21. Cassia
CASSIA
We make it back to the clinic as the riot smoke thins into a gray, acrid haze clinging to the rooftops.
The streets are quieter now, exhausted rather than calm; a whole district screamed hoarse overnight only to wake and discover the screaming changed nothing.
Rhykor walks beside me with his wings pulled tight, hidden by a salvaged cloak he grabbed from a supply cache three blocks back; the grease-stained fabric drapes over his vest and horns in a disguise that fools absolutely nobody but at least discourages the few civilians shuffling through the halls from making direct eye contact.
As we walk, his hand finds the small of my back.
The contact sends warmth bleeding through my jacket and into the space between my shoulder blades, a reassurance I should probably resent and instead lean into like a stray animal cuddling a heat source.
His steady presence grounds me. The frantic, desperate energy from the tunnels smooths into a quiet, constant reassurance that I harbor between my ribs, holding it close like contraband.
When we reach the clinic, heavy barricades block the entrance.
The first thing I register is how busy Junia has been.
Overturned supply crates and welded scrap choke the main corridor, forcing anyone approaching into a narrow kill zone dominated by two salvaged pulse turrets mounted on cargo pylons.
The breached wing beyond has been converted into a staging area, with pallets flush against the walls and emergency rebreathers stacked in labeled rows.
Portable light rigs cast sharp white beams across the corners.
Three dozen survivors huddle along the corridor walls with shock blankets around their shoulders, waiting with glazed, hollow patience—panic burns calories nobody here can afford.
Junia stands at the main triage station with a data-pad in one hand and a wrench in the other, practically vibrating with nervous energy.
She's fully organized and strapped the medical crates into mobile supply packs for underground transport.
The chaotic clinic I left yesterday has been transformed into a forward operating base, and the speed of it sparks a deep swell of gratitude I'll never say out loud because Junia would make fun of me for a month.
"You look like you spent the night in a condemned building," she announces, eyes sweeping between me and the towering shadow at my back. "Which, knowing you, is probably accurate."
"Things are getting worse topside," Junia continues, her focus sharpening as she taps the data-pad against her thigh.
"After the riots, Daxos's enforcers pulled back to reinforce the main terminal grid.
The outer corridors are open, but that only means they're regrouping.
We move these people into the lower drainage network now, while the chaos still gives us cover, or we lose the window entirely. "
I sling my med-pack over my shoulder and check the power cell on my pulse pistol. "How's the air quality in the sub-levels?"
"Conditions are marginal because the atmospheric scrubbers in the deep infrastructure are running on fumes, and although I have rigged emergency rebreathers for the first two hundred yards, we are on our own once we pass that point.
" She chews her bottom lip, the same tell she's carried since I met her, the one that means she's already three steps ahead and going over the odds.
"The drainage network connects to the primary logistics tunnels beneath the central grid.
If we're going to trace the Legion source, those tunnels are our best entry point. "
I glance at Rhykor. He fills the corridor behind me, cloak pushed back from his shoulders, eyes tracking between the barricades and the civilians and me with the compulsive vigilance I've stopped trying to argue him out of.
The scrape across his shoulder blade has already scabbed over, Kraaj regeneration turning what would sideline a human patient for a week into a fading inconvenience, though the rigid way he holds his shoulder betrays the deep, grinding ache of his body burning through immense energy to repair tissue that fast.
"Leave the upper access points' security to me," he says, already shifting into the clipped, operational register he uses when the soldier takes over.
"I've already dispatched a squad to Mother Serak.
While her chamber is disconnected from the digital grid and deep enough to avoid the surface sweeps, I'm not leaving her undefended.
Daxos will try to seal the ventilation shafts once he realizes the civilians have moved underground.
I can hold the terminal corridor for several hours before they bring enough firepower to force the issue. "
"And if they bring it before that?"
"Then they learn what several hours of the Dragon buys." His mouth twitches, barely enough that I catch it. Then the warmth drains from his face as the commander returns, prompting him to march out and brief the scout units Junia stationed at the perimeter.
