Chapter 1250: Story 1250: Dragged Under
It started with a tremor beneath the street.
After the hospital burned, Juno and Shade barely made it out alive, carrying the black box through smoke and sirens. The Code Blue broadcast had been silenced, but the damage was done. Survivors had vanished—or worse, been rewritten.
They headed toward the city’s edge, to the underground aqueducts that once funneled stormwater. A forgotten route out of Blackout.
But Blackout never lets anyone leave quietly.
The first sign was the sll—stagnant water, rotting things that never died fully.
Then ca the dragging sounds.
“Tunnel’s close,” Shade muttered, wiping soot from his face. “Stay quiet. Sothing down here doesn’t like footsteps.”
They reached a grated entrance beneath an old subway stairwell. As Juno pried it open, she glanced at the flood gauge.
Recent spike.
Too recent.
They entered anyway.
The aqueducts were wide, curved with moss-streaked walls and rusted pipes. Their flashlights barely touched the dark. Water pooled along the base, ankle-deep and ice cold. Every drop echoed like a scream.
Five minutes in, the water shifted.
No wind. No rain.
It pulled.
“Do you feel that?” Juno whispered.
Shade nodded, drawing his blade. “We’re not alone.”
They rounded a corner—and the current exploded.
A massive surge of water slamd into them, slamming Juno against the wall and sweeping Shade off his feet. She reached for him—but sothing else had already grabbed his leg.
A black, sinewy hand—webbed, sharp-clawed—burst from the water, dragging him under.
“SHADE!”
He vanished into the current.
Juno dove in after him.
The water wasn’t just deep—it was endless. Cold. Alive. She plunged deeper, lungs screaming, chasing the flicker of his flashlight.
And then she saw them.
Dozens of pale figures, floating just beneath the surface—bodies with stitched mouths and water-bleached skin, eyes open, unblinking. Victims of Code Blue?
No.
The Drowned.
Old city dwellers, failed experints, and Feeders that had mutated. Not dead. Not fully undead.
Dragged under by the signal.
She grabbed Shade’s arm and kicked hard toward the surface. One of the Drowned reached for her—their mouth opened, and a scream of bubbles erupted, inside her head.
“JOIN US.”
She gasped—and swallowed water.
Darkness.
Then—air.
They broke the surface in a forgotten drainage shaft.
Juno dragged Shade out onto the stone and coughed up water until her lungs burned.
He was breathing. Barely.
Around them, whispers echoed up the tunnel.
They don’t drown. They convert.
The black box was sparking—still active, sohow. Recording even this.
Shade groaned. “They tried to overwrite …”
“You’re not theirs,” Juno said, clutching his shoulder. “Not yet.”
A tunnel ahead glowed faintly with green exit lights.
Behind them, water surged again.
This ti, they ran.
Juno didn’t look back.
She didn’t need to.
She’d seen what waited beneath Blackout.
And it still wanted them.
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