Everything happened at once.
Wind slammed down the corridor, hard enough to shove Aiden sideways. A burst of light flared at the edge of his vision as someone threw up a shield. The air filled with shouts, the crack of spells, the sharp sting of ozone.
"Move!" Lysa yelled. "Get him out of the kill zone!"
Hands grabbed Kael from behind two of Lysa's people, a tall woman and a kid barely older than sixteen. They dragged him toward a gap in the barricade.
Kael twisted, eyes searching.
"Aiden—"
"Go!" Aiden snapped. "I'll hold them."
He didn't know if that was bravery or panic.
Mara strode toward him, shield up, weapon leveled. Rain beaded on the transparent barrier, sliding down in thin streams.
"Step away from the Deviant," she said. Her voice carried over the chaos, hard as the concrete under their feet.
"He's not the only target anymore," Aiden answered. "You have a whole ambush to deal with."
"You think I won't shoot around him?" she asked.
A stun bolt hissed past his shoulder, close enough that he felt the heat. One of Lysa's people yanked him back behind a piece of fallen metal.
"Friendly fire," Kael muttered, breathless. "You two need to work on your communication."
"Can you run?" the tall woman asked him.
"No," Kael said. "But I can do this."
Lightning flashed down the corridor, not wild this time, but in short, precise arcs that skated along the floor and up into the legs of armored agents. Several went down, muscles locking.
"Non‑lethal!" Lysa shouted at him. "Stay on non‑lethal!"
"I'm trying," Kael said through clenched teeth. "They're not exactly making it easy."
Aiden risked a glance around the edge of the barricade.
The lead transport was wedged into the scrap pile. The rear vehicle tried to reverse, wheels spinning on wet concrete, blocked by the debris that had fallen behind it. Agents used the transports themselves as cover, firing from behind reinforced doors. Lysa's group returned fire with a patchwork of magic and scavenged weapons.
It wasn't a slaughter.
Yet.
It was a stalemate waiting to break.
"Aiden!" Mara's voice snapped again.
He turned.
She had stepped closer, shield angled, eyes locked on him alone now.
"What did they promise you?" she asked. "What could they possibly offer that's worth this?"
"This isn't about what they offered," Aiden said. "It's about what we were going to do to him."
She laughed once, sharp.
"You think you're the first agent to feel sorry for a subject?" she said. "You're the first stupid enough to act on it in the middle of a convoy."
Another blast of force hit the barricade, sending shivers through the metal.
Beside Aiden, Kael sucked in a breath.
"Conversation later," Kael said. "They're trying to flank us."
He wasn't wrong.
Two agents had broken off, using the smoke from a shattered drone as cover, angling to cut Lysa's people off from the exit tunnel on the right.
"I'll handle them," Aiden said.
Lysa caught his sleeve. "You move away from us, they shoot you in the back," she warned.
"Not if they still think they can talk me down," Aiden said.
He stepped out from behind the barricade with his hands spread.
"Mara!" he called. "Call your people off the side advance. You're walking them into a crossfire."
She signaled something over her shoulder, eyes never leaving his.
"Too late for tactical advice," she said. "You made your choice."
She lowered her shield.
For a second, Aiden thought she was standing down.
Then she fired.
The bolt hit him square in the chest.
The armor absorbed most of it, but the impact still tore the breath from his lungs and threw him backward. He hit the wet ground hard, vision flashing white at the edges.
It wasn't lethal.
It wasn't meant to be.
"Non‑lethal shot!" someone shouted. "We can still take him alive!"
Voices blurred around him.
He heard Kael swear, heard the crackle of electricity surge higher.
"Bad idea," Kael said, and the floor beneath Mara's feet lit up.
Lightning shot from a puddle, racing up her shield. The barrier flared, taking the hit, but the force shoved her back a step.
"Aiden!" Kael's voice cut through the ringing in his ears. "Up!"
He forced his body to move, muscles sluggish, chest aching. The armor's internal systems kicked on, shock dispersal working through the residual stun.
He rolled, dragging himself behind the barricade again.
"Don't get yourself killed for drama," Kael said, breath rough.
"Wasn't the plan," Aiden managed.
"Could've fooled me," Kael shot back.
Lysa dropped beside them, cheeks streaked with dirt and rain.
"We have maybe twenty seconds before they regroup and push hard," she said. "We can't win a drawn‑out fight here."
"The exit?" Aiden asked.
She jerked her head toward the right‑hand tunnel.
"Service conduit down two levels," she said. "From there, we scatter. Small groups, different routes. They can't track all of us at once."
"And if they block the conduit?" Aiden asked.
"Then we improvise," she said. "You're good at that, apparently."
A stun bolt cracked into the metal above their heads, showering them with sparks.
"Move!" Lysa barked.
Her people responded like they'd practiced this a hundred times. Half laid down cover light shields, blasts of force, bursts of ice that froze the wet floor under agents' boots. The other half began to fall back toward the tunnel, dragging wounded, pulling Kael between them.
Aiden hesitated.
