The voice on the other side of the door didn't rise.
"I know you're in there," it said, patient. "Open up."
Kael kept his eyes on the latch. Cheap lock. Cheap door. He'd nudged it earlier with Echo—just enough to make it settle. Now the metal parts inside it hummed under pressure like something was listening through them.
Not a shove. A probe.
Lina stood with her head slightly tilted, two fingers pressed to the concrete beside the frame. Her Thread didn't glow; it tightened the air. The room felt strung with invisible lines, ready to snap.
Marta sat on the bucket, scarf-wrapped hands in her lap. Nina—thirteen and too quiet—stood behind Marta's shoulder with a tablet hugged to her chest. Trev had stopped pacing. His eyes were fixed on the door like it owed him something. Jae stayed near Kael, hands open, breathing through his teeth.
Outside, the calm voice added, "You can keep pretending you're hidden. It doesn't change what you are."
Echo answered in Kael's sternum—small, offended.
The latch clicked once.
Lina's fingers twitched. Thread tightened.
The latch tried again and stopped.
A soft exhale from the hall. "Thread," the voice said, pleased. "Good."
"I'm not here for your child," the voice went on. "I'm here for the fragment you pushed away."
Nina's shoulder jumped. Trev's throat bobbed.
"Open," the voice said gently. "Or I open it."
Lina didn't look at Kael when she spoke. "We move. Now."
She flicked her gaze to the bleach shelf. Kael followed it and saw what she'd seen: the bottom panel wasn't concrete. It was painted plywood, edges swollen from damp. A nail head sat half proud, as if someone had pried it once and never bothered to fix it.
Kael crouched, phone light low, and slid a bent screwdriver under the nail. He pried.
Paint flaked. Wood creaked.
Outside, the calm voice chuckled. "That's cute."
The door shuddered—resonance crawling through the frame like fingers along a spine. Kael felt it in his teeth.
Mara, pressed to the wall, made a strangled sound. Light surged between her clenched fingers.
Kael snapped, low, "Mara. Eyes on Lina. Breathe."
"I can't," Mara whispered. "It wants out."
"You can," Lina said, voice steady. "In. Out."
Mara's glow stuttered, steadied.
Kael pried again. The panel gave, peeling back enough to reveal a dark cavity behind the shelf: a utility chase packed with pipes and cable bundles.
Lina pointed at Nina first.
Nina stared at the hole, then down at her tablet.
"Leave it," Kael whispered.
Nina's jaw set. "It's mine."
Lina extended a hand. "Nina."
A heartbeat, then Nina shoved the tablet into Lina's palm like a bargain she hated and crawled into the dark.
Marta followed, slower, shoulders turning to fit. Al—older, shaking—went next with Jae pushing him by the elbow.
Trev didn't move.
He stood too close to the door, breathing fast.
"Trev," Marta snapped. "Move."
Trev didn't look back. "That fragment—"
The handle turned halfway.
Echo caught the lock's internal rhythm changing. Someone was vibrating it open.
Lina's Thread tightened so hard Kael saw it in her forearms.
The handle completed its turn. The lock gave.
The door swung open into a crack of hallway light.
A man stood there with his hands in his coat pockets, mid-forties, clean-shaven, coat too neat for this night. His eyes moved quickly—counting bodies, counting corners.
Two others hovered behind him: a woman with a tense jaw and a younger man whose hands trembled faintly under his skin.
The man's gaze landed on Lina. "Hello again."
Then it slid to Kael. The faintest smile touched his mouth. "Echo."
Kael didn't answer.
Trev lunged.
He made it one step before his legs hit something invisible. He dropped hard, face-first. The crack of his nose on concrete sounded wet. He screamed and rolled, blood smearing under him.
The man in the doorway sighed like this was routine. "People always think hunger makes them fast."
Lina snapped Thread across the frame—anchors on the railing, the hinge, the man's wrist. Not a bind. A snag.
