Chapter 6
Niki
The collar hit the floor with a clatter that seemed impossibly loud in the silence of the cell. For a moment neither of us moved. I stared at the metal band lying on the filthy stone, unable to believe I'd actually done it, that we were both still alive.
I blinked the display away.
Looked up at him.
Jesus Christ.
Up close, without the distraction of trying not to blow us both to hell, he was massive.
Had to be eight feet, maybe more, with shoulders that filled the entire cell and a body that was wrong in ways that made my stomach turn.
Patches of scales. Grafted skin from God knew what.
Fur interrupted by sections that didn't belong.
Claws like scythes and teeth that belonged on something that hunted in nightmares.
His hair hung in matted locks streaked white, falling past his shoulders. He wore only a pair of leather pants, nasty and tattered by time.
He looked like a monster.
But those eyes, gold set in blue, pure Vaktaire.
And when he reached for my hands, when those massive claws closed around my fingers with impossible gentleness, I knew I'd made the right call.
His skin was warm, rough where scales interrupted the pelt, but his touch was careful. Tender. Like he was afraid of breaking me.
"Come with me," I said softly in Vaktaire, the modulator translating. "We have to go now."
He stood, still holding my hand.
I led him to the cell door. It opened, Binwee's hack working perfectly, and beyond it stretched the passage she'd mapped, dark and narrow, leading down.
The smell hit immediately. Not just sewage but something worse, something that made my eyes water and my throat close.
The stench was physical, coating the inside of my nose and mouth with every breath.
Decay, biological waste, chemicals, and underneath it all, something sweet and putrid that made my stomach heave.
I'd been in the sewers under New York, chased suspects through tunnels that reeked of human waste and industrial runoff.
Rogers had told me about the time he'd seen something moving in the water under Grand Central, something with too many legs and eyes that reflected his flashlight. He'd sworn off sewers after that.
I'd laughed at him.
I wasn't laughing now.
The passage was slick, with walls so close Enslak's shoulders nearly brushed them. Water, or something like water, dripped from above and hit my shoulder with a wet plop that made me flinch.
I could barely see. My implants gave me just enough light amplification to make out shapes, the green-tinged vision showing the tunnel stretching ahead, its floor covered in something that moved when disturbed.
I didn't want to know what it was.
My foot slipped and I caught myself against the wall. My hand came away wet and covered in slime. I wiped it on my pants and fought the urge to gag.
"Okay," I whispered. "You've got this. Just like the subway tunnels. Just like—"
Something splashed ahead.
I froze, hand going to the blaster in my pocket.
The sound came again, closer. Something moving through the filth. Something big.
"Enslak," I breathed. "We need to—"
He stopped and released my hand.
I turned, confusion and fear spiking through me. Had he changed his mind? Was he going to leave?
Before I could finish the thought, he bent and lifted me.
I made a small sound of surprise. Then he was moving, cradling me against his chest as he stepped into the tunnel, his feet sinking into the filth. Mine stayed clean and safe.
Something in my chest tightened. This massive, damaged creature who'd been treated like an animal was protecting me from walking through sewage.
"Thank you," I whispered.
He made a soft sound, not words but acknowledgment. His arms tightened slightly, careful not to hurt, but secure.
I pulled out the datapad and its screen glowed faintly, the map showing tunnels twisting beneath the facility with red dots marking guard stations and blue lines tracing our route.
"Left here," I said, pointing.
Enslak turned without hesitation, smooth despite the uneven footing.
My implants shifted to thermal and the tunnel painted itself in orange and blue, warm water glowing amber while stone walls faded to indigo.
Heat signatures ahead. Two guards stationed at a checkpoint maybe two hundred meters above us.
I adjusted our course left, following the secondary passage Binwee had marked.
My implants filtered through ambient noise, the drip of water, the skitter of unseen things, and locked onto something else: voices, guard chatter echoing through the tunnels from multiple directions.
"...thermal signature moving through sector seven... possible escapee... alert all checkpoints..."
My heart rate spiked.
They knew.
I pressed my face against Enslak's chest, trying to escape the sewer stench.
It didn't help much. But pressed this close, the smell changed, or maybe I was just noticing it for the first time.
Beneath the copper tang of blood drying on his skin, there was something else.
Something distinctly male. It cut through the sewage stench like a blade, musk and heat and something primal that made my hindbrain sit up and take notice in a way that had nothing to do with fear.
I forced my focus back to the overlay.
Three more guard positions were converging on our sector, maybe five minutes before they cut off our escape.
I tapped Enslak's shoulder and pointed down a narrower passage flagged as clear.
No heat signatures that direction. No guards, no pursuit.
Just darkness.
We traveled deeper and the smell grew worse, the air turning thick and humid, warm like breathing through wet cloth soaked in rot.
My implants tracked guard communications as they spread out, searching methodically.
Moving away from us.
For now.
The tunnels all looked the same—dark, wet, reeking.
