Chapter Thirty-Two — Burn the City
Chapter Twenty-Five — Burn the City
The answer stayed inside Avery like poison.
No.
No one saved him.
Not when he was a child.
Not when they turned him into a weapon.
Not when they taught children to fear him more than death.
Avery watched Blaine move through the underground ward afterward checking failing
medical equipment with terrifying efficiency while pretending that sentence hadn’t cost
him anything.
But she noticed.
Of course she noticed.
The slight stiffness in his shoulders.
The way he avoided looking directly at the children afterward.
The quiet mechanical precision returning too fast.
Compartmentalizing again.
Surviving.
Lena watched him too.
Then softly whispered toward Avery:
“Why does he look sad if he’s dangerous?”
The question hollowed Avery out.
Because only children could ask something so honest.
“Sometimes,” Avery murmured carefully, “people become dangerous because nobody cared
what happened to them.”
Lena considered that seriously.
Then:
“You care.”
Avery looked toward Blaine again.
He stood beneath flickering fluorescent lights adjusting an oxygen line for one of the
younger children while black veins faintly shadowed beneath the skin near his wrists.
Beautiful.
Broken.
Trying anyway.
“Yes,” Avery whispered.
The word escaped before she fully realized it.
Silas heard.
Of course he did.
The amber-eyed assassin leaned beside an old medical console watching both of them with
a strange unreadable expression.
“Ah,” he murmured softly. “There it is again.”
Avery frowned slightly.
“What?”
“That terrible habit you both have.”
Blaine didn’t even look up.
“We’re busy.”
“Yes.” Silas smiled faintly. “Avoiding feelings through productivity. Very tragic.”
Avery almost rolled her eyes.
Almost.
Then alarms screamed overhead again.
Different this time.
Closer.
Blaine straightened instantly.
“Movement.”
The underground facility lights shifted from green to flashing crimson.
AUTOMATED PURGE PROTOCOL INITIATED.
Every child in the room froze.
Lena started shaking.
“What does purge mean?”
Nobody answered immediately.
Because everyone already knew.
Silas’ expression darkened sharply.
“Amazing,” he muttered coldly. “He somehow found a new level of monstrous.”
Blaine crossed quickly toward the central control panel along the wall.
“Luciano’s wiping the facility.”
Avery’s pulse sharpened.
“How long?”
“Minutes.”
The room erupted softly into panic.
Children crying.
Machines beeping.
Oxygen systems destabilizing.
Blaine ripped open the old terminal casing with brutal efficiency while sparks flew from
damaged wiring.
Avery moved toward the frightened children automatically.
“It’s okay.”
Lie.
But she said it anyway.
“We’re getting out.”
One of the younger boys looked toward the flashing red lights with wide terrified eyes.
“They’ll gas the tunnels.”
Cold slid through Avery instantly.
Blaine heard too.
His expression turned lethal.
“They’ve done this before?” she whispered.
The boy nodded shakily.
“Sometimes people disappear overnight.”
The words nearly made Avery physically sick.
Disposable children.
Disposable lives.
Something dark twisted alive inside her chest.
Not grief this time.
Hatred.
Pure and sharp.
Blaine finally forced the terminal screen alive.
Old maps flickered across cracked monitors revealing underground tunnel routes beneath
the city.
Most were already sealing shut.
“Found one,” he said tightly. “Maintenance rail line.”
Avery crossed toward him quickly.
“How far?”
“Two sectors east.”
“That’s impossible with thirty children.”
“We don’t have another option.”
Silence crashed between them.
Then Lena tugged lightly on Avery’s sleeve.
Small.
Careful.
“Are you really the poison girl?”
The question sounded hopeful.
Not afraid.
Avery looked down at her quietly.
“I don’t know anymore.”
Lena stared at her bare hand for a moment.
Then reached out slowly.
The entire room went still.
Even Blaine looked up sharply.
The little girl pressed tiny fingers carefully against Avery’s palm.
Not the black veins on Lena’s arms. Not contamination meeting contamination and
canceling out. Avery knew that wasn’t it.
It was the absence of fear.
Lena had reached for her without hesitation, without flinching, without the specific animal
panic that always triggered the reaction. Complete and uncomplicated trust from a child
who had no reason to give it.
The poison didn’t know what to do with that.
Neither did Avery.
Nothing happened.
No poison.
No collapse.
Lena smiled.
“She doesn’t hurt.”
The children stared.
Avery physically stopped breathing.
No one had touched her willingly like that since Vinny.
The grief hit hard.
But softer now somehow.
Because this wasn’t death.
This was proof.
Luciano lied about her.
The city lied about her.
Maybe she was dangerous.
But she wasn’t a monster.
Blaine watched her face carefully from across the room.
Something shifted behind his silver eyes then.
Hope.
Tiny.
Fragile.
Like he wasn’t used to seeing impossible things survive.
Then explosions thundered somewhere above the facility.
Dust rained violently from the ceiling.
Silas sprinted back into the ward immediately afterward.
“Well,” he announced breathlessly, “the good news is I found an exit.”
Avery narrowed her eyes.
“And the bad news?”
Silas smiled tightly.
“There’s an army between us and it.”
Blaine immediately grabbed weapons from the ruined tactical locker beside the terminal.
Avery looked at the children huddled together around the failing beds.
Fear.
Weakness.
Black veins spreading beneath fragile skin.
Then she looked toward the city above them.
