The tunnels didn't hold.
They failed.
Concrete screamed as it cracked above them. A shockwave rolled through the underground like a giant's breath. One of the side walls exploded inward, spraying dust and rebar.
"MOVE!" Varkos yelled.
They ran.
Water burst from broken pipes, flooding the passage up to their ankles. Sirens wailed through the ceiling like dying animals. The twins sprinted past fallen crates and smashed lights.
Juvy stumbled.
Maxruell caught her.
"Don't stop," he said, even as his shadow dragged behind him like a wounded thing.
The tunnel roof collapsed behind them.
A guard didn't make it.
Concrete crushed his legs. He screamed until the dust filled his mouth.
Juvy turned. "We can't leave him!"
She reached out.
The ceiling came down again.
The man vanished under rubble.
Silence.
Juvy froze.
Maxruell grabbed her shoulders. "Juvy. Look at me."
Her eyes shook. "We could've.."
"No," he said. "We couldn't."
Her chest glowed faintly as trapped souls leaked from the crushed tunnel, drifting upward like pale smoke. They brushed her skin and vanished.
She covered her mouth.
That was the first civilian she couldn't save.
And it burned.
They burst out of a sewer gate into rain and fire.
The city above was chaos.
Cars overturned. People ran with bags and blood on their faces. Black drones hovered in the sky, red lenses scanning everything that moved.
A loudspeaker boomed:
"ANOMALOUS ENTITIES WILL BE TERMINATED."
A drone spotted them.
Its gun whirred.
"DOWN!" Varkos shouted.
The street exploded as rounds tore through asphalt. A man trying to run was cut in half at the waist. His top slid forward without his legs.
Juvy screamed.
Maxruell raised his hand.
The drone's shadow twisted and crushed inward like a soda can.
It fell smoking to the street.
More drones turned.
Varkos shoved them into an alley. "Truck's two blocks east!"
They ran through burning trash and shattered glass.
A gang tried to block the street desperate, armed, high on fear.
"Hand over the Prism!" one yelled. "We can sell her!"
Maxruell didn't stop.
The shadows swallowed them.
When the twins passed, only pieces were left.
They reached the truck as another explosion rocked the city.
Varkos floored it.
The city shrank behind them—smoke rising like a funeral.
No one spoke.
Hours later, concrete turned into dead factories.
Road signs rusted. Buildings sagged. Wind pushed dust across empty highways.
The Dead Zone.
Juvy whispered, "There's nothing here…"
"That's the point," Varkos said.
They stopped inside an abandoned power station.
The walls were burned black. The ceiling was half-open to the gray sky.
Juvy sank to the floor.
Her hands shook.
"I didn't save him."
Maxruell sat beside her. "You saved everyone you could."
"That's not enough."
He didn't answer.
He couldn't remember the sound of their mother's voice anymore.
Varkos watched them from across the room.
"This is where Volume One ends," he said quietly.
"City's gone. You're exposed. And now…"
He looked at Maxruell's stone.
"…the world knows what you are."
Outside, the wind howled through broken steel.
In a church miles away, Mother Cain pressed her forehead to bone.
"They ran," she whispered.
"Good.
Prey tastes better when it believes it escaped."
And deep beneath the earth, the Gate of the Dead pulsed once.
Waiting.