Kael shoved Echo into the hinge and latch, jamming the door half-open at an awkward angle. Metal scraped. The door stuck.
"Go," Lina said, voice flat.
Jae shoved Mara toward the shelf opening. Mara squeezed in, shaking, glow leaking between her fingers. Kael grabbed Trev's jacket and dragged him toward the hole while Trev fought, twisting to get back toward the doorway.
"You're stealing my time," the man said mildly.
Kael ignored him and shoved Trev into the chase. Trev cursed, shoulder scraping pipe, then disappeared after Marta.
Kael looked at Lina.
She held herself between the doorway and the room, Thread lines vibrating under strain.
"Now," Kael mouthed.
Lina flicked two fingers.
A thin Thread snapped across the doorway at knee height.
She dropped and rolled under it into the room, sliding into the shelf opening.
The man stepped forward.
His shin caught the Thread. He stumbled a half-step. His hand left his pocket. His face tightened—irritation, not fear.
Kael yanked the plywood panel back into place just enough to hide the opening, then crawled into the chase after Lina.
Dark swallowed him.
The utility space was a throat. Pipes pressed his shoulders. Dust hit the back of his tongue. His hoodie snagged and tore; he didn't stop.
Ahead, Nina's small legs moved fast. Behind, Jae's breathing was loud, angry, scared. Trev kept swearing somewhere in the line, scraping himself on every turn.
Behind the plywood, a slow vibration pressed into the shelf. Curious, not frantic.
A muffled voice: "I hear you."
Kael crawled faster.
The chase dipped and widened enough to crouch-walk, then spit them out behind electrical panels into warmer air and buzzing fluorescent light.
They ran down the service hall, wet footsteps echoing. Lina hooked left through a fan room loud enough to blur sound, then to a narrow access stair that dropped steeply into damp air.
Down into a corridor with a grated channel in the floor where black water moved. The smell turned sour and metallic. The air got thick.
The corridor stretched both ways.
Lina grabbed Kael's sleeve. "Listen."
Kael listened with Echo.
Right: voices. More people. More chaos.
Left: deeper silence, thick and still.
"Left," Kael said.
They moved single file past sweating pipes.
Then they heard him.
Frantic breathing ahead. A low moan. Footsteps scraping in place.
They rounded a bend and found a man in a delivery jacket sitting against the wall, hands pressed to his eyes. Sweat shone on his forehead.
"I can't," he whispered. "I can't, I can't—"
Light seeped between his fingers in thin, trembling lines.
"Don't come near me," he snapped.
Kael stopped several feet away. "Name."
The man's laugh cracked into panic. "Sam."
"Sam," Kael said. "Look at me. Breathe with me."
"Stop saying that," Sam hissed. "I'm going to—"
His glow surged, then inverted for a split second before surging again.
"Back," Lina ordered.
Nina and Marta retreated behind a pipe column. Jae pulled Mara with them. Mara's eyes stayed locked on Sam like she was watching her own future.
Kael stayed where he was.
Because the tunnel was narrow, and Echo already felt how a collapse would rebound off concrete.
A soft, steady vibration came down the stairwell behind them.
Controlled. Coherent.
Kael's blood chilled.
Sam's eyes went wide. "He's here," he whispered.
"Sam," Kael said, urgent. "Stay with me. Don't chase it. Don't fight it. Just—"
The air tightened.
The fold began at Sam's fingertips and raced up his forearms like cold wind. Light inverted, sucked inward. Space around him compressed with that heavy-door pressure.
Kael moved without thinking. He stepped forward and grabbed Sam's wrist—anchoring, grounding.
Sam's skin burned.
For half a heartbeat, Sam looked at him like he'd been caught drowning and someone finally grabbed him.
Then Sam vanished.
Kael stumbled, hand closing on nothing.
Silence.
