One thing I could say about the lattice—
Was that if you were hiding from sothing, it didn’t just sharpen your instincts.
It added new ones.
The kind that sat underneath your skin and whispered before your brain could even catch up.
Danger to the left.
Eyes on you.
Don’t go there.
Move.
And now, after whatever Jennifer had done to , those instincts felt multiplied into sothing unnatural.
Every sound ant sothing.
Every shift in a crowd.
Every reflection in glass.
Every pause in conversation.
I moved through the city carefully, mapping routes in my head while pretending not to.
Possible exits.
Possible choke points.
Possible places they’d move Lila through.
I didn’t even fully realize I was doing it anymore. My brain had already turned the entire underground city into terrain.
The long overcoat hanging from my shoulders felt wrong against my skin.
Too clean.
Too heavy.
Sa with the cap shadowing my face.
I looked like sobody trying to imitate normal.
Not sobody who actually belonged here.
People brushed past endlessly.
Dress shirts.
Polished shoes.
Perfu.
Laughter.
Nobody looked hungry.
Nobody looked desperate.
Nobody looked like they had ever gutted an infected with a screwdriver because ammunition was too valuable.
The deeper I walked into the district, the stranger it felt.
Bright storefronts reflected against polished windows.
A woman adjusted the pearl necklace around her throat while talking to sobody over a phone.
A man in uniform laughed outside a restaurant.
Children ran past carrying paper bags full of candy.
Candy.
I felt sothing twist in my stomach.
Because for a second—
Just one second—
It looked like the world before the surge.
Before the screaming.
Before the rot.
Before entire neighborhoods started eating themselves alive.
It felt wrong.
Like seeing a corpse blink.
What the fuck was this place?
Did these people even know what the surface looked like now?
Did they know people traded nicotine pouches like currency up there?
Did they know what starvation did to people?
What desperation sounded like?
Or had they all just crawled underground and pretended the world ended politely?
As I moved through the crowd, voices nearby caught my attention.
"...I’m serious, they still haven’t found it?"
I slowed slightly without fully stopping.
Two n stood near a food vendor, speaking low enough that they probably assud nobody cared.
"The infected?" the other muttered. "No. That’s what they’re saying, anyway."
His friend cursed under his breath.
"How the hell does one of those things even get down here?"
The second man shook his head.
"Governnt swears they’re doing everything they can to shield us from the bullshit topside, but clearly they don’t know what they’re doing."
The other scoffed quietly.
"I just don’t want this place ending up like the boroughs in Britain."
My eyes flickered slightly.
Governnt?
Boroughs?
The way they said it made my stomach tighten.
Not like survivors talking.
Citizens.
Like this place actually still believed it was functioning civilization.
Like the apocalypse had borders.
I slowed even further.
The first man rubbed his forehead tiredly.
"My wife’s freaking out. Says if one got in, then there’s probably more."
"There aren’t," the second replied quickly, though he sounded like he was trying to convince himself too.
"They would’ve locked the districts down already."
"...you sure?"
Neither of them answered for a second.
I stared at them carefully.
Trying to piece together what the hell this place actually was.
How long it had existed.
How deep the Crucible’s hands really went.
When I started to step toward them—
"HEY!"
My body reacted before my brain did.
I turned imdiately, pulling the cap lower over my forehead as I started walking faster through the crowd.
A soldier shoved past civilians behind .
"Hey, mister!"
Fuck.
My chest tightened.
I kept moving.
Not too fast.
Not too slow.
The soldier closed distance quickly before his hand landed on my shoulder.
"You dropped this."
I glanced toward his hand automatically.
A small laminated pass rested between his fingers.
I barely registered the symbol on it.
Because by then, he was already studying my face.
His eyes narrowed.
Mine did too.
Fuck.
I turned sharply and ran.
Behind , the two civilians looked over in confusion as people imdiately started shouting.
"HEY!"
The soldier’s voice exploded behind .
"STOP RIGHT THERE!"
I shoved through the crowd hard enough that sobody crashed into a table beside .
Food hit the pavent.
People scread.
More voices started rising behind .
I didn’t look back.
Didn’t need to.
The lattice already told where everybody was moving.
A left turn.
An alley.
A staircase.
Move.
My lungs burned as I sprinted deeper through the district.
The city blurred around in flashes of neon signs and polished concrete.
