The sound of the second silenced shot was a wet thud as the bullet buried itself in the mahogany bench behind them, sending splinters of ancient wood flying like shrapnel. Silas didn't wait for a third. He grabbed Elara's shoulder, his grip like iron, and shoved her toward the service stairs hidden behind the luggage kiosk.
"Move! Don't look back, don't stop for breath!" Silas barked.
Elara lunged forward, the hardshell case clutched to her chest like a shield. Her lungs burned, the cold, stale air of the terminal feeling like shards of glass in her chest. Behind them, she heard the rhythmic, heavy thud of boots on marble. The Hounds weren't shouting; they didn't need to. They were professionals, moving with a terrifying, silent efficiency.
Silas kicked open a door marked Authorized Personnel Only and slammed it shut, sliding a heavy steel bolt into place just as a shoulder hit the other side. The metal groaned, but it held.
"This way," Silas panted, his face slick with sweat and grime. He pulled a heavy tactical flashlight from his belt, the beam cutting through the darkness of a steep, concrete stairwell that smelled of damp earth and a century of soot.
"Where are we going?" Elara whispered, her voice trembling. "The exits are all upstairs. We're going down."
"The exits upstairs are death traps," Silas said, leading her down the stairs two at a time. "Sophia's men will have the street level blocked. But the Vanes don't know the guts of this city like I do. We're going to Track 61."
Elara had lived in New York for years, but she had only heard of Track 61 in urban legends. It was the "Presidential Tunnel," a secret siding built deep beneath the Waldorf Astoria hotel, designed to allow FDR to enter the city in secret. It was a place that didn't exist on any public map.
As they reached the bottom of the stairs, the heat rose. The air became thick with the smell of grease, hot metal, and the distant, low-frequency hum of the city's heart. They were standing on a narrow, rusted catwalk overlooking a labyrinth of tracks. High above, the floor of Grand Central rumbled as a late-night maintenance train pulled out, the vibration shaking Elara's very bones.
"Down the ladder," Silas commanded.
Elara climbed down, her hands slick with rust. When her boots hit the gravel of the track bed, she felt a wave of vertigo. The darkness was absolute, pushed back only by the flickering beam of Silas's light. Rats scurried into the shadows, their eyes glinting like tiny rubies.
"Silas," Elara said, stopping as he jumped down beside her. "Sophia said the hardware wallet is a frame-up. She said the moment it's plugged in, I'm the one the FBI comes for. Tell me she's lying."
Silas stopped. He turned the flashlight toward the ground, but the light reflected off the damp walls, illuminating the jagged scar on his brow. "Julian is an architect of chaos, Elara. He never builds a door without a trapdoor underneath it. Is it possible the drive is rigged? Yes. But it's also the only thing that contains the proof that Sophia authorized the Red Hook cleanup."
"So my freedom is the price for your evidence?" Elara's voice rose, echoing off the arched tunnel ceiling. "You're using me as a delivery system for your revenge, just like Julian used me as an Anchor for his crimes!"
"I'm keeping you alive!" Silas roared, stepping into her space. The intensity in his eyes was staggering—a mix of fury and a desperate, haunted hunger for justice. "If I wanted you dead, I would have left you on that park bench. If I wanted to trade you, I would have answered Sophia's call myself. You want to know what happened in Red Hook? My sister didn't just die. She was discarded. Like trash. If helping me take down the people who did that makes you a 'delivery system,' then start walking, because the only other option is waiting here for The Hounds to find us."
Before Elara could respond, a red laser dot danced across the rusted pillar next to Silas's head.
"Down!" Silas tackled her, the two of them crashing into the gravel just as a flurry of suppressed shots hissed through the air.
The Hounds had found a way in.
"They have night vision!" Silas hissed, pulling Elara behind a massive concrete pillar that supported the Waldorf Astoria above. "We're blind, and they're hunting by heat."
Elara looked at the hardshell case. Her mind raced, a year of repressed survival instincts finally snapping into place. "The flash," she whispered.
"What?"
"In the case! Julian's 'gift'... the secondary phone. If I trigger the emergency distress signal, the screen brightness and the LED flash go into a high-frequency strobe. It's designed to blind sensors."
Silas looked at her, a grim smirk touching his lips. "Do it. On three."
Elara fumbled with the case, her fingers slick with sweat. She found the phone, navigated to the SOS setting, and held it over her head.
"One... two... THREE!"
The tunnel was suddenly incinerated by a blinding, rhythmic white light. The high-frequency strobe was agonizing, even with Elara's eyes squeezed shut. Above them, she heard a cry of pain and the sound of someone stumbling over the tracks. The night vision goggles were useless now, overloaded by the sudden surge of lumens.
"Now! Run!" Silas grabbed her hand.
They bolted down the center of the track, the strobe light casting long, jerking shadows that looked like a horror movie come to life. They ran past a rusted, abandoned train car—the very one that had once carried a President—and dived into a narrow maintenance crawlspace.
They crawled for what felt like miles, the sound of their own breathing loud in the cramped pipe. Finally, Silas kicked out a rusted grate, and they spilled out into the cool, damp air of a side street three blocks away from the terminal.
They were out. They were alive. But as Elara looked at the silver drive in her hand, she realized she was no longer just a witness or a victim. She was an outlaw.
"Where now?" she asked, her voice a hollow shell of itself.
Silas looked at the distant lights of the Manhattan Bridge. "My warehouse isn't safe anymore. Sophia knows about the Red Hook connection. We need a place they'd never think to look. A place Julian thinks he's already destroyed."
"The gallery," Elara said, the irony tasting like ash in her mouth.
"The gallery," Silas agreed. "We prep the drive there. If it's a frame-up, I'll find the kill-switch. If it's the truth... we buy a ticket to Singapore."
Elara looked back at the shadows of Grand Central. She had entered that building as a woman trying to solve a mystery. She was leaving it as a woman who realized that in a world of architects, the only way to win was to be the one who pulled the trigger.