The hope was a fragile thing, a tiny flame in a hurricane. Ren shielded it, nurtured it, and used it to fuel his steps into the oppressive darkness ahead. The path was no longer a retreat; it was an advance.
He moved for what felt like an hour through a labyrinth of humming conduits and weeping pipes. The city's groans were his only company. Then he heard them. Voices. Not the mimicked sounds of an Aberration, but the raw, panicked sound of human argument.
He slowed, his body melting into the deep shadow cast by a massive generator. Peeking around the edge, he saw them. Half a dozen Gamma survivors, their faces slick with grime and fear, were cornered in a small junction. Their way forward was blocked by a heavy, magnetically sealed security gate, the kind designed to withstand a sub-reactor breach.
They were trapped, and they were turning on each other.
"We just have to hit it harder!" a large, broad-shouldered man yelled. He was holding a length of broken pipe like a club. He swung it, and the pipe clanged uselessly against the gate, the sound echoing like a dinner bell in the silent tunnels.
"Stop it, you idiot!" a wiry woman hissed, her eyes darting nervously into the darkness. "You're going to bring them right to us!"
The large man, clearly the self-appointed leader, rounded on her. "And what's your plan, huh? We sit here and starve? We wait for the Alphas to come save us?" He laughed, a bitter, ugly sound. "They left us to die."
Ren's cynical heart agreed with that, at least. The man's methods were idiotic, but his assessment was spot on. Their noise was a problem. A big one. It was a threat to his own survival.
Pragmatism won out over caution. He stepped out of the shadows.
"He's right," Ren said, his voice quiet but cutting through their argument. "You're ringing a bell for every Aberration in the sector."
Six heads whipped around to face him. Their expressions shifted from panic to suspicion. The big man squared his shoulders, puffing out his chest.
"And who the hell are you? Popped out of a vent?"
"I'm the guy telling you to stop being a fool before you get us all killed," Ren replied, his tone flat.
The man's face darkened. He took a menacing step forward, brandishing the pipe. "You got a better idea, vent-crawler? Or are you just running your mouth?"
Ren looked from the man's furious face to the impenetrable gate. He had two choices: let this idiot doom them all, or reveal his hand. It wasn't really a choice.
"Yeah," Ren said with a sigh. "I've got a better idea."
He walked past the stunned group and stood before the gate. He ignored their whispers, the fear and aggression rolling off them in waves. He closed his eyes, filtering out the world until all he could see were the shimmering golden threads of the Covenant woven into the door's locking mechanism. It was more complex than the last one, a tight, powerful knot of reality.
He found the central seam and focused. The headache came instantly, a sharp spike of pain. He could feel the eyes of the other Gammas on his back. They probably thought he was insane.
He reached out with his mind and pulled.
The world held its breath. The golden knot resisted, then shuddered, and began to unspool.
With a soft, final hiss, the entire magnetic lock assembly dissolved into a pile of shimmering dust. The gate, its power source severed, slid open a few centimeters with a quiet sigh of depressurization.
Ren stumbled back, the [System Lag] hitting him with a wave of dizziness. He leaned against the wall to steady himself, his vision blurring at the edges.
When he looked up, no one was looking at the open gate. They were all staring at him. Their suspicion hadn't vanished. It had mutated into something worse: fear, and a dark, hungry flicker of envy.
He wasn't one of them anymore. He was something else. A freak. An Alpha in a Gamma's skin. A tool.
The big man slowly lowered his pipe. A cold, calculating smile spread across his face.
"Well, well," he said, his voice a low growl. "Look what the vents spat out."
He stepped forward, blocking Ren's path through the now-open gate.
"Looks like things just got a whole lot easier for us. You're not going anywhere, freak. From now on, you'll be opening doors for us."