Mitch, Emma, and Diego had been walking for what felt like forever.
No patrols overhead. No sudden explosions. No screams echoing down the tunnels. Just the same endless drip-drip of water, the same sour stink of rot and rust, the same dim bioluminescent patches glowing sickly green on the walls. Their boots scraped concrete. Legs ached. Eyes burned from staring into the same dark ahead. Peaceful, yes. Tiring, yes. They didn't speak much anymore—just kept moving because stopping felt worse.
Then they rounded a bend and saw him.
Benjamin slumped against the wall like a discarded rag doll. His jacket was soaked black with blood. His abdomen had been torn open—multiple deep stab wounds weeping steadily. Fresh cuts crisscrossed his arms, his face, his neck. Bruises bloomed purple and black across his jaw and ribs. His prosthetic arm sparked weakly, one joint hanging loose. Blood pooled beneath him in a slow, dark mirror.
The three of them froze for half a second.
"What the hell happened?!" Mitch's voice came out sharp, worried.
Benjamin lifted his head just enough to look at them. His lips were split. One eye was swelling shut.
"It's a long story," he rasped, voice thin and wet.
High above, on the 200th floor of HEX HQ, Sovereign sat motionless in his chair. The marble floor gleamed under soft recessed lighting. His leather boot tapped once. Twice. Impatient. The sound echoed like a metronome in the vast, empty room.
Ashley stood a respectful distance away, hands clasped tight in front of her.
"Sir, Knox Maiden would like to have a quick word with you," she said. Her voice trembled at the edges.
"Knox?" Sovereign's boredom evaporated instantly. Knox always brought the wildest news. "Bring him in."
The double doors hissed open.
Knox stepped through. Even he—Knox Maiden, the walking massacre—felt his pulse kick up when he crossed the threshold. Sovereign's presence filled the room like a low-pressure front before a storm.
Knox cleared his throat.
"Greetings, sir. I'm very sorry for disrupting your peacefulness."
"Get on with it." Sovereign's voice was flat, cold, commanding.
"Gary Cooper and Henry Cooper were murdered by Hannah." Knox forced the words out, sweat already prickling along his hairline.
Sovereign exhaled slowly through his nose.
"Out of all the people, I least expected Hannah to betray the rich." A quiet, disappointed sigh. "So, where is she?"
"I killed her, sir."
"You fucking idiot…" Sovereign rubbed his forehead once, slow and deliberate. "I asked where is she."
"Ah, right. Sorry, sir." Knox swallowed.
"No offense, sir. But how could I know exactly where I killed her at…? It's a sewer. There's no street names or anything." Knox said, his voice shaking.
Sovereign's eyes narrowed.
"Then I'm coming with you. If you don't find her, then I'll kill you."
Knox led the way.
They retraced his flight path through the tunnels—Knox flying low, Sovereign matching him effortlessly. Eventually they reached the massive cratered chamber. The hole in the floor was enormous—easily the size of a big arena, walls cracked outward like broken teeth.
"Why's there such a massive hole in this place?" Sovereign asked, voice calm. "This is like as big as the Colosseum. Who did this?"
"I don't know, sir. When I came to confront her, it was already like this."
"So, where's her body?" Sovereign asked again, pressure coiling tighter in every syllable.
"Right away, si—"
"Go back," Sovereign cut him off. "I'll handle this myself."
Knox didn't hesitate. He shot upward and vanished into the dark.
Sovereign stood alone.
Then he let his senses unfold.
His hearing sharpened until he could pick out the individual drips falling fifty yards away. His sense of smell cut through the sewer stench—footprints, blood trails, fear-sweat, the faint copper tang of Hannah's blood still lingering on the stone. His eyes glowed a bright, deadly red.
Elsewhere in the tunnels, Alfie's, Aya, and Milo carried Hannah between them.
They'd torn strips from their own shirts, pressing them to her worst wounds—abdomen, chest, throat. Blood still soaked through the makeshift bandages in seconds. Her head lolled. Breathing shallow. Pulse thready. They moved fast, desperate, hoping Emma could do something—anything.
Then the air changed.
A low pressure wave rolled through the tunnel. Water rippled outward from nowhere. Every hair on their bodies stood up.
"Nngh?!" All four gulped at the same instant.
A presence slammed into them—not physical, not yet—just pure, suffocating menace. They'd heard the stories for decades: Sovereign. The strongest. The richest. The king. No one admired him. Everyone hated him. But now he was right there, the king of the world.
