If you want to see how this ends, add the book to your library.
The crawler's plated back rose like a shield over Owen's chest, and Owen's boots scraped the asphalt as it dragged him into the smoke. Rifle cracks snapped from the far side of the road, and concrete chips burst off the pillar above Noah's head. Mara shouted his name, but her voice was thin under the gunfire. Noah's eyes kept tracking the angles, because the drone was still up there, and someone was feeding the shooters their lane.Noah sprinted. The crystal burn in his veins made the world feel too sharp, like every sound had teeth. He reached Owen and hooked one arm under Owen's ribs, but the crawler's hands clenched harder and pulled back with a jerk. Owen's breath turned into a wet, panicked cough.Noah drove the tire iron down at the crawler's skull. The metal rang. Nothing cracked. The plated bone only dented, and the recoil stung Noah's wrist. That old clean headshot logic was dead, and it was dead right now, with Owen's throat exposed.So Noah changed the target. He shoved the tire iron under the crawler's jaw hinge and pried like he was ripping a door off its frame. The crawler thrashed, claws scraping sparks off the road. Noah leaned in harder until something gave with a sick pop. The crawler's mouth hung wrong, and its bite lost power.Mara fired twice, not at the head but at the base of its neck. The bullets didn't kill it, but they staggered it long enough for Noah to drag Owen free. The win hit fast and small, and the cost came with it. A round snapped past Noah's ear, and the next one tore through his sleeve and kissed his upper arm with burning heat.Blood ran down to his elbow. It wasn't deep, but it was loud inside his body."Move," Mara said, and she sounded like she was forcing herself not to shake.Noah hauled Owen toward the transport van's open side door. The smoke from the overpass trap still crawled low, but it was thinning, and the shooters were walking their fire closer. Owen was heavy, half-dead weight, and every step felt like it took two.Behind them, the crawler didn't stay down. It scrabbled with its broken jaw and started to pull itself forward, silent and fast on its forearms. Another evolved zombie slipped out of the haze to the left, taller, plated, and it moved like it had learned to not waste motion. It didn't moan. It just tracked.Noah grabbed the fire extinguisher from the van floor and blasted white powder into the lane. The cloud hit the drone's camera line, and for two breaths the gunfire stuttered, unsure. That was all the room he needed.He slammed the extinguisher into the tall zombie's face. The mask of plated bone took the hit, but its neck bent, and Mara put a knife into its eye socket and twisted hard. The zombie convulsed and dropped. Mara's hands came out shaking, and she hated herself for it.Noah didn't let them leave the body whole.He knelt, shoved his fingers into the wrecked eye hole, and felt for the soft break behind the bone. He used the tire iron like a wedge and cracked deeper. The skull gave with a crunch that made Owen flinch even through his haze. Noah pulled a slick, dark crystal out of the ruin.Instant value. Instant danger.A rifle round snapped off the van's frame like a warning shot, and Noah knew they had been seen. His pocket felt too small for what he was holding. The crystal didn't glow, but it pulled on him anyway, like a hook sunk behind his ribs."Don't," Mara said, and it was half order, half fear. "Not here."Noah swallowed once. He could run without it, maybe. He could also die without it.He absorbed it.The crystal slid down his throat like cold glass, and then pain exploded behind his eyes. His knees hit the asphalt. His stomach cramped so hard he thought it would tear. Blood filled his mouth from nowhere, iron and salt, and his hearing went wide open until every single gunshot was a hammer inside his skull.He saw nothing for one blink, and in that blink he was somewhere else. Fluorescent lights. A hallway that smelled like bleach. A clipboard that said RIVERGATE in block letters. A man's voice behind a mask saying, "Keep the head intact."Then the road came back, and Owen was slipping out of his grip.Noah caught him, but his hands shook like he was freezing. Mara grabbed Noah's shoulder and yanked him upright, and he almost hit her by reflex. He didn't. He hated that the impulse existed."Eyes on me," Mara hissed. "Now."A drone whined lower, and the gunfire restarted with purpose. The kill lane was back.Noah forced his legs to move. The crystal gave him speed, but it also made the edges of everything too bright. They ran bent low, dragging Owen between them, and Noah's brain kept trying to pick twenty threats at once. It was the worst kind of power.They reached the maintenance door under the overpass, the one with a chain and a cheap padlock. Noah hit it with the tire iron. The lock held. Mara cursed, tight and quiet, and a plated zombie slammed into the concrete behind them with a thud that shook dust loose.Noah wrapped both hands around the chain and pulled. The metal bit his palms. The chain stretched, and then it snapped with a sound like a gunshot. He didn't feel the cut until his fingers slipped on his own blood.They shoved through the door into the dark.The stairwell smelled like wet rot and old smoke. Owen sagged between them, and his breath wheezed like he was drowning. Noah's arm wound leaked down his side, and the crystal inside him kept urging him to run faster than his body wanted to carry dead weight.Above, the drone's speaker clicked on."NOAH CARTER," a calm voice said. "KNEEL. HAND OVER SUBJECT THIRTEEN."Mara's eyes flicked to Noah, sharp and ugly. Noah didn't answer the voice, because answering made it real.The speaker crackled again, and the calm voice changed."DANIEL CROSS," it said, like it was tasting a private name. "YOU CAN'T HIDE IN HERE."Noah's lungs went tight. The alias was burned. Worse than burned. They had the thing under it.Mara stopped for half a second, and that half second was a cliff edge. "What did it call you?""Move," Noah said, and he pushed her forward. "Ask later.""Later gets us killed," Mara snapped, but she moved anyway, because Owen was dying between them.They