The low thrum of power hummed through the Excalibur's bones, a tremor just beneath the surface, subtle enough to be lost in the machine's constant grind. But Eric felt it. He didn't just hear it—he felt it ripple through his own chest, like the pulse of an old memory suddenly remembered.

It was the sound of something ancient stirring from its grave.

He stopped, his boots suddenly heavy on the metal floor. The scavenger ahead of him kept rummaging through the corpse of a fallen Conglomerate officer, oblivious to the shift in the air, the feeling of the walls closing in. The stench of burnt flesh, oil, and rust filled his nostrils, but it was nothing. The stench of decay had never stopped him before.

The systems in the lower spire—the ones buried in the heart of the Excalibur—had been left untouched for decades. They were supposed to be buried in dust and silence, a myth among scavengers. There was no reason they should be active. No reason they could be active.

And yet, here it was—the unmistakable flicker of something old, alive again. A pulse that shouldn't be there.

Kael.

Eric's gaze snapped to the flickering light above. His hand went instinctively to his sidearm, though he knew it wouldn't help. The Excalibur wasn't a place where weapons solved anything. At least not with their own teams involved.

He looked up. Daraq was already watching him. Their eyes locked.

For a moment, Eric's pulse faltered. A beat of raw panic, the kind he hadn't felt in a long time. He could see it in Daraq's face. The unreadable mask. But there was no mistaking it. Daraq knew. The pulse—the sound—it had shaken him too. They had both sensed it.

Eric closed his eyes. The slow crawl of regret, of things buried long ago rising to bite you. The first taste of a lie cracking apart at the seams. 

He blinked. Once. Trying to push it all back, to regain control of his face before Daraq could see it. Too late. He knew Daraq saw that too—the tiny flicker in his eyes, the moment of panic.

Fuck.

"Shit," Eric muttered under his breath, looking away, breaking the connection. His mind was already racing. That old tech. Kael had gotten to it—if she had somehow managed to power it up.

She had survived. What if she had burrowed herself into the bones of this place like a ghost, feeding off its whispers, waiting for the world to catch up? Watching them, hearing them now, through the shadows.

Eric swallowed hard, but it felt like his throat was closing in on itself. This was going wrong in a way he didn't understand. 

Daraq's voice pulled him from his spiraling thoughts, low and even, like the calm before an avalanche.

"What was that?"

Eric's shoulders stiffened, but he kept his tone light, too light. "Backup systems, maybe. We've been pushing too much power through this place. Kicking up a storm of old systems."

"You think that's just old systems?" Daraq's voice was a little too sharp, too curious. "That sounded like analog systems kicking in."

Eric stiffened further, turning away just enough to hide the storm inside his head. "Could be. We haven't swept the full map since the collapse."

"You ran comm diagnostics, didn't you?" Daraq's words cut through the air like a knife.

Eric hesitated. For a moment, he almost told the truth. Almost said, No, I didn't run them right. But I didn't need to. The silence spoke volumes. But he couldn't. So he nodded instead.

"Nothing live."

Daraq's gaze never wavered. "And yet."

And yet. The lie tasted foul in Eric's mouth. It felt foul.

Daraq turned and started walking.

Eric followed, boots echoing too loud, too hollow in the silence. His mind churned, running calculations in a panic. If Kael had somehow reached the control core, if she had revived the systems... if she had figured out how to make herself alive again in this place—

No. No way. That whole section had caved in, the walls buckled in on themselves. He'd watched it happen. Watched the rubble fall.

Unless—

Unless she'd found a way. Found a way to worm herself into the very guts of the Excalibur, digging in like an infection.

A twist of nausea clenched Eric's stomach.

Unless his lie was coming undone, piece by piece. Unless Kael wasn't dead. Unless she was waiting—hidden in the depths, watching him, hearing him. Waiting for the right moment to tear the skin off every lie he'd wrapped himself in.

And now, Daraq was walking toward the truth, like a hand gripping the handle of a knife.