In 0.4 seconds, he found them.
Sonic boom cracked the air. Water sprayed outward in a wide arc. Sovereign's eyes glowed bright red, heat vision on standby. The tunnel lights flickered around him like they were afraid.
The four of them froze.
Milo's mind screamed—Move, move, why can't I move?!—but his legs refused. His body locked solid just from pure fear of Sovereign's presence.
Alfie Sr. thought: I fear that even the slightest move could lead to instant death!
"Give me that woman," Sovereign said. One sentence. Calm. Absolute.
They threw her.
Not out of hatred.
Survival instinct took over.
Hannah's body hit the ground between them with a wet slap. Sovereign looked down at her—charred, broken, barely breathing.
He chuckled once. Dark. Low.
"You're all with John, aren't you?"
Their eyes widened.
How does he know?
In that heartbeat they were certain—this was it. Death. Right here. Right now.
Instead—
A second sonic boom erupted.
The shockwave blasted them off their feet. Vision blurred white. Ears rang. They hit the ground hard, rolling, coughing.
When they looked up again, Sovereign was gone.
Hannah's body was gone.
"So that's the king of the world, huh?" Milo whispered, voice shaking.
All four of them clutched their chests as though their hearts might fall out. Breathing came in ragged bursts. Fear still burned full and bright in every vein.
They didn't move for a long time.
Aya's voice was small in the dark. "What's he going to do to Hannah?"
Milo's reply came out frayed, a wire about to snap. "Aya, listen. We all care. We want the best for her. But please… not now. Just… not now."
The memory of Sovereign's presence—the pressure in the air, the red eyes in the gloom—rose in her throat like bile. She forced it down. Swallowed her questions. All she had left was the thin, desperate hope that somewhere, against all reason, Hannah was still breathing.
---
In the isolation chamber, John's mind had become a house of broken mirrors.
The timer glowed: 35:46:19.
The numbers meant nothing now. The countdown wasn't for his execution; it was the sound of his own consciousness emptying, drop by digital drop. He wanted to die. The desire was a pure, cold stone in his chest. Hope had been scoured out, leaving only the raw nerve of agony.
Voices swarmed—taunting, hissing, laughing. Ghost hands clawed at his skin. He didn't scream anymore. He had passed through rage and fear into a silent, static sea of pain. The worst of it was the beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
A sound with no feeling, yet it was the most exquisite torture he had ever known. It drilled past thought, past memory, into the primal pulp of being.
His wrists were fused with the suppressive cuffs, skin swollen and purple around the metal. His forehead was a crusted mask of dried blood from hours of beating it against the unyielding wall. The only sounds were the metronome of the beep and the ragged whistle of his own breath.
---
Sovereign laid Hannah's broken form on a sterile floating med-table. To any eye, she was a corpse—charred, crushed, lifeless. But his senses, refined to a god's precision, detected it: the faint, sluggish thump… thump… of a heart refusing to quit.
He didn't look at the team of trembling med-techs. He didn't need to.
"She dies," he stated, his voice flat as a guillotine blade, "you all die."
He left the statement hanging in the antiseptic air and ascended to the observation suite on the 199th floor. The head of observation, a woman named Mia, jumped to her feet.
"John," Sovereign commanded. "Now."
Mia's fingers danced across the console. A live feed of the isolation chamber bloomed on the main screen. She vacated her chair without a word.
Sovereign sat, steepling his fingers. On the monitor, John Harper was a crumpled thing, rocking faintly. A slow, dark chuckle escaped Sovereign's lips.
"Give him a gun."
Mia blinked. "Sir?"
"Don't hand it to him. Drop it through the slot. I want to see what he does."
She opened her mouth, caught his eyes—cold, depthless, expectant—and closed it. Nodding once, she unholstered her sidearm and hurried toward the basement elevators.
---
In his chamber, John heard the familiar hiss-clunk of the food slot. He didn't look up. Another paste of nutrient gel and crushed cockroaches. Another day.
But the object that slid onto the floor wasn't a tray.
It was a pistol.
John stared. Another cruel hallucination. A phantom of his desperation. He shuffled forward, pressed his forehead against the cold, blued steel.
It was real.
A sound tore from his throat—half laugh, half sob. "Yes. YES!"
With fumbling, cuff-bound hands, he dragged the gun toward him. His mind sang one clear, glorious note: Finally. Finally.
He tried to twist his hands, to get a finger on the trigger. The cuffs hummed, locking his wrists at a useless angle. He tried to brace it against the wall and use his mouth. His teeth scraped metal, but he couldn't get it to fire a shot.
