One thing I could say about the lattice—

Was that if you were hiding from something, it didn’t just sharpen your instincts.

It added new ones.

The kind that sat underneath your skin and whispered before your brain could even catch up.

Danger to the left.

Eyes on you.

Don’t go there.

Move.

And now, after whatever Jennifer had done to me, those instincts felt multiplied into something unnatural.

Every sound meant something.

Every shift in a crowd.

Every reflection in glass.

Every pause in conversation.

I moved through the city carefully, mapping routes in my head while pretending not to.

Possible exits.

Possible choke points.

Possible places they’d move Lila through.

I didn’t even fully realize I was doing it anymore. My brain had already turned the entire underground city into terrain.

The long overcoat hanging from my shoulders felt wrong against my skin.

Too clean.

Too heavy.

Same with the cap shadowing my face.

I looked like somebody trying to imitate normal.

Not somebody who actually belonged here.

People brushed past me endlessly.

Dress shirts.

Polished shoes.

Perfume.

Laughter.

Nobody looked hungry.

Nobody looked desperate.

Nobody looked like they had ever gutted an infected with a screwdriver because ammunition was too valuable.

The deeper I walked into the district, the stranger it felt.

Bright storefronts reflected against polished windows.

A woman adjusted the pearl necklace around her throat while talking to somebody over a phone.

A man in uniform laughed outside a restaurant.

Children ran past carrying paper bags full of candy.

Candy.

I felt something twist in my stomach.

Because for a second—

Just one second—

It looked like the world before the surge.

Before the screaming.

Before the rot.

Before entire neighborhoods started eating themselves alive.

It felt wrong.

Like seeing a corpse blink.

What the fuck was this place?

Did these people even know what the surface looked like now?

Did they know people traded nicotine pouches like currency up there?

Did they know what starvation did to people? 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

What desperation sounded like?

Or had they all just crawled underground and pretended the world ended politely?

As I moved through the crowd, voices nearby caught my attention.

"...I’m serious, they still haven’t found it?"

I slowed slightly without fully stopping.

Two men stood near a food vendor, speaking low enough that they probably assumed nobody cared.

"The infected?" the other muttered. "No. That’s what they’re saying, anyway."

His friend cursed under his breath.

"How the hell does one of those things even get down here?"

The second man shook his head.

"Government swears they’re doing everything they can to shield us from the bullshit topside, but clearly they don’t know what they’re doing."

The other scoffed quietly.

"I just don’t want this place ending up like the boroughs in Britain."

My eyes flickered slightly.

Government?

Boroughs?

The way they said it made my stomach tighten.

Not like survivors talking.

Citizens.

Like this place actually still believed it was functioning civilization.

Like the apocalypse had borders.

I slowed even further.

The first man rubbed his forehead tiredly.

"My wife’s freaking out. Says if one got in, then there’s probably more."

"There aren’t," the second replied quickly, though he sounded like he was trying to convince himself too.

"They would’ve locked the districts down already."

"...you sure?"

Neither of them answered for a second.

I stared at them carefully.

Trying to piece together what the hell this place actually was.

How long it had existed.

How deep the Crucible’s hands really went.

When I started to step toward them—

"HEY!"

My body reacted before my brain did.

I turned immediately, pulling the cap lower over my forehead as I started walking faster through the crowd.

A soldier shoved past civilians behind me.

"Hey, mister!"

Fuck.

My chest tightened.

I kept moving.

Not too fast.

Not too slow.

The soldier closed distance quickly before his hand landed on my shoulder.

"You dropped this."

I glanced toward his hand automatically.

A small laminated pass rested between his fingers.

I barely registered the symbol on it.

Because by then, he was already studying my face.

His eyes narrowed.

Mine did too.

Fuck.

I turned sharply and ran.

Behind me, the two civilians looked over in confusion as people immediately started shouting.

"HEY!"

The soldier’s voice exploded behind me.

"STOP RIGHT THERE!"

I shoved through the crowd hard enough that somebody crashed into a table beside me.

Food hit the pavement.

People screamed.

More voices started rising behind me.

I didn’t look back.

Didn’t need to.

The lattice already told me where everybody was moving.

A left turn.

An alley.

A staircase.

Move.

My lungs burned as I sprinted deeper through the district.

The city blurred around me in flashes of neon signs and polished concrete.

