17. Cassia #2
I'm in the new wing, stitching a laceration on a Kraaj teenager's shoulder.
I pause for a split second, recognizing the dull copper scales and stubby, unformed horns.
It's the same terrified sixteen-year-old kid whose arm I set on the first night of the outbreaks.
He actually came back to us. I press a comforting hand to his good arm, tying off the stitch, when a familiar voice rises above the noise from the clinic side of the breach.
"Cass!"
Junia climbs through the breach in the wall, hair full with sweat, silver piercings catching the generator light.
Her scavenger gear is shredded along one arm—claw marks from a savage droid, if I have to guess—and she's clutching her data-pad against her chest the same way she clutched it in the loading bay vault.
Her eyes possess a wild and burning manic intensity that only surfaces when scattered pieces of a puzzle finally lock into place.
"Finish that stitch," she pants, pointing at my hands. "Then you and I need to talk. Somewhere quiet."
"I'm a little busy saving lives, Juno."
"Yeah, and I'm about to tell you why the thing killing everyone is nesting right underneath our feet, so maybe hurry it up."
After tying off the stitch and slapping a clean bandage over it, I instruct Wen to take over.
Junia pulls me into one of the storage alcoves at the furthest end of the new wing—a narrow, concrete-walled space behind a row of empty shelving units, far enough from the patient cots that our voices stay contained.
Slapping her data-pad onto an overturned crate, she pulls up the schematic overlay featuring the same map she showed us earlier, now covered in new data points that pulse red like infected veins spreading through the district's skeleton.
"I've been tracking the signal patterns from the surface outbreaks," she explains, fingers flying across the display.
"The coordinated droid attacks in the last twelve hours originate from the same subterranean broadcast node.
They all trace back here." She jabs a finger at the midpoint of the map, where a dense cluster of red lines converges into a single pulsing nexus embedded deep beneath the district's foundation layer.
"There are old infrastructure tunnels running from access points across the district straight down into the source. I've mapped three viable entry routes."
My throat tightens. "How deep?"
"The depth is significant; we are talking about pre-occupation construction that predates everything built on top of it.
The schematics I pulled from the blackout data show at least four sub-levels, completely crawling with infected machines.
" She minimizes the map and pulls up energy readings and thermal signatures.
"But here's the important part. The broadcasts are getting stronger.
Each hour the source stays active, it recruits more machines into the network.
The attacks we're seeing on the surface are distractions.
The real expansion is happening underground, building outward from the core like roots spreading through soil. "
"If we take the source out?—"
"The network collapses. The infected droids on the surface lose their coordination signal and revert to basic programming.
Most of them would shut down entirely." Junia's eyes lock onto mine.
"But somebody has to go down there to map the route and figure out how to kill it.
And I've been scavenging the tunnel systems under this district since I was twelve years old, Cass.
I know the old infrastructure better than anyone alive. "
"You're talking about walking into a Legion hive."
"I'm talking about ending this. But I need time to prep.
There's gear I have to pull from my stash points, like the mapping drones I modified last year.
And I need to run the route metrics to figure out which entry point gives us the best odds of reaching the core alive.
" She taps the data-pad against her thigh, the skin at her brow furrowing with sudden intensity.
"Give me a few days. The access points keep shifting with the attacks, and I need to run fresh route metrics after each one.
But once I lock down a viable path, we go. "
"We?"
"You're the only person I trust to keep me alive down there, and you know the contamination signatures and the medical hazards better than anyone.
Plus—" She glances toward the breach wall and the distant rumble of Rhykor's defense operations above ground.
"Somebody has to bring back proof of what's down there.
Hard evidence that Daxos and his people can choke on.
You're the credible witness, Cass. Scavenger intel gets dismissed.
A medic with documented field evidence gets listened to. "