The alarm was a physical thing, a shrieking wall of sound that vibrated in Damian's teeth. Red light strobed, turning the dusty apartment into a hellish slideshow: Aris's shocked face, the jagged hole in the window, the void beyond.
Time snapped back into focus. He had seconds. Maybe less.
Aris took a step toward him, the cylindrical tool still in her hand, but her aim was thrown off by the deafening noise and the flashing lights. "You fool!" she shouted, her voice barely a whisper against the siren.
Damian didn't hesitate. He scrambled toward the broken window, shards of polymer crunching under his shoes. A vicious wind whipped through the opening, pulling at his clothes. He looked down. It wasn't a sheer drop to the city below. The apartment overlooked a deep, dark airshaft—a canyon between towers, lined with maintenance ledges, conduits, and levels of ductwork. It was a terrifying maze, but it wasn't certain death.
It was a chance.
He glanced back. Aris was fumbling with her device, trying to override the alarm system on her data-slate. He could hear other sounds now—distant shouts, the whine of approaching security drones. The entire Aegis force would be converging on this sector.
He swung his legs over the jagged sill. The wind tore at him. The drop was dizzying. Twenty feet below, a wide maintenance walkway ran along the side of the shaft. It was his only shot.
He pushed off.
The fall was a heartbeat of sheer, gut-lurching terror. He hit the metal grille of the walkway hard, the impact jolting through his ankles and knees. He gasped, pain flaring, but he was alive. He forced himself to roll, getting to his hands and knees.
Above, he saw Aris's face appear in the broken window, her features distorted by rage and the strobe lights. She wouldn't follow him. She was the architect, not a field agent.
He had to move. He lurched to his feet, his body screaming in protest, and started running along the narrow walkway. It was a forgotten world, a skeleton of the sleek city above. Pipes hissed steam. Thick cables snaked along the walls. The air smelled of grease and ozone.
The alarm was muffled out here, but he could still hear the drones getting closer. He needed to get off this level. He spotted a ladder bolted to the wall, leading down into the deeper gloom of the shaft. He climbed down, his hands slipping on the cold, moist rungs.
He descended two levels, then three, each one darker and dirtier than the last. The sounds of the pursuit began to fade, replaced by the deep, mechanical hum of the Arcology's core systems. He was entering the engine room of the world.
He jumped off the ladder onto another service platform. This one was wider, cluttered with abandoned machinery and stacks of obsolete parts. A single, flickering light strip illuminated the area. He slumped against a large, warm pipe, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He was lost, he was hurt, but he was free. For now.
The enormity of what he'd learned crashed down on him. Aris Thorne. The kind, concerned doctor was the mastermind. "Chimera" was her project. She saw human emotion as a bug to be fixed. And he was the virus she needed to eliminate.
He thought of the lavender plant sitting on his sterile table. A thing that could still grow. That was what he was now. Something growing in the cracks, unwanted.
A soft scraping sound echoed from the far end of the platform.
Damian froze, pressing himself against the pipe. Had a drone found him? He peered into the gloom.
A figure emerged from the shadows. It wasn't Aegis. It was an old man, dressed in stained coveralls. His face was leathered and lined, and one of his eyes was a dull, mechanical prosthetic that glinted in the low light. In his hand, he held a heavy wrench like a weapon.
"Well," the old man grunted, his voice rough with disuse. "Don't see many suits down in the guts." He looked Damian up and down, taking in his patient tunic, his bleeding hands. "You're the one they're screaming about topside. Blew a hole in the Aerie."
Damian said nothing, his muscles coiled. He was in no shape to fight.
The old man took a step closer, his bio-eye whirring as it focused. "Relax, son. If I was gonna turn you in, I'd have done it already. Name's Casper. I keep the lights on." He gestured with the wrench at the maze of machinery around them. "Heard the whole thing on the comms. They're mighty pissed at you."
"They want to kill me," Damian said, the words tasting like ash.
Casper let out a dry, crackling laugh. "They don't kill you. They 'decommission' you. Cleaner that way." He spat on the grimy floor. "What'd you do? Figure out the food paste is made of bugs?"
"Something like that," Damian muttered. He studied the old man. He was a relic, a piece of the old world that the sleek Arcology above had tried to forget. Maybe he was an enemy. But right now, he was the only person who hadn't tried to edit or erase him.
"I need to get out of here," Damian said. "Out of the Arcology."
Casper's laugh was even harsher this time. "Out? There is no 'out.' Just more levels. More walls. Only thing outside is poisoned air and ruins." He leaned in close, his mechanical eye staring into Damian's soul. "But if you want to disappear… really disappear… you don't go out. You go down."
He pointed his wrench toward a dark, narrow opening in the platform floor, where a rusty ladder descended into absolute blackness.
"The Deep Storage," Casper said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Where they keep the things they don't want to think about anymore. Including the failed Versions."
Damian looked at the dark hole. It looked like a mouth waiting to swallow him whole. It was either that, or wait for Aris's drones to find him.
He had no choice. He had to go down.