A fragment hovered where Sam had been—raw, bright, pulsing too fast. The air around it hissed like feedback. It felt like it might tear the tunnel apart to prove it existed.
Nina made a small sound behind the pipes.
Kael's panel flashed, harsh:
[FRAGMENT: UNSTABLE]
[COLLAPSE RISK: HIGH]
Absorb to prevent rupture.
Behind them, that steady vibration slowed, listening. Taking its time.
Kael stared at the fragment.
If he left it, it would collapse in this narrow tunnel and kill them, or draw the predator straight to them. If someone else touched it—Nina, Mara, Jae—they'd die.
His sternum hummed toward it like hunger.
He didn't want to.
But the options had narrowed until they were sharp.
Kael stepped forward.
Lina's voice cut through, tight. "Kael—"
"I know," Kael said, and didn't. Not really.
He took the fragment.
Pain erupted behind his sternum—pressure, bright and crushing. His knees hit wet concrete. His vision blew out white.
He screamed, and it sounded too loud in the tunnel.
His panel flooded his sight:
[DIVINE FRAGMENT ABSORBED]
[HIDDEN ORIGIN UNSEALING…]
[WARNING: OUTPUT LIMITS REMOVED]
The pressure doubled.
Then it changed—not relief, expansion.
A door inside him opened onto a space with no walls. The hum behind his sternum didn't get louder. It got deeper, as if it had always been infinite and he'd only been hearing the surface.
Kael coughed, tasting metal.
The fragment's hiss vanished. The tunnel steadied. The air stopped trying to tear.
His panel settled into one calm line:
[INFINITE AMPLIFICATION: ACTIVE]
Kael stayed on his knees, shaking.
Behind the pipe column, Nina whispered, barely audible, "He stopped it."
Kael's stomach turned, not from pain—from the way those words tried to become belief. From the faint tug in his chest like something wanted to connect.
"Don't," Kael rasped, and didn't know if he meant the system or the kid.
Lina crouched beside him. "Get up."
As if to prove her right, a voice carried down the corridor—muffled but calm.
"That was your first," it said, almost satisfied. "You made the right choice."
Kael forced himself to his feet. His legs felt borrowed. The hum in his chest felt enormous, quiet, awake.
They backed away down the corridor, away from the stairwell. Kael shoved the door to the pump room open as they passed—metal groaning, machinery thumping slow and steady behind it.
"Inside," Kael said.
They packed into the cramped pump room, condensation slicking every surface. Kael grabbed a pressure valve wheel with both hands and twisted. The metal fought, then moved.
A hiss started.
Lina's Thread snapped across the door as Kael cranked harder.
The hiss became a roar.
A joint near the ceiling blew. Water exploded into the corridor through the open door, loud enough to blur footsteps and drown out clean resonance.
Kael shoved the pump room door toward closed against the pressure. Lina anchored it shut.
On the other side, the calm voice laughed once, quiet and pleased.
"Good," it said. "Do that again."
Then the footsteps shifted away—not leaving. Repositioning.
Kael backed from the door, soaked, shaking, chest humming like a deep engine, and understood he'd bought minutes.
Minutes they'd have to spend deciding where to run next, now that Kael had something infinite inside his ribs and a predator outside who could hear it.
The pump room was a box of noise and spray. Kael's phone beam skated over sweating pipes and a wall calendar that still said AUGUST, like time had quit.
Outside the door, water hissed. Under it, footsteps shifted—measured, patient.
Lina's Thread held the door shut, fine lines sunk into the handle and hinge. Her forearms trembled. "We can't stay."
Kael swept the room with the flashlight. A bolted ladder ran up behind the main pump to a circular hatch in the ceiling, rust streaking down from the hinges. He climbed two rungs and tested the wheel.
Stuck.
Behind the door, the calm voice drifted through the spray. "Maintenance tricks? I respect it."
Nina flinched.
