A hand tapped my shoulder. I spun, fists half-raised.

Jenn stood behind me, having slipped out of a narrow bathroom door I hadn’t even noticed in the shadowed wall. She was wearing Sherry’s clothes, a short pleated skirt and crisp white shirt that fit her differently, tighter across the chest and shorter on the thighs.

She smoothed the fabric self-consciously and gave a small, hopeful smile, the kind of smile someone wears when they’ve just tried on something new and want to know how it lands.

"How do I look?" she asked, doing a quick half-twirl that flared the skirt.

Then her gaze drifted past me to the window. To the street below. To the growing mob of armed men pointing, shouting, and pouring back into the building like angry hornets.

The smile died on her face.

"What are you doing in my room?" Her voice dropped to something small and frightened. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

"Jenn." I kept my tone steady, low. "Those men down there want us dead."

"Why?" Two voices spoke at once, Jenn’s and Mercury’s, overlapping in sharp confusion.

"Help us get out of here," I said. There was no time for the full story. "Please."

The building had come alive with noise. Heavy footsteps thundered through the corridor outside. Doors slammed open one after another. The methodical, brutal rhythm of men who knew every inch of their territory and were hunting.

Jenn looked at me, then at Mercury, then back at me. She swallowed hard.

"So you want to escape from this building," she said, like she was confirming a simple order.

"Yes. Please."

"I’m going with you," she decided. She turned, grabbed a worn canvas bag, and began stuffing things into it with hurried but deliberate hands.

You don’t know how serious this is, I thought, watching her take her time organizing whatever she was taking. Outside the door the footsteps had reached our corridor. I could hear them moving room to room, doors taking the impact of shoulders and boots.

They reached ours. The knocking was hard and certain. The knocking of people who weren’t asking.

"Done," Jenn said, slinging the bag over her shoulder, face pale but determined.

She darted into the bathroom and waved us after her. We crowded in. She shut the door, reached behind a cracked mirror, and pressed something hidden in the wall.

The floor dropped.

My stomach lurched violently as the entire bathroom platform dropped like a stone. I grabbed for the wall, found nothing, and seized Mercury instead. She grabbed me back, our bodies pressed together in the sudden freefall. Wind rushed up around us in the narrow shaft as we plunged downward in a stomach-twisting descent.

"What the hell is this?" I growled, bracing against the motion.

"Elevator," Mercury answered, strangely calm, as if secret building drops were everyday technology.

"It’s the only working one left in the building," Jenn added, gripping the railing tightly. She still didn’t know the full horror of what had happened upstairs. She was helping anyway.

The platform hit bottom with a heavy thud that jolted through our bones. The doors hissed open.

We stepped out into a dim, forgotten basement. Thick concrete walls. Puddles of stagnant water reflecting faint emergency lights. The air smelled of dust, rust, and years of undisturbed decay.

Above us, furious voices echoed down the elevator shaft, they had found the bathroom and realized what had just happened.

One car waited in the gloom. Small. Old. Paint faded and chipped. It sat there like it had been waiting in the dark for exactly this moment.

"Is it—"

"Yes," Jenn said, predicting the question. "But I don’t know how to drive."

"Not a problem," I said, glancing at Mercury.

We piled in. I took the front passenger seat. Jenn slid into the back with her bag clutched to her chest. Mercury dropped into the driver’s seat, reached under the dash, and yanked out a bundle of wires. With quick, practiced fingers she twisted two of them together. The engine coughed, sputtered, then roared to life with a throaty growl.

We shot forward.

The car nearly collided with a man sprinting into the basement ramp. His eyes widened in terror as the headlights washed over him. He threw himself sideways into the wall at the last second. We scraped past him with inches to spare, sparks flying off the side mirror, and burst out into the blinding daylight of the street.

Mercury wrenched the wheel and floored it. The forsaken city blurred past the windows in streaks of crumbling concrete and shattered glass. The wide, empty plain opened up ahead like a sea of yellow grass under the harsh sun.

"Oh my," Mercury said, a wild, breathless laugh escaping her. "That was extremely close."

The old car rattled and shook as she pushed it harder. Wind whipped through the cracked windows. Jenn was in the back looking at everything.

"So Sinn just left without us," Mercury said, her left hand loosening slightly on the vibrating wheel.

"Yes," I replied.

"I’ve worked with him for years," she said, slowing slightly. "He’s never done that."

"Something must have happened," Jenn offered from the back, watching the ruined city shrink behind us. "Major isn’t the kind of man who chases his visitors either."

I stayed silent. Both of them were circling the truth without reaching it. I needed one more moment before I shattered their world.

"Where are we heading?" Mercury asked, glancing at me.

"The Fallen City," I said.

She let that sink in. The plain stretched endlessly ahead, flat and merciless.

"We don’t have maps," she said quietly. "No detectors. No armed escort." She looked around the tiny, rattling car, then at the two of them, not ability users. "This is genuinely suicidal, Bram."

She slowed the car just a fraction. "Bram... Is everything okay?"

My mind was still running the accounting. Speed. The Guardian door. The navigation system. Oddo. Major. Code. Sinn’s face as he walked to the cars. Owen getting in after Oddo went down.

"No," I said finally, staring at the empty road ahead. "It isn’t." I exhaled. "Pull over first."