Chapter forty-nine
Riven
The smoke hit fast. One second I could still see Naoya standing near the SUVs. Next, the entire chamber disappeared beneath thick grey clouds, burning my lungs and eyes.
“MASKS!” Somebody shouted from the Olympus side.
They were too organized. Too prepared. This wasn’t panic; this was extraction. Gunfire exploded almost instantly. Deck fired first. Then everybody else followed because nobody could see shit, and suddenly the tunnels became chaos again.
“Down!” Pop barked.
I dropped behind one of the overturned cages just as bullets shredded the concrete above my head.
Somebody screamed. Not fatal, but it was still bad.
The smoke kept getting thicker. Military-grade, of fucking course.
Olympus had tactical gear while Stonebridge gangs fought with ego and trauma.
A hand grabbed my jacket hard. I nearly swung before hearing Dion’s voice.
“It’s a retreat tactic.”
“No shit.”
“They’re leaving.” That snapped something in me instantly.
“No, the fuck they aren’t.” I shoved forward through the smoke despite Dion trying to stop me.
My eyes burned violently as the chamber dissolved into flashes of muzzle fire and silhouettes.
“Riven!” I ignored him.
Because Naoya was getting away. Because Nadia was upstairs in a hospital bed while the man responsible tried disappearing back into the dark like he always did. Because everybody in this fucking town had been manipulated for decades by ghosts pretending to be gods. Not tonight.
I pushed through the smoke toward where the SUVs had been, only to find it empty. Fuck. Engines roared somewhere deeper in the tunnels, moving away. The bastards had another exit. Of course they did. I sprinted after the sound anyway. Behind me, voices echoed chaotically through the chamber.
“Shane’s hit!”
“Watch your left!”
“Move!”
The smoke started thinning as I reached another tunnel branch splitting deeper underground. Fresh tire tracks cut through muddy concrete toward a descending access road. I heard footsteps behind me. Dion.
“You can’t chase them alone.”
“Watch me.”
“You don’t know this system.” Neither did he, not really.
But we understood one thing now: Olympus had escape routes built beneath the entire fucking town. We followed the tire tracks deeper anyway. The
farther down we went, the newer the tunnels became. Fresh concrete, modern lighting, and ventilation systems. These weren’t abandoned mining routes anymore; they were infrastructure. This part of Olympus was active and operational.
The tunnel finally opened into another underground station much larger than the first and completely empty.
Vehicles gone. Files gone. Computers smashed.
They cleaned out fast, too fucking fast, as they planned for discovery eventually.
Dion walked slowly farther into the station, staring at the massive freight elevator built into one wall.
“That leads topside.” I stepped beside him.
“Where?” He looked upward grimly.
“North side.”
Of course it fucking did. Kingsmen territory. No wonder Olympus stayed hidden so long. Nobody crossed into Kingsmen infrastructure without consequences. I violently kicked over one of the broken monitors.
“Fuck!”
The sound echoed through the station. Not enough. Nothing felt like enough anymore. Nadia was unconscious. Olympus was disappearing. Naoya was walking away, smiling like he already won. I was so angry I felt physically sick. Dion crouched near one of the abandoned desks suddenly.
“Wait.”
“What?”
He held up a weathered map stained yellow with age. Old distribution routes carved across Stonebridge in faded ink. At first glance, it looked like old gang territory markings. Then, I looked closer. My stomach tightened instantly. The territory lines weren’t random.
The borders between the East, West, South, and North sides followed the tunnel systems underneath the town almost perfectly.
Not gang-created, but designed. Olympus built the territories intentionally.
Every gang in Stonebridge had been herded exactly where Olympus wanted them.
Drug routes. Weapon movement. Human trafficking.
The gangs kept the town violent while Olympus profited beneath them unnoticed.
“Jesus Christ,” Dion muttered.
Footsteps echoed behind us. Both of us spun instantly with guns raised. It was Pop. He emerged from the smoke alone, carrying a shotgun in one hand, his expression carved from stone. Blood streaked across his knuckles and one side of his face. But the second he saw the map?