People jumped out of my way too slowly.
I slamd into shoulders.
Pushed past bodies.
Sobody cursed at .
Didn’t care.
Behind , I already heard boots.
More than one pair.
Shit.
I turned sharply into another alley before nearly skidding to a stop.
Soldiers poured out from the opposite side.
Fucking shit, man.
I pivoted instantly and ran the other direction again.
The coat slowed down.
The cap too.
I ripped both off while running, abandoning them onto the pavent without hesitation.
Cold air hit my skin imdiately.
No gun.
No knife.
Nothing.
And fists didn’t an much against trained soldiers with rifles.
That was the ugly truth people never really talked about.
Survival stories loved making hunted people sound heroic.
Like instinct suddenly made you unstoppable.
It didn’t.
Being hunted felt pathetic.
Humiliating.
Every breath beca desperate.
Every decision beca panic disguised as strategy.
And most people never got to explain how it felt.
Because they died first.
I spotted a fire escape ladder bolted onto the side of a building and jumped for it imdiately.
My fingers caught tal.
I started climbing fast.
Really fast.
Adrenaline overrode the ache in my body as I pulled myself higher.
Below , voices echoed through the alley.
"There!"
"THERE HE IS!"
I climbed harder.
The tal rattled underneath .
My breathing turned ragged.
Higher.
Almost there.
Then—
SCREEEEEEECHHHH.
The sound hit so hard my entire body locked up.
Not loud.
Wrong.
Like sobody shoved a blade directly through my skull.
My vision warped instantly.
My grip nearly slipped.
The ringing tunneled through my brain violently as my eyes dilated and constricted uncontrollably.
Pain exploded behind them.
Not normal pain.
Neurological.
Deep.
Like sothing inside my head was malfunctioning.
I gasped sharply.
Or tried to.
My lungs spasd instead.
The sound kept going.
God—
Blood suddenly poured from my nose.
Hot.
Fast.
My fingers twitched violently against the ladder.
My body jerked.
The alley twisted around .
I couldn’t think straight.
Couldn’t move right.
It felt exactly like seizing.
Only worse.
Way worse.
Because this ti, it felt targeted.
Like sobody had reached inside my nervous system and grabbed it directly.
I lost my grip.
My body slamd against the ladder before crashing onto the pavent below with a brutal thud.
Pain shot through my shoulder instantly.
But it barely registered.
I laid there twitching slightly, staring upward as blood slid across my lips.
My arms wouldn’t move right.
Neither would my legs.
What the fuck—
The screeching finally stopped.
But the damage didn’t.
My body still refused to cooperate.
Footsteps surrounded quickly.
Rifles pointed down at my head.
Boots closed in from every direction.
I tried forcing myself up.
Nothing happened.
One soldier cautiously stepped closer.
Then another.
Nobody touched imdiately.
They looked nervous.
Scared, even.
Like they weren’t sure if I was about to die or rip sobody’s throat out.
One of them finally crouched near carefully.
"...Jesus Christ," he muttered under his breath while looking at the blood running from my nose.
Another soldier lifted his walkie quickly.
"We got him," he said urgently.
A pause.
Then:
"Subject’s incapacitated."
Subject.
Not person.
Not patient.
Subject.
My vision blurred again.
I tried moving my hand.
It twitched uselessly against the pavent.
The soldier nearest to noticed.
He imdiately backed up half a step.
"Easy," sobody muttered.
Easy?
I wanted to laugh.
My own body didn’t even belong to right now.
Two soldiers finally moved in and grabbed my arms carefully.
The mont they touched , sothing primal inside my brain snapped violently awake.
Danger.
My body jerked hard enough that one of them stumbled backward in panic.
"SHIT—!"
Another grabbed my shoulders roughly.
"Hold him down!"
I couldn’t even tell if I was fighting them intentionally anymore.
Everything hurt.
The alley lights sared together overhead.
The blood pooling beneath my face looked black against the concrete.
Then suddenly, sothing stuck into my neck.
A needle.
The man pressed down, plunging the liquid inside my body, leaving my body more limp and numb then it already was.
No one could ever tell that I didn’t fight to keep awake.
Because I did. I swore I did.
But eventually, my eyes slowly began to drift into darkness, my eyelids feeling like they had bricks stuck to them.
And for the first ti in a long ti, I felt truly helpless.
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