The exit was right there. In his hands. And he was physically incapable of taking it.
A guttural groan of frustration boiled out of him. "Oh my god… no… no, no, NO!" He strained, veins standing out on his neck and temples, his entire body shaking with the effort to perform the one, simple, desired action.
The dam of his numb silence shattered.
"JUST FUCKING KILL ME, YOU SICK FUCK!" he screamed at the unseeing camera, his voice raw and breaking, echoing off the walls that had absorbed so many of his whimpers.
---
In the sewer, Benjamin was fading.
His breathing had become a wet, shallow rattle. The pool of blood beneath him had grown, glossy and dark.
"The first aid kit!" Diego barked, patting down Mitch's and Emma's packs. "I thought you brought them!"
Benjamin's lips moved, barely a whisper. "Gave it… to Aya and Milo."
Diego froze. Then his face crumpled. "¿Por qué?! ¡Estás pendejo o qué?!" The shout was pure anguish, tears springing to his eyes.
A flicker of awareness in Benjamin's glazing eyes. "I'm sorry, mate… I know. That was… really fucking stupid of me." His eyelids fluttered shut.
"No! ¡Hermano, Benjamin! ¡Despierta! ¡No te mueras! ¡Por favor…!" Diego collapsed beside him, pressing his forehead to Benjamin's bloody chest, his shoulders shaking.
Mitch and Emma exchanged a silent glance. Their grief was pragmatic, quiet. They'd known Benjamin for hours, not years. But they understood loss.
Emma knelt, placing a firm hand on Diego's shoulder. Her voice was calm, absolute. "Diego. Stay with him. We'll find Aya and Milo." She met his tear-filled eyes. "He's going to be alright. Mark my words."
Diego looked up, a fragile hope cutting through his despair. He nodded, swallowing hard. "Gracias… Muchas gracias."
"Well, that's the only part I understood," Mitch muttered as they turned to run into the labyrinth.
Elsewhere, "We have to find the others," Milo was saying, his voice tense as he, Aya, and the Alfies navigated a junction. "Things are getting worse by the minute."
---
Sovereign returned to the sewers, a god walking in filth.
SHHIIIIUUUUM—BOOM.
He moved, and the tunnels screamed in protest. The air cracked with successive sonic booms, walls vibrating, pipes shearing loose. He stopped, and the resulting shockwave spiderwebbed the concrete around him.
A scent caught his attention—not the general decay, but the specific, sweet-rot stench of human death. His eyes narrowed. The world shifted in his vision; concrete and earth became translucent layers. Ten feet down, buried in compacted rubble, lay a corpse.
He punched once and blasted the already destroyed ground.
Sovereign lifted the corpse 10 feet under. A device on Sovereign's wrist hummed, scanning the base of the man's skull. A soft ping.
A registered HEX chip. Identity: Wesley.
A faint, approving smirk touched his lips. "Ruthless woman," he murmured.
He dispatched a clean-up code to HQ and continued his search. Two more bodies to find. Two more pieces of Hannah's treason to catalog.
---
In her office, Ashley reviewed the final streams of data. The numbers glowed on her screen: a calculus of horror.
Her assistant, Lana, hovered. "The perfect preparation phase seems complete. We can begin staging for the Death Parade."
"We wait," Ashley said, her eyes never leaving the screen. "We wait for him to return and approve the stats."
"What are the stats anyways?" Lana asked.
Ashley's voice was a dry, administrative recital. "Six thousand and twelve killed. Seventeen thousand, one hundred and forty-two captured for the parade."
Lana shifted her weight. "Isn't that… enough?"
Ashley finally looked up, her gaze devoid of debate. "It's not a matter of if it's enough or not. It's his decision, and we must follow it."
Ashley's wrist chimed.
A miniature holographic screen flared to life above her forearm, casting cold blue light across her face. One name hovered in the center, sharp and absolute.
SOVEREIGN.
Shivers raked down her spine. She wasn't ready. She was never ready.
She answered.
"Hello?"
"Prepare the Death Parade."
His voice was a blade. No greeting. No explanation. Just the command, delivered flat and final.
Ashley opened her mouth to give him the stats—six thousand twelve killed, seventeen thousand one hundred forty-two captured—but the line was already dead.
She lowered her arm. Let the screen fade.
Then she did as she was told.