Everything in him changed. Not shock, but recognition. Slowly, Pop walked toward us. Dion handed him the map carefully. Silence filled the station while he studied it. Then he laughed once under his breath. A cold, bitter laugh.
“That old son of a bitch.”
“You knew?” I asked.
“Not like this.” His jaw tightened.
“But I suspected something was wrong.” He pointed toward one of the route lines cutting through the South side.
“The Scorpions started moving differently before Callahan died. Smarter. More organized.” Callahan, his son. Nobody in Stonebridge talked about him much. Only whispers. Only grief.
“The Scorpions were stealing shipments,” Pop continued quietly.
“Intercepting routes I didn’t know existed.” Dion frowned.
“They were skimming from Olympus.”
“I see that now.” Clive’s eyes darkened.
“And Olympus responded.” The station suddenly felt colder. Because now I understood. The war years ago between the Kingsmen, LBC, and Scorpions wasn’t random gang violence. It was cleanup.
“The Scorpions tried cutting Olympus out,” I said slowly. Pop nodded once.
“And Naoya helped me burn them off the South side.” Dion stiffened beside me.
It felt impossible to picture. Clive Spencer and Naoya Hattori standing on the same side of anything. But then Pop’s expression twisted into something uglier.
“I thought the Phantoms sold my son out to the Scorpions.” The words settled heavily in the station. Not present tense, but past tense.
“You don’t anymore?” I asked carefully. He stared at the map.
“No.” Something about the way he said it made my chest tighten. Because this wasn’t just regret. This was realization. Years of hatred built on lies.
“I blamed Cordelia.” He admitted quietly.
“Thought she was too soft, too weak.” Dion looked confused.
“What does Cordelia have to do with this?”
“Nothing.” The answer came instantly, sharp enough to cut. Pop folded the map tightly in his hands.
“She had nothing to do with Olympus. None of us did.” His eyes flicked toward me then. Toward the tunnels. Toward everything.
“They used us.” He said bitterly.
“That’s all we ever were to them.”
Not heirs, not bloodlines, not even chosen. We were assets. Disposable criminals keeping Stonebridge distracted while Olympus moved underneath us untouched. A harsh sound escaped me before I realized I was laughing. All these years.
All the blood.
All the funerals.
All the territory wars.
And Olympus sat beneath the town collecting profit from every dead kid buried in Stonebridge soil. Dion walked toward one of the walls where shipment schedules still hung half-burned.
“These dates…” Pop joined him, then went still.
The paper listed spikes in gang violence beside shipment increases. Every major war in Stonebridge coincided with trafficking movement through the tunnels. Manufactured chaos. Olympus escalated violence whenever they needed cover. Pop’s face darkened with pure fury.
“They killed Callahan.” Not a theory. A realization. Slow, horrible, and absolute.
“The Scorpions took the blame,” he continued quietly.
“But Olympus set the whole thing in motion.” My stomach dropped.
Because Callahan’s death created the exact war Olympus needed. The South side burned. The Scorpions got wiped out. The routes stabilized again. Profit restored. Dion looked sick.
“My father knew.” Pop’s expression turned murderous instantly.
“Oh, he fucking knew.” Silence swallowed the station. Then Pop looked directly at me.
“And Nadia figured it out.”
Yeah, she did. That’s why they tried to kill her.
Not because of some prophecy. Not because of lineage.
But because she threatened the machine. And Olympus couldn’t allow that.
Suddenly, shouting echoed faintly through the tunnels behind us.
Everyone immediately raised weapons again. Footsteps, then Deck’s voice:
“Riven!”
He emerged seconds later with everyone else behind him. Shane clutched his shoulder where blood soaked through his shirt, but he was still standing. The second they saw the station, all of them went silent. Skylar stared at the rails disappearing into the darkness.
“What the fuck is this place?” Pop answered without looking away from the map.
“The real Stonebridge.”
Nobody spoke after that because there was nothing left to say. Everything we thought we knew about this town had just been buried alive beneath a mountain.