I stare after him. My very marrow registers the distance; a fragile, insistent frequency in my chest stretches tight, pulled thin by his withdrawal toward the stairs.
As I start to turn back to Junia, a high-frequency chirp punctures the static on the comm terminal mounted to the triage station wall. Nysera's encrypted signature flashes across the screen, followed by a compressed audio burst.
"The eastern transport lines are clear of Legion interference," Nysera relays, devoid of any military posturing and projecting absolute urgency.
"I've secured three heavy cargo shuttles at the old rail yard near Sector Four.
Get the civilians to the deep junction shelter.
I will initiate extraction the moment you signal the path is secure, so move fast."
Junia and I lock eyes across the triage station.
An extraction route exists. It is a real one—offering cargo shuttles and a destination outside the district.
This gives the families huddling in this corridor a chance to survive the week.
The confirmation sends a jolt through the room.
The nearest survivors straighten, parents gripping children tighter with expressions that look dangerously close to hope.
"You heard her," I call out, checking the wrist-mounted comm relay and scanner Elias rigged for me from salvaged parts.
It's clunky, but he managed to load it with offline linguistic databases and an encrypted audio-capture partition, even though the comm capabilities are short-range and prone to static in deep infrastructure.
Still, it's functional enough to maintain contact through the upper tunnel levels.
I clip my med-pack tight and draw my pulse pistol. "Let's move."
The descent takes an hour.
We lead the caravan out the clinic's fortified rear exit, sprinting two blocks through smoke-choked alleyways to an old municipal maintenance plaza.
I pry open the heavy iron bulkhead sealing the surface well, ushering them down into the sheer drop of the drainage network.
My flashlight cuts a pale beam through air that grows colder and more metallic while we drop levels.
The walls transition from concrete to ancient stone blocks slick with mineral deposits and moss, pre-occupation construction from the original settlement foundations.
Water pools in the lower channels, ankle-deep runoff that soaks through my boots and numbs my feet within minutes.
Children whimper in the line behind me, and their parents murmur reassurances that sound more like prayers than promises.
Junia walks the middle of the column, distributing rebreathers and keeping the pace constant with a combination of gentle encouragement and creative profanity aimed at anyone who tries to stop moving.
She is remarkably good at this, performing much better than her chaotic scavenger persona would suggest. The woman who crashes through doors and dumps stolen tech on my counter with zero ceremony becomes someone else entirely underground, where she is calmly focused and reading the tunnel infrastructure with an intuition born from years of crawling through District Seventeen's forgotten guts.
We reach the deep junction shelter, a circular chamber where old structural pylons support the crushing weight of the market district above.
Garrow is already there, having traveled ahead with a small advance group, his granddaughter asleep on him and a thermos in his free hand.
He signals to me once, weary and relieved, and begins organizing the families into the dry alcoves along the eastern wall where the structural integrity holds strongest.
I key Nysera's frequency on my wrist comm. "Civilians are in position at the deep junction. Eastern alcoves, three dozen plus Garrow's advance group. The path from here to the Sector Four rail yard—is it passable?"
A burst of static sounds, followed by Nysera's cut response, "Passable and holding. Shuttles are prepped. Signal when you're ready for extraction, and I'll have the first transport moving within fifteen minutes."
The survivors settle into the alcoves while Junia coordinates the last of the rebreather distribution.
Shopkeepers and mechanics fill the space.
Teenagers stand by when they should be arguing about music and chasing each other through market stalls.
An elderly Kraaj woman with cracked horns and arthritic wings shares a blanket with a human girl who braided her hair while they walked.
Each of these faces is someone else's loved one, and the survivors in this chamber have been sentenced to death by a general who has never set foot in the district he's ordering burned. The shuttles waiting at the rail yard are real. The extraction route is open. Daxos’s authorization of the purge had left them trapped, but now, these families have a way out.