Kael kept the new pressure in his ribs leashed and gave Echo one careful breath of it—no surge, just sharper teeth. The hatch wheel popped loose with a crack like a knuckle. It turned.
He shoved the hatch up. Cold air spilled down, smelling like rainwater and concrete.
"Up," he said.
Nina climbed first. Marta boosted her, scarf-wrapped hands careful. Al followed, coughing. Jae stayed close, one hand hovering behind Al's back without touching. Mara climbed next, shaking; the cold made her glow flicker brighter for a second, then dim again when she clenched.
Lina waited until Trev was on the ladder, then snapped Thread in a new pattern—anchors along the doorframe, then up around the hatch rim. A trap meant to cost someone a moment.
They pulled into a narrow runoff tunnel, ankle-deep water sliding along the floor. Kael dragged the hatch down behind them as far as it would go; it didn't seal, but it lied.
Below, metal scraped. The trap caught, then snapped.
A voice rose through the shaft, calm as ever. "There you are."
Footsteps followed—slow, never hurried, never lost.
They moved deeper. The tunnel split around a concrete support; Lina chose right toward a faint draft. The water there ran thinner, and Kael felt the sound carry too clean.
Ahead, a rusted ladder led up to a storm drain cover.
"Up," Lina said.
Nina climbed. Marta started after her, then froze as the water behind them rippled—an invisible pulse traveling forward in a clean wave.
Lina swore under her breath. "He's using the water."
Kael felt it: resonance turning the stream into a wire. If the pulse reached them, the ladder would become a cage.
He dropped to a knee, slapped his palm into the water, and shoved Echo into the flow—not stopping it, scrambling it. He made the water noisy and stupid.
The tunnel erupted in chaotic splash. Pain bit behind Kael's sternum, sharp and immediate. He held the interference long enough for Marta to climb, for Jae to shove Al upward, for Mara to haul herself onto the ladder with shaking arms.
Then Kael let go.
The clean pulse broke into useless ripples.
Somewhere behind the bend, the predator's footsteps paused.
Recalculated.
Kael climbed, hands slipping on rust, lungs burning. He shoved the cover from below. It shifted an inch, stuck with years of grime.
Lina's Thread snapped around the rim and pulled. Metal groaned.
They forced it up enough to squeeze through.
Kael emerged into winter air in a narrow alley behind the building—dumpsters, chain-link fence, the city's noise distant but everywhere. Sirens. Shouts. A helicopter's low churn.
Above, the crack in the sky was brighter now, widened into a ragged seam of silver-gold light. People stood in the street with phones raised, faces lit by screens and terror.
Kael dropped the cover back down as quietly as heavy metal allowed.
They huddled in the alley's shadow, soaked and shaking. Jae stared at Kael like he was trying to see through him. Nina clung to Marta's sleeve.
Below the concrete, through the grate, Kael felt footsteps resume—slow, certain.
He wasn't safe.
He'd just changed where the danger could reach him.
For a second nobody moved. The alley was narrow enough to feel like another tunnel, just with colder air and the stink of garbage.
Trev wiped his nose again, smearing red across his knuckles. "You took it," he said to Kael, low and venomous. "You took it and now he's on us."
Kael stared past him at the street. Two people stood under a streetlight, hands faintly glowing as they argued. A third person backed away from them like they might detonate.
"I took it so it wouldn't tear us apart down there," Kael said.
Trev scoffed. "Convenient."
Lina cut in, flat. "If Kael doesn't take it, you do. And you die doing it."
Trev's jaw worked, but he didn't have a comeback that wasn't a confession.
From beneath the storm drain, the calm voice carried up through metal, close enough to feel like breath. "Kael. Keep walking. I'll meet you when you stop."
Nina made a small sound and pressed closer to Marta.
Lina's eyes met Kael's. "We don't go back inside," she said. "We don't go toward crowds."
Kael nodded once, and started them moving out of the alley into the dark side of the block, phone light off now, trusting the city's spill of light to hide them.