burst out through a broken side door into a narrow service alley. The world outside was colder, and the gunfire was farther, but it wasn't gone. A siren wailed in the distance, then cut off like someone had taken a knife to it.A battered Authority SUV sat wedged against a dumpster, front end smashed. The driver was slumped over the wheel, face gray, jaw hanging open. Noah didn't check if it was alive. He checked the dash.Keys were still in the ignition.He shoved Owen into the back seat, and Mara climbed in with him, one hand already on Owen's neck, counting his pulse. Noah slid behind the wheel. His hands shook on the steering wheel, and he hated that he could feel the tremor in every finger.In the passenger seat, a clipboard lay face-down. Noah flipped it over with a quick jerk.A route sheet. BLOCK LETTERS. CLEAN PRINT.RIVERGATE CLINIC. MOBILE INTAKE ROUTE B.Under it: SUBJECT 13 — HEAD INTACT — PRIORITY: HIGH.And taped to the page was a printed photo from a security camera. A man's face, half turned, eyes cold, blood on his sleeve.Daniel Cross.Noah's face.Mara saw it too. Her jaw tightened until it looked painful. "That's you."Noah stared at the paper until his vision tried to blur. It didn't blur. The crystal wouldn't let it. "They're using my name.""Why do they have it?" Mara asked. Her voice was quiet, and that was worse than yelling. "What is Rivergate to you?"Noah started the engine. The SUV coughed, then caught. "It's a clinic.""That's not an answer.""No," Noah said, and the word tasted like rust. "It's a trap with clean walls."Owen groaned from the back seat. His eyes fluttered open, unfocused. "No… Rivergate… please."Mara leaned close. "Owen, you heard them?"Owen swallowed hard, and his throat clicked. "They… they said I was thirteen. They said… Harrow wants the head intact. They joked about… opening me while I'm still breathing."The car felt too small. The air felt dirty.Mara's gaze snapped to Noah again. "You knew this kind of place."Noah didn't deny it, because denial was another kind of lie. "Before the outbreak, I worked around it. Not for them. Not like this.""Worked around it," Mara repeated, like she was chewing on the words to see if they broke. "So you brought me into this with a fake name, and now the Authority is calling you like you're theirs."Noah's fingers dug into the wheel. "I'm not theirs.""Then why do they want you alive?"The truth pressed at the back of Noah's teeth, and it wanted out. He kept it in anyway. "Because I know where things are. Doors. Routes. How to get inside without a key."Mara watched him for one long beat. Then she nodded once, hard. "Fine. We go to Rivergate. But if you freeze, if you lie again, I walk. And I take the boy with me if I can."That wasn't love. That wasn't loyalty. That was a deal in blood and time.Noah drove.They cut through back streets, away from open roads and away from light. Twice, zombies stumbled out of alleys, but Noah's new speed let him thread the SUV through gaps that shouldn't have fit. Each near miss made his heart slam harder, and each slam made the crystal itch like it wanted more.The city changed as they moved. Storefronts turned into burned shells. Street signs were bent like broken arms. Cameras still hung on corners, dark and dead, except when they weren't. One block over, a red light blinked on a pole, and Noah felt eyes on him without seeing them.Mara kept pressure on Noah's bleeding arm with a torn sleeve. She did it rough, because gentle wasted time. "Don't pass out," she said. "I'm not carrying you too."Noah almost laughed, but it came out as a cough. "Save your breath."They reached a fenced medical complex near the river. The sign was half ripped away, but the name still showed through grime.RIVERGATE.The gates were open by an inch, like someone wanted it to look abandoned, but not fully dead. Floodlights stood on poles, turned off, and that felt wrong. No place with power just left lights off on purpose.Noah stopped the SUV in the shadow of a delivery truck and listened. His hearing was too good now. He could pick out the soft buzz of a transformer somewhere inside the complex. He could hear a generator's uneven rhythm, like a sick heart."There are people," he whispered.Mara nodded. "And cameras."Noah leaned across the dead driver and yanked an Authority badge off the man's chest. The plastic was cracked, but the strip still read. He held it up toward the gate's camera box.For a second, nothing happened.Then the gate motor whined, and the metal slid open wider.Win.Cost.The camera saw the badge, and the camera saw him. Somewhere, a log updated. Somewhere, a person got a ping.Noah drove through anyway, because fear didn't fix Owen.Inside, the parking lot was lined with white vans. Some had "HEAD INTACT" stamped on the back doors in faded paint. One van's rear door was open, and the inside was stained dark.Mara gagged once and swallowed it down. "Jesus."Noah killed the engine. The silence after the drive felt like pressure in his ears. Owen whimpered, and his hands clutched at Mara's sleeve like a child.Noah stepped out, tire iron in hand, and the crystal inside him made him want to sprint, hunt, break things. He forced himself to walk slow, because rushing got people shot.They moved toward the main entrance. The glass doors were shattered, but the lobby lights were on. A trail of dried blood led across the tiles like someone had been dragged, and drag marks crossed over it like new footprints had stepped in the old mess.On the wall by the reception desk, a monitor still worked. It looped a single screen. A white background. Black text.MOBILE INTAKE ACTIVE.SUBJECTS IN TRANSIT.DO NOT DAMAGE HEADS.Noah's skin crawled. It wasn't supernatural. It was human.A speaker in the ceiling clicked, soft and polite."Daniel Cross," a man's voice said, calm as a doctor in an office. "You're late."Mara's grip tightened on Owen. "Noah—"The voice continued, still calm, still sure. "Bring Subject Thirteen to Room Four. And don't make me send my people outside."Noah stared into the bright hallway beyond the lobby. A door deeper in the clinic swung open, slow and inviting, and a shadow moved behind frosted glass.Then the door shut again, and the lock clicked like a promise.