The Houses.
Luciano.
The Black Vein Program.
All of it built on buried children and poisoned bodies.
Something inside her finally finished transforming.
No more surviving quietly.
No more hiding.
Avery slowly looked toward Blaine.
Then toward Silas.
And softly deadly calm she said:
“Let’s burn the city.”
For one second nobody moved.
The red emergency lights flashed violently through the underground ward while purge
alarms screamed overhead and children huddled together beside failing filtration
machines.
And Avery stood in the middle of it all looking less like a frightened girl and more like the
beginning of something dangerous.
Silas smiled first.
Slowly.
Beautifully.
Like he’d just fallen in love with a catastrophe.
“Oh,” he murmured softly. “There she is.”
Blaine stared at Avery in silence.
Not surprised.
Like some part of him always knew this existed beneath the grief.
Not cruelty.
Wrath.
Different things entirely.
Another explosion thundered above the facility.
Concrete dust rained from the ceiling.
Blaine snapped back into motion immediately.
“We move now.”
The children panicked as lights flickered harder overhead.
Lena grabbed Avery’s hand instinctively.
No fear.
Just trust.
The feeling nearly shattered her.
Silas crossed toward the medical storage units lining the walls and ripped several
emergency Breath canisters free.
“Half these kids won’t survive the tunnel air without filtration.”
Blaine already knew that.
Avery saw it in the tension cutting across his shoulders.
He was calculating survival rates.
Loss probabilities.
Choosing who could physically make the escape route.
The realization hit her like ice water.
No.
Absolutely not.
“We take everyone.”
Blaine looked at her sharply.
“Avery—”
“Everyone.”
“There are critically unstable subjects here.”
“Children,” she corrected.
His jaw tightened.
Because he knew she was right.
But survival had taught him math before morality.
Avery stepped closer toward him beneath the flashing red lights.
“We are not leaving anyone behind.”
The words landed hard.
Not request.
Not debate.
Promise.
Blaine stared at her for one long breath.
Then slowly he nodded once.
Silas looked delighted again.
“This is becoming incredibly revolutionary.”
“Shut up and carry oxygen tanks,” Blaine muttered.
They moved fast after that.
Children wrapped in blankets.
Emergency masks strapped onto pale faces.
Small shaking hands clutching stolen medical supplies.
Avery helped Lena onto her feet while the little girl stared up at her with exhausted
wonder.
“You came back for us.”
The sentence hurt.
Because nobody ever came back in this city.
Avery swallowed hard.
“Yes.”
Lena looked toward Blaine then lowered her voice.
“Did he come back for you too?”
Avery’s chest tightened painfully.
She looked across the ward.
Blaine lifted one of the younger boys carefully into his arms while simultaneously reloading
a handgun with the other hand.
Weapon and protector at once.
The sight nearly broke her.
“Yes,” Avery whispered softly. “He did.”
The purge countdown blared overhead.
TWO MINUTES UNTIL CONTAINMENT CLEANSING.
Silas kicked open the rear maintenance doors leading deeper beneath the city.
Cold tunnel air rushed inward instantly.
Dark.
Wet.
Dangerous.
“Field trip time,” he announced.
The children clustered closer together immediately.
Fear spread thick through the room.
Avery felt the poison stir beneath her skin again responding automatically.
But differently now.
Not violent.
Protective.
Like her body wanted to shield instead of destroy.
She thought about the tablets. About years of carefully managed doses, one extra per cycle,
keeping herself below the threshold where the poison started climbing. She’d spent so long
treating it like a problem to suppress that she’d never properly considered what it was
when it wasn’t being suppressed. What it wanted when nobody was afraid of it.
This, apparently.
Interesting.
Blaine noticed her expression.
“Avery.”
“I’m okay.”
His silver eyes stayed on her a moment longer.
Then he moved.
The first automated defense drones descended from the ceiling moments later.
Metal shrieks echoed through the corridor as black security units unfolded mechanical
weapons beneath flashing red lights.
The children screamed.
Blaine moved instantly.
Gunfire exploded through the tunnels while the assassin dropped the first drone with
surgical precision before it fired.
Sparks burst violently across concrete.
“Go!” he shouted.
Avery shoved the children forward deeper into the maintenance tunnels while Silas carved
apart a second drone midair using hooked blades and reckless grace.
The underground corridors descended sharply beneath Poison City like veins beneath skin.
Rust.
Steam.
Darkness.
And somewhere above them the city still breathed unaware of the children hidden beneath
its bones.
Another drone fired.
A bullet ricocheted toward Lena—
Avery reacted instinctively.
The poison surged outward violently.
The bullet stopped.
Midair.
Everyone froze.
The metal round dropped harmlessly onto the tunnel floor smoking faintly black.
Silence crashed through the corridor.
Even Blaine looked stunned.
Avery stared at the bullet.
“What…”
The poison curled visibly around her fingers like smoke before dissolving back beneath
skin.
Silas looked openly fascinated.
“Oh,” he whispered softly. “Now that is new.”
The children stared at Avery like she’d performed magic.
Maybe she had.
Blaine’s expression sharpened dangerously.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Like he’d just realized Luciano’s theories about her were incomplete.
The poison wasn’t only evolving through destruction anymore.
It was evolving through attachment.
Through protection.
And suddenly Avery understood something horrifying — the city didn’t create a weapon.
It created something it no longer understood how to control.