The floor sagged. Someone heavy was coming.
Anna had learned to read pressure. Ten years of being meat had taught her to feel the weight of a gaze before it landed. She didn't need eyes to know when a guard was bored versus hungry, when a handler was distracted versus hunting. The body remembered, even when the mind tried to forget.
This weight was different.
Heavy. Dense. The floor sagged under him.
She didn't look up. Looking up invited engagement. Instead, she pressed her back harder against the sweating stone and drew her knees tighter.
The fetal position. Universal language. I am small. I am nothing. Move on.
Footsteps. Slow. Measured. Each one landed like a hammer on anvil.
Then: silence.
He was standing over her. She could feel his shadow, an absence of the dim fungal glow that seeped through the grate. Her fingers curled against her thighs. The instinct to fight roared in her chest, hot and stupid, the same instinct that had gotten her teeth smashed in and her tongue cut out.
'Don't,' she told herself. 'He's not a Dreg. He's not a Handler. This one is worse.'
"Lot Seven."
She didn't move.
"Seven years running. Fourteen confirmed self-terminations to evade capture. Zero successful extractions." A pause. The weight shifted, the floor creaking under something that moved like a man but weighed like a monument. "You have cost the organization considerable resources."
'Kill me, then. Reset me. Try again.'
She didn't say it. Couldn't say it. The cauterized stump of her tongue throbbed in phantom agreement.
"I have business," the General said. "Pending retrieval. When I return, I will deal with you."
His footsteps retreated. The door groaned shut. The lock clicked home.
And Anna sat in the dark, shaking, waiting for a "deal" she couldn't imagine and couldn't escape.
'Seven years,' she thought. 'Seven years of running. And I'm going to die in a cell, wondering what he meant.'
The word didn't leave with him: Interesting.
---
The Floor Five Armory smelled of gun oil and anticipation.
Lieutenant Craw lurked near the door, hands wringing like he was trying to kindle a fire between his palms. His thermal gloves were off — the leather too thick for the friction he craved — and his pale skin gleamed pink from the constant rubbing. He hated this room. Hated how the squad looked at him. Hated how they stopped looking the moment he opened his mouth.
But mostly, he hated that they only straightened up when the General arrived.
'Any minute now.'
The Reavers sprawled across the staging area with the calculated laziness of professionals before a job. They knew the drill. Hurry up. Wait. Hurry up again.
"Suicide run for brass toys." The voice belonged to Twitch, the scout, a wire-thin wretch with multi-lens goggles pushed up on his forehead and a wad of grey paste bulging in his cheek.
He chewed constantly. Grit. The stimulant. Made his pupils the size of needles and his paranoia the size of planets. "That's what this is. Fetch quest in Hellhound Central."
"Shut up, Twitch," Iron Varris said, not looking up from the whetstone rasping across his warhammer's edge. The sergeant's voice carried the weight of authority earned, not given.
Grey-bearded. Face like a clenched fist. Missing his left ear, taken by something he refused to name. "You want to die with your mouth open?"
"I want to die in bed, Sarge. Surrounded by women. Two of 'em crying over my body, one counting my inheritance—"
"You don't have an inheritance."
"Hence the crying."
A grunt from the corner. That was Boiler, eight feet of man inside a jury-rigged cooling suit, the ceramic plates stained with old burns and older rust. He didn't speak. Hadn't spoken in years. Something about the suit made it impossible, or something about his throat made it pointless. He communicated through gestures and the occasional slap that broke ribs.
Right now, he was petting his Steam-Cannon. The barrel was thick as a man's thigh. The ammunition drum held railroad spikes on chains.
Suture, the medic, noticed Craw lurking and smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. She had a cleaver in each hand and was testing the edges against her thumb, watching the blood bead up and fade. Her apron was already stained — she'd been "practicing" on something in the back room.
"Lieutenant." The word dripped with false respect. "Joining us for the stroll?"
Craw's hands rubbed faster. "The General—"
"Asked for you personally, we heard." Suture's smile widened. "You must be so honored."
Before Craw could respond, a new voice cut through.
"Does the General always look like he's contemplating murder?"
Silence.
