For the first time since waking up in the alley, Lyric closed their eyes and didn't hear the static. They just heard the breathing of their brother and the distant, rhythmic thumping of the Guild's war drums beginning to beat.