Chapter 1 Part 5
The reflection stared back.
Kael watched it—watched himself—trying to find something familiar in his own face. But there was a tension behind his eyes now, like someone else had moved in and was watching from the inside out. He blinked and, for half a second, swore the glyph down his back pulsed in the mirror. Like a second spine.
Behind him, Vireya sat still, perfectly composed, as if time itself bent politely around her presence. She didn't speak. She didn't need to.
Outside, something moved.
Not footsteps.
Wings.
They both heard it at once.
Vireya stood instantly. "They've arrived."
Kael's body reacted before his brain caught up. He was on his feet, clutching the wall for balance as adrenaline surged through his still-burning system.
"Which ones?" he asked, voice sharp.
"Drones," she said, walking swiftly to the far end of the under-platform. "Blood Inquisitor-grade. Recon first."
Kael followed, gritting his teeth against the static crawling through his nerves. "Recon's bad enough. You said they send worse?"
"If they confirm I'm alive, yes. A Hunter-Priest. Or worse."
He didn't ask what worse meant.
The corridor ahead twisted into a rust-choked stairwell, lit by intermittent emergency strips. It smelled like mildew and scorched copper. Above them, red light flickered down through a broken grate—the kind that only came from Protocol enforcement optics.
Then a sound. Low. Grinding.
Metal limbs on concrete.
A drone dropped into view—silent but for the whisper of sanctified alloy scraping steel. It was spider-shaped, gliding on six legs, its eyes a cruciform cluster of red optics. Carved into its shell were symbols Kael recognized from old surveillance files: Sanction Class IV—psychic enforcement authority.
Kael drew breath to speak—too late.
The drone hissed and lunged.
Vireya moved like a storm. One instant she stood beside him, the next she was in the air, cloak flaring, descending on the drone with a silent precision that turned the moment into art.
Her fingers curled around its primary optic cluster.
She breathed.
The drone imploded—quietly, impossibly—its shell folding inward like paper burned from the inside. A black mist bled from its ruin, dissolving before it hit the floor.
Kael stared. "What the hell did you just do?"
"I reminded it what I am."
"Pretty sure machines don't have fear protocols."
"They remember their creators."
Another sound—dozens of legs clicking above them now.
She turned to him. "We can't fight them all."
"You think?"
He took the lead this time, sprinting down the stairs as another drone dropped into the platform above them. Red light flared. An alarm pinged.
> SUBJECTS ESCAPING – INITIATING RESPONSE SEQUENCE
"Move!" Kael shouted.
They burst into a side corridor barely wide enough to squeeze through. Kael shouldered open a utility door, dragging Vireya behind him, and slammed it shut. The tunnel beyond was lined with tangled conduit veins and smelled like burnt silicon. Everything buzzed.
Kael's spine screamed again—briefly.
He fell to one knee, breath ragged.
Vireya knelt beside him. "It's the feedback."
"No shit—what's it doing?"
"Stabilizing. It's trying to merge with your bloodstream."
"You said I wasn't compatible."
"You aren't," she said softly, "but it no longer cares."
Kael's vision pulsed with lightless bursts. He saw her—not as she appeared, but as something deeper. Something older. The outline of her presence: a vast shape wearing a body too small to contain it.
The moment passed. He blinked. Breathing steadied.
Then he heard voices. Human ones.
From above.
"...last ping showed divergence at junction seventy-two... check sector bleedoffs…"
Vireya's face hardened. "Protocol ground scouts."
"Armed?"
"Always."
Kael forced himself upright. "Any exits?"
Vireya placed a hand on the wall.
It responded. Stone shifted, groaned, and peeled back like skin. Behind it—a vertical drop.
"No ladder?" he asked.
"I broke it when I left it here."
"Of course you did."
She jumped.
Kael looked down into the dark shaft, swore violently, and followed.
They landed in liquid.
Not water—some old coolant system half-collapsed and long abandoned. The stench hit him first: rust, chemical rot, and blood that had no source. He surfaced coughing, shivering.
Vireya was already wading to the far edge, climbing silently onto the ledge.
"This connects to the Sprawl fringe," she said. "We're almost out of their search radius."
Kael pulled himself up, panting. "Define 'almost'."
But before she could answer, a searchlight speared through the liquid. A drone swooped overhead, scanning.
Kael flinched, diving behind a pylon. Light grazed his leg. His skin sizzled—just for an instant. It wasn't normal burn. It was coded light. Holy spectrum.
Vireya hissed low. "They've upgraded."
"We can't stay here."
"No," she said. "There's one more route. But it's old."
"Define old."
She didn't answer.
They crawled through a final corridor—more like a throat. The walls were warm and pulsing. Not alive. Remembering. Vein-roots still clung to the ceiling, whispering faint glyphs in Kael's head as they passed.
"You were locked away," Kael said quietly, "but you knew these passages. How?"
"I built them."
"For what?"
"For when the Protocol failed."
Kael stopped walking.
"You planned to come back."
"I knew someone would open the gate. Eventually."
"And the bond?"
She looked at him. "That wasn't part of the plan."
"Lucky me."
They reached the surface hatch.
Vireya looked back once.
The glyph on her throat glowed faintly.
Kael's spine flared to match it.
Then they pushed through—into night.
Real night.
No neon. No towers.
Just ruined city fringe, half-lit, buzzing with insects and decay.
They were in the Sprawl now.
And for the first time since awakening, Vireya looked uncertain.
"This is not the city I remember."
"No," Kael said, voice low. "It's worse."
And behind them, in the tunnels below, the city remembered them both.