The derelict sector was a skeleton of the old world, picked clean by time and terror. Kaelen moved with a predator's grace, her senses alert for more than just Gloaming entities. They were fugitives now, hunted by the very organization meant to protect them.
"They'll assume we're dead," Kaelen said, her voice low as they navigated a collapsed office building. "Consumed by the Resonance Eater. It's the cleanest explanation for Valerius. It preserves his data—a failed field test—and closes the file."
"Will he believe it?" Leo asked, his own senses stretched thin, a low-level environmental awareness humming in the back of his mind. The habit of vigilance was now ingrained.
"He'll want to," she replied, ducking under a fallen beam. "The alternative—that his most valuable asset has gone rogue—is a mess he won't want to admit to. It gives us a head start. But he's thorough. He'll send a team to verify. We need to be gone."
She led him to a seemingly impassable wall of rubble. With a grunt, she shifted a rusted filing cabinet, revealing a hidden opening into a maintenance tunnel. The air inside was stale and cold, but it was shelter.
The tunnel opened into a small, fortified bunker. It was spartan—a couple of cots, shelves of canned goods, a battery-powered lamp, and a rack of weapons. Not energy rifles, but solid-projectile firearms and blades. Low-tech, low-energy. Tools for survivors who couldn't afford to broadcast their location.
"This is a Sweeper safe house," Kaelen explained, activating the lamp. "Off the books. For when a mission goes FUBAR and command can't be trusted. There are a few of them."
Leo looked around, the reality of his new situation settling in. "What now?"
"Now, we disappear." She tossed him a canteen and a protein bar. "We find the shadows and we stay in them. Valerius controls the enclave. Our only chance is out here." She gestured vaguely at the walls, meaning the vast, bleeding world beyond.
"He'll never stop looking for you," Leo said, unwrapping the bar. "You're a liability. You know his secrets."
"He'll never stop looking for you," she corrected, her gaze intense. "I'm a loose end. You're the holy grail. But out here, in the Weeping Lands, his authority is paper thin. His power is in his walls and his databases. Out here, it's about this." She tapped her temple. "And this." She rested her hand on the grip of her sidearm.
For the first time in weeks, Leo felt a semblance of control. It was terrifying, but it was his. "He thinks he has a blueprint. A way to replicate what I did."
"He does," Kaelen said grimly. "And that's the problem. He'll try to build another you. He'll find other Aptitude users, ones with less resilience, and he'll try to force them to break in the same way. Your escape isn't just about saving yourself, Leo. It's about making sure no one else has to pay that price."
The weight of her words settled on him. His freedom was now tied to a greater responsibility. He wasn't just running from something; he was running for something.
"He'll be analyzing the data from the substation," Leo realized aloud. "He'll see that the Resonance Eater was destroyed by a massive, uncontrolled backlash. He'll think I lost control and blew myself up with it. It fits his narrative of me being an unstable weapon."
"Exactly," Kaelen nodded. "But he's missing one piece of data." A faint, hard smile touched her lips. "The wrench."
Leo almost laughed. The sheer, beautiful simplicity of it. Valerius, with all his sensors and models, would be searching for a complex psychic event. He would never account for a blunt physical object applied with precise force. It was a variable his cold, calculating mind had dismissed.
Kaelen's smile faded. "It won't last forever. He's smart. He'll find inconsistencies. And he has other assets."
She went to the weapons rack and pulled down a long, heavy case. She opened it. Inside, nestled in foam, was a rifle, but unlike any energy weapon Leo had seen. It was all mechanical levers and polished wood, with a complex series of lenses along the barrel.
"A Schrodinger rifle," she said, seeing his confusion. "Pre-Gloaming tech. Experimental. It doesn't fire energy or bullets. It fires a contained, probabilistic field. Doesn't harm living tissue, but it... unmakes non-organic, energetically complex structures. Like a Manifestation's physical form. Or a Sweeper's plasma rifle. It's finicky, slow to reload, and has a hell of a kick. But it's completely silent and leaves no energy signature."
She looked at him. "Valerius's biggest weapon is information. His control over technology. We need to be a ghost in his machine. This," she patted the rifle, "is a ghost-maker."
Leo looked from the antique-looking weapon to Kaelen's determined face. The plan was forming. They wouldn't just hide. They would fight back. Not with overwhelming power, but with cunning. With the things Valerius overlooked.
He was a data clerk, a master of finding patterns in chaos. She was a soldier, a master of applied force. Together, they were a wrench in the Captain's perfectly calibrated works.
"Teach me," Leo said.
Kaelen nodded. "First lesson. How to disappear."