All eyes turned to the far corner, where Jinx, the rookie, was adjusting his ill-fitting breastplate. Young. Too young. His face hadn't yet acquired the patina of old violence that marked a Reaver. He was twenty, maybe. Eager. Green.
Dead in a week, Craw estimated. Maybe less.
Varris set down his whetstone. "What did you say, boy?"
Jinx blinked, sensing the temperature drop. "I just — I mean, every time I see him, he's got this look. Like he's deciding where to bury you."
"That's not murder he's contemplating." Varris stood, brushing stone dust from his knees. "That's Math. He's calculating your value. Whether you're worth the rations to keep breathing."
"And?" Jinx's voice cracked. "What's the answer?"
Varris didn't reply. He didn't have to.
The door opened.
The General entered.
Conversation died. Postures shifted. Twitch stopped chewing mid-gnaw, Suture's cleavers vanished into sheaths, Boiler's massive hand stilled on his cannon. Jinx shrank inside his armor, the plates suddenly too large for the body inside.
Desmond Price crossed the room without a word. His boots struck the concrete with metronomic precision, and the floor groaned under each step, not from age or decay, but from weight. He moved like a man who had learned that hurrying was for prey.
His amber eyes swept the room. Counted. Assessed.
"Status."
Varris snapped to. "Squad ready, General. Transport fueled. Armory loaded. We can roll in two."
"The route?"
"Main highway to the Ash Coast gate, then overland to last known coordinates. Twelve hours out, twelve back. Assuming no complications."
"There will be complications."
It wasn't a prediction. It was a statement of fact.
Desmond turned to face the squad. His gaze lingered on each of them: Twitch, who looked away first; Suture, who met it with surgical calm; Boiler, who rumbled something behind his faceplate; Jinx, who forgot to breathe.
"The cargo is irreplaceable. Six crates. Brass and steam. You bring them back, or you don't come back. Questions?"
Silence.
Then Jinx's hand twitched upward. Halfway to his mouth. He caught himself, forced it down.
Desmond noticed. Of course he noticed.
"Speak."
Jinx swallowed. "The... the fog, sir. I heard the convoy survivors talking. They said it screams."
"It does."
"And the hounds? They... mimic voices? Dead voices?"
"They do."
A pause. Jinx waited for reassurance. Tactics. A plan that made the horror manageable.
Desmond offered nothing.
"Move out."
---
The gates of the Kennels were twenty feet of hammered iron, bolted to walls of compacted bone. They opened with a sound like a dying animal, hinges screaming, chains rattling, a mechanical groan that vibrated through the transport's metal frame.
The Reavers loaded in silence. Bolt-actions checked. Straps tightened. Suture wedged herself between ammunition crates, already threading a surgical needle for no reason except habit.
Craw perched near the cab, as far from Desmond as the confined space allowed. His hands hadn't stopped rubbing since the briefing. His thermal gloves were back on now, but the friction continued — invisible heat bleeding into the leather.
The transport lurched forward.
Through the gap in the gates, the Dis Highway unfurled like a wound.
It was chaos given infrastructure, an arterial road carved through the lower strata, wide enough for three vehicles but packed with twice that. Slave columns shuffled along the margins, manacled souls connected by rust-chains, driven by Handlers with shock-prods and dead eyes. Corpse-carts rumbled past, stacked high with the day's harvest, bound for the Surgeons or the Wet Market or somewhere worse. And between them, the vehicles: bone-plated crawlers, steam-powered wagons, things that moved on legs instead of wheels.
The sky above was grey and weeping. The rain hissed against the transport's hull, chemical and cold.
Jinx stared out the porthole, his face pale. "It's... bigger than I thought."
No one answered.
Desmond sat at the rear, amber eyes fixed on something beyond the hull. The cargo they were chasing. The rifles worth dying for. The odds they were all calculating.
His gaze slid, just for a moment, back toward the receding gates.
Back toward Block C.
Then he looked away.
The transport accelerated into the current. Around them, the highway pressed in, a river of meat and metal flowing toward destinations Jinx couldn't name. Couldn't imagine.
Twelve hours to Gehenna. Twelve hours back.
'Assuming no complications,' Varris had said.
The General had answered: There will be complications.
Jinx pressed his face to the glass and watched Hell's traffic swallow them whole.