"I'll check it out," Eric said, moving away. "What if it's The Conglomerate? They've never come this far down before but always a first time."

"We're moving out," Daraq snapped ignoring him. "This place will be crawling with Conglomerate soon." A few of them stiffened at the mention—muscle memory kicked in, weapons checked, stances squared. But Daraq's eyes were scanning the group. Eyes that darted too quickly. Feet too eager to follow. He was still missing something entirely.

"Mandy, Troy—grab your squads. You're with us."

He didn't wait to see if they hesitated. He trusted their steel, not their faith. That would come later—or not at all.

"The rest of you, fall back to the node. Set a perimeter. Stay dark. Regroup in two hours."

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The tension in the air pressed down on the group harder as they moved. Daraq's boots echoed through the hollow corridors, the sound reverberating off the rusted walls. He didn't need to glance over his shoulder to know that Eric was still following him, the rhythm of his footsteps just slightly off, too quick, too calculated. But Daraq didn't care. He was used to the silence. The silence had a way of sharpening the mind.

The path was familiar, even after all this time. They didn't venture here often. The long dead tube lights overhead flickered weakly, casting brief flashes of light that reminded Daraq of the slow death of the Excalibur. The corridor walls—once pristine—were now streaked with years of neglect, covered in grime and the faint residue of old fires. Puddles of dark water gathered in cracks beneath their feet, the air thick with the scent of rust and decay. It was the smell of everything falling apart, a reminder that the world they once knew was gone.

The old subway station control room was just ahead. But even as the familiar surroundings closed in around him, Daraq's thoughts remained fixed on one thing: Kael.

She was alive. He could feel it deep in his bones. 

He could hear Eric breathing behind him, his quick, shallow gasps punctuating the tension. Daraq didn't turn to look. He didn't need to. Eric was the same as always—stiff, cold, nervous when new things started to come in at them. 

Daraq didn't slow his pace. He didn't have time for Eric's distractions. The air was thick with something else now. Something old, something primal. The Excalibur's pulse thrummed beneath their feet, and it wasn't just the systems coming online anymore. No, there was something more to it. Something that felt like the ship was alive. Watching.

The elevator shaft was ahead. Daraq paused only long enough to override the lock, the hiss of the door sliding open sending a chill through the air. He stepped inside, not waiting for Eric to catch up. The lift rattled as it ascended, shuddering under the weight of the decades-old machinery struggling to keep pace. The flickering lights above cast long shadows over their faces, each passing second pressing down harder, tighter. The farther up they went, the more the past seemed to stretch out, ready to consume them.

The doors opened with a sigh, and Daraq stepped out onto the deck of the upper hall. His eyes swept across the darkened space. The silence in the hall was suffocating, and he could feel he was being watched.

"What's down here?" He whispered in awe. They'd been through many times but never stopped at these lower levels to really see. It was perfect. 

Daraq's heart skipped a beat as he crossed the threshold, the weight of the moment pressing in on him. A signal beeped at him. 

Eric stepped beside him, his eyes darting around the room, searching for something, anything. 

"She's alive," Daraq said quietly, as if confirming a dark, inevitable truth. His voice was steady, but there was something underneath it—something colder. The truth was never easy, and Daraq had learned that the hard way. He was missing something here. Why hadn't Kael come back to them? Tried to reach out? It didn't make sense.

Eric didn't answer, his eyes scraped the walls looking for a clue. He tapped the side of his head scanning for the source of the signal.

"Where is she?" Eric asked, his voice tight, unsure. 

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Kael sat hunched over the interface, fingers working with a surgeon's precision. The air still tasted of dust and copper wiring, but the console beneath her hands thrummed with slow, reluctant life. Lines of ancient code flickered across the screen. The EMP was still offline, but the surveillance relays—those she had coaxed into activity.

One by one, the Excalibur's ancient eyes blinked open.

One by one she could see more and more into the outer corridors. She smiled at her success. Briefly she wondered if they relocate the entirety of The Excalibur here. 