Something that might've been moss covered the walls in thick patches, glistening.
Water dripped constantly and the sound echoed until it seemed like a thousand tiny waterfalls surrounded us.
And there were other sounds: scratching, skittering, things moving in the darkness.
Something splashed, closer this time.
I twisted in Enslak's arms, trying to see.
The darkness swallowed everything.
My implants showed shapes, vague and indistinct.
Might've been debris.
Might've been something else.
"It's nothing," I whispered to myself. "Just water. Just echoes. Just—"
A shape moved in the water ahead, big and easily six feet long. It surfaced briefly, something pale and segmented, before disappearing back into the filth.
I bit back a scream, my hand clutching Enslak's shoulder.
My heart hammered. Each breath came in short, sharp gasps I couldn't control.
Breathe. Focus. You're a cop. You've been in worse.
Except I hadn't. Not really.
The worst I'd faced in New York was armed suspects and the occasional knife fight. I'd never been carried through alien sewers by a tortured prisoner while things moved in the darkness beneath us.
Enslak's arms tightened around me, not painfully, but firmly. Reassuringly. His chest rose and fell with steady breaths. His heartbeat was a slow, strong rhythm I could feel against my side, and I focused on it the way I used to focus on my grandmother's voice during thunderstorms when I was small.
He wasn't afraid.
He'd been through worse. Had definitely been through worse. A century of torture, experimentation, pit fights against creatures that made the thing in the water look like a house pet. This was nothing to him.
The thought steadied me more than any pep talk could have.
If he could survive what he'd endured, I could handle some sewers.
I forced myself to breathe slowly, in through my nose and out through my mouth, counting the way they'd taught me at the academy. One, two, three, four. The panic receded, leaving behind cold, focused calm.
"Okay," I said softly. "I'm okay."
Enslak made that low sound again, somewhere between acknowledgment and reassurance. His head tilted slightly, listening to something I couldn't hear.
We kept moving.
The tunnels twisted and branched off in directions not on the map.
Some passages were partially collapsed. Others flooded with water that rose to Enslak's knees, thick and viscous and smelling of things I refused to think about.
Time became elastic, stretching and compressing in ways that had nothing to do with the datapad's readout.
Forty-three minutes elapsed.
It felt like days.
Something brushed against Enslak's leg. He froze, his entire body going still in that way predators went still, not the stillness of fear but of calculation. I felt the tension ripple through his muscles, heard his breathing shift from steady to alert.
"What is it?" I whispered.
He didn't answer. Couldn't. But his eyes scanned the darkness and his head tilted at that angle I was already starting to recognize.
Then he moved again, faster this time, his strides longer and more purposeful. Whatever he'd sensed, he didn't like it.
The scratching sounds grew louder. Closer. All around us now, echoing until the tunnels themselves seemed alive with it.
I saw shapes in the water. Dozens of them, small things maybe the size of cats, cutting through the filth with disturbing speed. Too many legs. Too many eyes. When one surfaced briefly, I glimpsed rows of needle-sharp teeth in a mouth that opened far too wide.
"Enslak," I breathed. "We need to—"
He was already running.
Not the careful pace from before but real speed, his feet pounding through the sewage and sending up sprays of filth I was grateful I couldn't see clearly.
His breathing stayed steady, his arms locked around me like iron bands while the creatures followed.
I could hear them splashing behind us, their chittering calls bouncing off the walls. They were fast. Too fast.
One lunged from the water, body arcing toward us in a pale streak.
Enslak's hand shot out and caught it mid-leap.
His claws closed around its body, crushed it without breaking stride, and tossed the corpse aside.
More came, a dozen, then two dozen, swarming from side passages and drawn by noise and movement.
Enslak didn't slow.
He kicked one that got too close, sending it flying into the wall with a wet crunch. Another tried to climb his leg and he shook it off, movements efficient and brutal and completely unhesitating. Through it all, he kept me cradled against his chest, his body a shield between me and every threat.
I clung to him, my arms wrapped around his neck, and something settled in my chest despite the terror. He would protect me. I knew it with the same certainty I knew my own name. Whatever came out of that darkness, he would stop it.
The tunnel ahead grew lighter, not much, but enough that I could make out an opening.
"There," I pointed. "That's the exit."
Enslak burst through.
We emerged into open air and the relief hit like a wave.
Clean air. Real air. I sucked in great gasping breaths, my lungs burning as they adjusted to something that didn't reek of sewage and decay.
The scrub brush stretched before us, foothills rising in the distance.
Somewhere out there, Binwee was waiting with the ship.
Enslak set me down carefully, his eyes scanning the terrain with predatory focus. I pulled up the map on my implant and tried to orient myself, my hands trembling from adrenaline and the lingering fear still crawling up my spine.
"Northwest," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "Maybe half a mile."
Movement.
All around us.
Not just a few guards but at least twenty. Maybe more. They burst from the scrub brush like ghosts with weapons raised, charging in from every direction.
We were surrounded.