People jumped out of my way too slowly.

I slammed into shoulders.

Pushed past bodies.

Somebody cursed at me.

Didn’t care.

Behind me, I already heard boots.

More than one pair.

Shit.

I turned sharply into another alley before nearly skidding to a stop.

Soldiers poured out from the opposite side.

Fucking shit, man.

I pivoted instantly and ran the other direction again.

The coat slowed me down.

The cap too.

I ripped both off while running, abandoning them onto the pavement without hesitation.

Cold air hit my skin immediately.

No gun.

No knife.

Nothing.

And fists didn’t mean much against trained soldiers with rifles.

That was the ugly truth people never really talked about.

Survival stories loved making hunted people sound heroic.

Like instinct suddenly made you unstoppable.

It didn’t.

Being hunted felt pathetic.

Humiliating.

Every breath became desperate.

Every decision became panic disguised as strategy.

And most people never got to explain how it felt.

Because they died first.

I spotted a fire escape ladder bolted onto the side of a building and jumped for it immediately.

My fingers caught metal.

I started climbing fast.

Really fast.

Adrenaline overrode the ache in my body as I pulled myself higher.

Below me, voices echoed through the alley.

"There!"

"THERE HE IS!"

I climbed harder.

The metal rattled underneath me.

My breathing turned ragged.

Higher.

Almost there.

Then—

SCREEEEEEECHHHH.

The sound hit me so hard my entire body locked up.

Not loud.

Wrong.

Like somebody shoved a blade directly through my skull.

My vision warped instantly.

My grip nearly slipped.

The ringing tunneled through my brain violently as my eyes dilated and constricted uncontrollably.

Pain exploded behind them.

Not normal pain.

Neurological.

Deep.

Like something inside my head was malfunctioning.

I gasped sharply.

Or tried to.

My lungs spasmed instead.

The sound kept going.

God—

Blood suddenly poured from my nose.

Hot.

Fast.

My fingers twitched violently against the ladder.

My body jerked.

The alley twisted around me.

I couldn’t think straight.

Couldn’t move right.

It felt exactly like seizing.

Only worse.

Way worse.

Because this time, it felt targeted.

Like somebody had reached inside my nervous system and grabbed it directly.

I lost my grip.

My body slammed against the ladder before crashing onto the pavement below with a brutal thud.

Pain shot through my shoulder instantly.

But it barely registered.

I laid there twitching slightly, staring upward as blood slid across my lips.

My arms wouldn’t move right.

Neither would my legs.

What the fuck—

The screeching finally stopped.

But the damage didn’t.

My body still refused to cooperate.

Footsteps surrounded me quickly.

Rifles pointed down at my head.

Boots closed in from every direction.

I tried forcing myself up.

Nothing happened.

One soldier cautiously stepped closer.

Then another.

Nobody touched me immediately.

They looked nervous.

Scared, even.

Like they weren’t sure if I was about to die or rip somebody’s throat out.

One of them finally crouched near me carefully.

"...Jesus Christ," he muttered under his breath while looking at the blood running from my nose.

Another soldier lifted his walkie quickly.

"We got him," he said urgently.

A pause.

Then:

"Subject’s incapacitated."

Subject.

Not person.

Not patient.

Subject.

My vision blurred again.

I tried moving my hand.

It twitched uselessly against the pavement.

The soldier nearest to me noticed.

He immediately backed up half a step.

"Easy," somebody muttered.

Easy?

I wanted to laugh.

My own body didn’t even belong to me right now.

Two soldiers finally moved in and grabbed my arms carefully.

The moment they touched me, something primal inside my brain snapped violently awake.

Danger.

My body jerked hard enough that one of them stumbled backward in panic.

"SHIT—!"

Another grabbed my shoulders roughly.

"Hold him down!"

I couldn’t even tell if I was fighting them intentionally anymore.

Everything hurt.

The alley lights smeared together overhead.

The blood pooling beneath my face looked black against the concrete.

Then suddenly, something stuck into my neck.

A needle.

The man pressed down, plunging the liquid inside my body, leaving my body more limp and numb then it already was.

No one could ever tell me that I didn’t fight to keep awake.

Because I did. I swore I did.

But eventually, my eyes slowly began to drift into darkness, my eyelids feeling like they had bricks stuck to them.

And for the first time in a long time, I felt truly helpless.