Behind the wrecked lead transport, Mara barked orders. Agents regrouped, aiming for the center of Lysa's retreat toward the place where Kael's collar light still glowed in the dim.
Aiden raised his hand.
Illusion rose up, fast and instinctive.
For a moment, the corridor split: three different copies of Kael's glowing collar lights flickered into existence at different points along the retreating line, each surrounded by ghost‑images of people moving.
"Targets multiplying!" an agent yelled. "I can't get a lock—"
"They're fakes!" Mara snapped. "Lioren's tricks. Ignore the echoes, focus on the tether signal!"
Aiden's stomach dropped.
The tether control unit.
Still in his pocket.
If they pinged the band on Kael's wrist, they'd know exactly where he was, illusion or not.
He ripped the unit out and slammed it against the concrete.
The plastic cracked. Sparks spat. The small screen went dark.
Somewhere under the wreckage of the transports, a relay beeped a warning as the link cut.
"Signal lost!" someone shouted. "We've lost remote control of the band!"
Mara swore.
"Manual pursuit only!" she ordered. "I want them on foot!"
Aiden pushed himself upright.
Lysa's people were almost at the tunnel mouth. Kael looked back once, eyes searching.
Aiden met his gaze and nodded.
Go.
Kael disappeared into the shadows of the side passage.
Aiden turned back toward Mara.
She advanced through the rain and smoke, shield up again, steps deliberate.
"Last chance," she called. "Stand down, Aiden. Come with us now, and I can argue you were coerced. That you were overwhelmed by an ambush."
"And if I don't?" he asked.
Her jaw tightened.
"Then I write the report as it is," she said. "You betrayed your unit. You handed a dangerous subject to a terrorist cell. You became exactly what we hunt."
The word betrayed hit harder than the shot had.
Aiden swallowed.
"You told me once," he said, "that doubt gets agents killed."
"It does," she said.
He nodded toward the tunnel where Kael had vanished.
"If I'd ignored it," he said, "it would have gotten him killed instead."
For the first time, something like hurt flickered across her face.
"You think you saved him?" she asked. "You just gave him to people who will use him until he burns out."
"Maybe," Aiden said. "But at least he'll have a say in how."
They stared at each other across the wrecked corridor.
Then Mara lowered her weapon not in surrender, but in something colder.
"Run," she said quietly. "Because from this moment on, I can't protect you."
He believed her.
He ran.
***
The side tunnel was narrower, the ceiling lower. Emergency lights flickered at intervals, leaving patches of deep shadow.
Aiden's lungs burned as he pounded down the steps. The echoes of his boots chased him. Behind, distant shouts bounced off metal.
The tunnel curved.
He saw figures ahead Lysa's people, some crouched, some standing guard. Kael leaned against the wall, one hand pressed to his ribs, breaths sharp and quick.
"You took your time," Kael said as Aiden skidded to a stop.
"Had to break up with my old life," Aiden said. "It took a minute."
Lysa gave him a quick once‑over.
"You're not dead," she said. "Good. That would have made this awkward."
"They're coming," Aiden warned. "Mara won't stop at the barricade."
"We don't plan to be here when she arrives," Lysa said. "Down."
She kicked open a heavy grate in the floor. A ladder dropped into darkness, smelling of rust and old water.
"You first," she told Kael.
Kael glanced down.
"Love what you've done with the place," he said, then climbed.
Aiden followed, metal rungs cold under his hands. Lysa came last, pulling the grate back into place above them.
Darkness swallowed them for a moment.
Then someone snapped their fingers.
A small sphere of soft blue light bloomed in the air, hovering between them as they descended.
"Welcome," Lysa said quietly, "to the part of the city the maps don't show."
The sounds of pursuit above grew fainter.
New sounds replaced them: dripping water, distant rumble of trains, murmur of voices from deeper tunnels.
They reached the bottom.
The space opened into a wide, low chamber reinforced with old steel beams. Makeshift lights hung from wires. People moved between stacked crates and patched‑together sleeping areas. Some stared as Aiden emerged in Department armor, hands empty.
"Don't freak out," Lysa called to them. "He's with us—for now."
Kael stepped away from the ladder, testing his balance.
The collar still glowed around his neck. The band still hugged his wrist. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead, but his eyes were bright in a way they hadn't been in the cell.
"You did it," he said to Aiden. "You actually did it."
"Some of it," Aiden said. "We're not clear yet. Once they regroup, they'll lock this whole section down."
"That gives us time to breathe," Lysa said. "And to decide what comes next."
She looked between them.
"You just crossed their line," she said to Aiden. "There's no going back. Do you understand that?"
"Yes," he said.
"Good," she said. "Because from this point on, the people upstairs call you exactly what they call us."
She held out a hand.
"Welcome to the wrong side," she said.
Aiden looked at her hand, then at Kael.
Kael watched him, expression unreadable.
"Guess we're both Deviants now," Kael said softly.
"Maybe we always were," Aiden replied.
He took Lysa's hand.
Somewhere above, sirens began to wail, rising over the steady fall of the rain.