The space around her echoed with the weight of the past. Concrete walls lined with old maintenance signage. Exposed wiring, rust-streaked piping, half-buried rails long since stripped of function. It was more than a control room—it was a forgotten terminal, a ghost station tucked beneath the bones of the city.

There were plenty of corridors, cargo bays, scorched hallways slick with smoke stains from a forgotten era. 

And then she saw them.

Daraq, grim and focused, storming through a lower corridor. And Eric. His face drawn, his stride tense. Mandy was with them as well as six or seven others she didn't recognize. Daraq had kept her working codes and adaptations. Getting to know the rest of the inhabitants had been second on his list. 

But they'd heard her. Both of them. It had been too much to hope for that Daraq would get here first. He would have been easier to talk to. Besides his grim nature, he had saved her life. Her shoulder ached with the memory of him digging the tracker out of her shoulder. 

She followed their movements for a moment and then bent back down to her work. The EMP still wasn't finished. She'd need it but in the meantime. Let them come.

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They were already walking faster. Not running—running would be too obvious—but their boots struck harder against the metal grates and cracked tiles. The narrow corridor, lined with long-dead tube lights and skeletal conduit rails, groaned beneath their pace. The smell of ozone lingered like a whisper.

No words passed between them. There was nothing to say. Not yet.

They passed through the crumpled remains of a supply tunnel, stepping over coils of shattered conduit and puddles of rust-tainted water. The air had a weight to it here. Old, damp, full of memory. A heavy drip echoed from the broken ceiling, rhythmic as a ticking clock.

The elevator shaft still had power. Daraq overrode the lock with a flick of his wrist; the Excalibur responded to his code like an old friend waking from sleep. Eric watched him closely. Daraq was calm. Too calm.

He knows.

They ascended in silence. The lights overhead flickered like dying stars. Faint echoes from deeper tunnels rose and fell like distant trains that would never arrive. The lift groaned as it passed ancient thresholds, each one a scar in the earth's memory. Graffiti scrawled in rust and ash blurred past them like haunted film reels—faces, symbols, warnings. Prayers, maybe. Curses.

When the doors opened, the static hum was louder. Tangible. Alive.

"She's alive," Daraq said. No question. Just a simple, devastating fact.

Eric didn't deny it. He couldn't.

Instead, he asked, voice low, brittle: "Then what now?"

Daraq looked at him—looked through him. Something behind his eyes shifted. Not anger. Not yet. Just the echo of an old grief rising, burned at the edges by betrayal. The kind of look you give a dying flame that once kept you warm.

Eric flinched. Just a flicker. Barely there. Daraq saw it.

They stepped into the upper hall. The silence there wasn't emptiness. It was pressure. The kind that made your ears ring even when there was no sound. The ceilings loomed above like the ribcage of some long-dead god. Grime painted the support beams in flaking layers. The floor was cracked, split in places like a wound that refused to close, revealing the sinew of old infrastructure—tram rails, power lines, dormant machinery curled beneath the concrete like the nervous system of a dead city.

And then, ahead, a door opened with a hydraulic sigh.

The EMP struck.

A white-hot pulse detonated across the chamber—like lightning cracking inside bone. Lights died screaming. Comms flared, shrieked, and fell silent. Weapons jittered in stunned hands before shorting out, metal sizzling with dying energy. Sparks rained. Circuits fried. The air filled with the sharp sting of ionized metal.

Half the squad collapsed, clutching their heads, blinking through a blur of static and afterimages. Others just stood there—disarmed and disoriented, some of their weapons useless.

For Daraq and Eric, it was worse. Their augments died mid-thought. Systems went dark. Muscles faltered. Reflexes dimmed. What was once fluid became mechanical again—ordinary men, armed with meat and bone, no faster, no stronger than anyone else there. The world felt heavier without enhancement. Slower. More fragile. Back to the stone age weaponry most had forgotten to use.

Kael's voice, soft, low, amplified through the halls "Boo."

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