The order rippled outward through HEX's network, cascading from her terminal to every elite still hunting in the tunnels, every patrol still sweeping the surface. A single, unambiguous directive:
PERFECT PREPARATION PHASE COMPLETE. ALL UNITS RETURN FOR DEATH PARADE STAGING.
One by one, the hunters stopped hunting.
---
The sewers swallowed the silence.
Alfie Sr., Junior, Aya, and Milo walked. Boots scraped concrete. Water dripped. No one spoke.
They had been walking for so long that the silence had calcified into something heavy, something they carried on their shoulders like a second pack. Every tunnel looked the same. Every junction promised hope and delivered only more identical dark.
Then Milo stopped.
"Okay—what the fuck are we doing?!"
The words detonated in the quiet. Everyone froze.
"Do you really think we're gonna find them by just walking mindlessly?!" His voice was raw, frayed. "This shit is huge. We probably got within a hundred feet of them and walked right past because we don't know where the fuck we're going!"
Aya rounded on him, jaw tight. "Then what do you suggest?"
"We go back to base." His tone was sharp, certain. "Obviously."
"Tch. Back to base? Seriously? You think hundreds of rich aren't waiting there?"
"Why would they be?"
Aya stepped closer, anger rising off her like heat. "We've got the most advanced tech out of any rebellious group down here. You think they won't get suspicious? You think they won't notice?"
Milo's face twisted. "Geez, what the fuck has gotten into you?!"
He paused. His eyes narrowed.
Then he said it.
"Benjamin was right. Love does make you stupid. Bitch."
The word hung in the air like a slap.
Aya's voice dropped to something low and lethal. "The fuck did you just call me, you fucking Aussie trash?"
"Oh you fu—"
"Hey! Hey hey hey!"
Alfie Sr. shoved himself between them, palms out, arms spread. His voice was cracked with exhaustion and fear, but it carried.
"Calm down! Both of you!" He looked from Aya's blazing eyes to Milo's clenched jaw. "We're supposed to be a team. Not enemies. I don't know what the hell happened between you two, but we've got bigger problems than whatever this is."
Aya stared at Milo. Milo stared at Aya.
Neither spoke.
They turned and resumed walking, ten feet of bitter silence between them.
Alfie Sr. and Junior exchanged a glance. Then, in unison, they sighed—a long, weary exhale that carried all the stress and fear of men who had been holding their breath for hours.
---
Benjamin was still breathing.
Barely. Each inhale was a wet, shallow rasp. His eyes remained shut, his face slack, but the bleeding had slowed. The torn shirts Diego had pressed against the wounds, now soaked through and stiffening, were doing something.
"Any moment now, hermano," Diego whispered. He cradled Benjamin's head in his lap, one hand resting on his chest, feeling the weak, stubborn rhythm of his heart. "They're gonna be here any moment. Just keep hanging on."
A long pause.
Then, faint and dry:
"I'm not a fucking kid, mate."
Diego's head snapped down. Benjamin's good eye was cracked open, glazed with pain but unmistakably awake.
"¡Estás despierto!" Diego's face split into a trembling grin. "Are you okay?!"
"Not at all." Benjamin's voice was barely a thread. "Feel like I might die in a few minutes."
"No, no, no." Diego shook his head fiercely. "They'll be here soon. They'll treat you. Lo sé. I'm sure of it."
Hope, fragile and desperate, flickered in his chest.
Then a shadow fell over them.
Diego looked up.
A man hovered above, boots suspended a foot above the filthy water. His cape hung motionless. His visor gleamed.
His smile was a slow, cruel carve.
"Look at how miserable you look."
Diego couldn't move. His limbs had turned to stone.
"I love killing miserable people."
The elite raised his fist. Energy crackled along his knuckles. Diego saw his own death reflected in that glow—
Ping.
The man's wrist device chimed. His head tilted. His eyes scanned the notification.
Then he smacked his lips in frustration, lowered his fist, and shot upward without a word.
Diego stared at the empty space where the man had been.
"What the fuck…?"
Then he heard it.
A low, distant rumble. Growing. Aggressive. Hungry.
The ground began to tremble. Fine dust danced on the surface of stagnant water. Diego's blood turned to ice.
He moved on instinct—grabbed Benjamin, dragged him into the deepest alcove he could find, pressed them both against cold, sweating stone. His heart hammered against his ribs so hard he thought it might crack them.
The rumbling became a roar.
The walls began to splinter. Hairline fractures raced across concrete like lightning trapped in stone. Water rippled in violent concentric circles. The air itself seemed to compress.
BOOM.
