23. Kalev
KALEV
The metal under our boots vibrates with the distant hum of machinery buried deeper than the city’s current map layers allow.
Each step sends a faint echo ricocheting off ancient conduit ribs overhead, like ghosts whispering in a language I half remember.
The air tastes like forgotten storms—damp, mineral-rich, and laced with the tang of oxidized metal, a far cry from the artificial precision of Alliance compounds.
I keep Leah tight on my six, her shadow flickering against tunnel walls as we thread through the underbelly of Yareth Prime’s industrial sector.
Coalition tech isn’t just crawling this zone—it’s embedded, watching.
Layered counter-surveillance loops feed false signals to surface drones, but I can feel their gaze brushing the back of my neck anyway.
“Clear for the next junction,” Leah murmurs, voice low but sharp.
“ETA?”
“Three minutes, maybe less. The drainage chute’s where we breach vertical. Then we scale.”
“Copy. Stay loose.”
I don’t have to look to know she’s rolling her eyes.
We duck under a bent grate, old insulation hanging like ghost-vines, and I catch a flicker of heat signature ahead—small, erratic. Civilian? Or bait?
We both freeze.
I raise two fingers—wait. One breath. Another.
Then we move again, fast and low, slipping past like shadows under pressure.
Up ahead, the corridor narrows, stone damp with runoff and old soot. The flickering amber of an old maintenance beacon sets everything on edge. The League safehouse is close now. Too close.
The hair at my nape stands up a second before the first pulse round hits.
“Down!”
We hit the deck as the wall behind us explodes in shards of ferrocrete and static. The smell of burnt circuitry floods the space—plastic, hot copper, ozone. Leah’s already rolling into position, pulse pistol drawn, trajectory mapped. I pivot, tagging hostiles on HUD.
“Four,” I grit out. “Two elevation, two forward flank.”
“Too tight,” she hisses. “They’re corralling us.”
“Exactly.”
I ping Command. Dead air. No fallback channel. No extraction confirmations.
“This isn’t a mission,” I say, low, cold. “It’s a cull.”
Leah swears under her breath. “And we’re the goats.”
We move.
The plan dissolves—there’s no elegance to this, no grace. Just brute movement and the roar of gunfire. The underpass shudders with each detonation. Leah leads the break, vaulting a collapsed beam with a lithe power I shouldn’t be watching right now, but I do—just a second too long.
A pulse slug kisses my shoulder.
Pain blooms hot, sharp.
“Shit!”
“Kalev!” she yells, doubling back.
“Keep moving!” I bark, grabbing her wrist and yanking us both into the nearest service tunnel. “I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“No time to argue.”
The secondary route is tighter than I remember. I slam a heel into a weak support bracket, shoulder the door open, and we plunge into black.
We run blind for three minutes straight, only the flickering green of Leah’s wrist beacon guiding us.
The walls close in like jaws—moisture-slick, cramped.
Our boots splash through inches of standing water, the smell of mildew choking in the close air.
Somewhere behind us, the fight continues—shouts, another blast.
We’re leaving bodies back there. Friendly or not, I can’t tell anymore.
At the breach point, I slam my palm against the rusted control panel. Nothing. Leah’s already popping the cover, jury-rigging the charge manually.
“Three seconds,” she mutters.
I press my forehead to the cool steel next to her and breathe.
“Of course they’d send us to die,” I say.
“They didn’t expect us to live.”
The door groans open with the screech of years grinding on itself.
We slip through.
Inside the abandoned tram substation, everything is dust and silence.
Thick layers of it coat every inch, muffling even our footfalls. I motion for quiet—point upward. Listening.
Nothing.
But nothing can be worse than something.
I pull Leah into the corner behind a half-collapsed support strut. My arm throbs, the cloth soaked through with blood. She sees it and curses again, this time softly, almost lovingly.
“Let me?—”
“No.”
“Kalev.”
“Later.”
She doesn’t fight me on it. Not really.
Instead, she leans her forehead against mine, just for a second.
The world stills.
And then it spins again.
We take the northeast drain run-off channel, crawling through a chokehold of rust and rebar. Leah’s ahead of me now, shoulders tense, hips shifting with each narrow pivot. I catch the tremble in her limbs—not fear. Not weakness.
Rage.
She knew something. Not what—but something.
And that’s a conversation for later. If we get later.
My boot hits a loose pipe, and the clatter echoes like gunfire.
We freeze.
Nothing follows.
Leah exhales.
“Once we’re out,” she says, “I want answers.”
“You’ll have them.”
“Promise?”
“On my last breath.”
As we reach the tunnel mouth, I see it—the shimmer of thermal detection mesh strung across the exit.
A trap.
I yank Leah back, hard.
“They’re covering every escape. How the hell did they?—?”
I know the answer before she says it.
“They knew we’d use the backups. This was always about containment.”
“And denial.”
She nods. “Dead agents don’t leak lies.”
“We’re not dying in this pit.”
I pop the last two explosives from my rig. Leah watches, eyes wide.
“This’ll drop the ceiling.”
“What if it collapses the entire line?”
“Then we make a new exit.”
“And if we don’t?”
I meet her gaze.
“Then I’ll hold the ceiling up myself.”
We set the charges, backtrack thirty meters.
The blast is thunder and earth and heat.
The world shudders.
Light pours through the broken strata above—dust-choked, golden.
Freedom.
She looks at me, eyes burning.
I nod.
“Go.”