The first sonic boom hit Diego's ears like a physical blow. Then the second. Then the hundredth.
Rich elites—hundreds of them—screamed through the tunnel at supersonic speed. They didn't just fly. They crashed. Deliberately, joyfully, they slammed their bodies into walls, carved trenches through concrete, reduced decades of infrastructure to rubble in seconds. It was what they always did. What they loved doing.
Diego seized Benjamin and launched them both through the collapsing alcove entrance. They hit the ground hard, rolled, came to rest against the far wall. Rubble crashed down behind them, sealing the hollow forever.
The rich kept coming.
They moved like a single, unstoppable current—a river of armored bodies and crackling energy, an invincible wall studded with lethal spikes. They didn't stop. Didn't slow. Didn't even look at the two broken men huddled in the filth.
Then they were gone.
The thunder faded. The dust began to settle.
Diego lay on his back, chest heaving, ears ringing, blood trickling from both nostrils. Benjamin was a dead weight against his side.
The rumbling continued—distant now, retreating—but the walls around them were still groaning, still shedding fine clouds of concrete dust.
Diego forced himself upright. Forced his trembling arms to lift Benjamin again.
He didn't know where he was going.
He just knew he couldn't stay here.
---
Mitch and Emma pressed themselves against crumbling concrete, hands clamped over ears, heads low.
The rich were everywhere.
They screamed through the tunnels in waves—hypersonic, relentless, each pass a hammer strike to the skull. The walls vibrated. Water shivered in its stagnant pools. Sonic booms echoed in overlapping chaos, a symphony of destruction conducted by nothing but pure, mindless obedience.
"Looks like Perfect Preparation Day is finally over!" Mitch shouted over the din, his voice barely audible.
The rich didn't look human anymore. Not that they ever had. But now, moving in perfect formation, following unseen commands with instant, unquestioning loyalty, they resembled something else entirely.
Dogs returning to their master.
It was, the rebels had long agreed, their one small comfort. How utterly, beautifully clueless they were. How they never thought—just obeyed. You could hate them for a thousand crimes, but you could never accuse them of disobedience.
Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
The last rich vanished upward. The tunnels fell silent.
One year. They had peace for one year again.
A collective breath escaped them—deep, trembling, relieved. Alfie Sr. slumped against the wall, Junior's face buried in his father's shoulder. But Aya and Milo stood apart, jaws tight, refusing to look at each other. The space between them was a wall of silence and fresh anger.
They stepped out of the rubble.
Across the junction, two figures emerged from another collapsed alcove.
Aya froze. "Mitch?"
"Holy shit." Mitch blinked rapidly, as if his eyes were lying. "How did I—how did we find each other?!"
Milo's voice was low, barely audible, muttered into his own chest. "What the fuck kind of coincidence is this… You can't fucking tell me our mindless walking actually led us to them… Something's up…"
Emma grabbed Aya's arm. "We need to go help Benjamin. He's gonna die."
"Diego knows what to do," Aya said. "We go back to base first."
Emma's face tightened. "What? That's not—how is he? And how are you even gonna know the way back?"
Aya reached into her pack.
She pulled out the map.
When she unrolled it, a soft blue light bloomed across its surface. A single, pulsing arrow materialized on the thin, flexible metal—pointing through the dark tunnel ahead.
"We all have these," Junior said quietly. "When you open it, it pinpoints our exact location and shows the way to our last checkpoint."
Mitch stared at the glowing device. His mouth opened, closed, opened again.
"How the fuck do you guys have this shit…?"
---
Sovereign descended once more back into the crater.
The bodies of Gary and Henry were still missing. He had not forgotten. He did not forget anything.
His eyes shifted. Concrete became translucent, then invisible. Layers of earth peeled away in his vision. And there—buried beneath compacted rubble, hastily sealed—he found them.
He moved.
The ground erupted upward, debris scattering like shrapnel. Henry Cooper's body tumbled out, landing at Sovereign's feet.
His head was unrecognizable. Crushed. Caved. Brain matter reduced to a slick, glistening paste. Sovereign tilted his head, studying the wound with clinical detachment.
A faint smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Ruthless, he thought again. Impressive.
He stepped over the body and lifted Gary from the rubble.
The hole in Gary's chest was wide enough to fit a fist through. Clean. Precise. The heart simply… missing.
Sovereign's smirk vanished.
His face went still. Not calm. Not cold. Just… empty. The kind of emptiness that precedes absolute destruction.
"Why did you have to lie...."