After delivering the gold bars to Rivya, much to her surprise at my success, I return to the underworld. Talc is in the same spot as before, leaning against the wall.
"I'm surprised the stone doesn't scorch your back," I say.
He shrugs. "I've gotten used to it." He pushes himself away from the wall. "I found the portal."
"Show me."
Through the passages, we walk in silence. Several minutes tick by until he stops, pointing to a dead end. He lifts his foot, but he can't bring it any further. An invisible field blocks his foot from moving forward.
"Seems about right," I say. The air has cooled by about five degrees, and the faintest indigo flickers around the rocks at the end. My boots echo against the stone, the clicks of the shoes magnified in the quiet. I approach the rounded end of the tunnel, then remove a few stones. Light seeps through the cracks in thin, blinding bursts. I remove a particularly large rock, leading to a gaping hole in the wall. A magnetic energy pulls at me, and I feel my body being caught in a vacuum, sucked through the wall.
For a second, white, fluorescent light blinds my vision, and a crushing weight closes around my body.
The next moment, darkness closes in again. I'm crouched down on the floor, looking up at a single, blaring lightbulb. I stand, surveying the room quickly to evaluate where the underworld has spat me out. It appears that I'm in a storage room.
I tap the watch on my wrist. It runs a quick geo-scan, and my coordinates appear on the screen. I plug those numbers into a map. The ping returns with "location unknown."
My brow furrows. I try again, this time searching for the nearest location to me.
Nearest location: The CryoFuture Inc., Headquarters.
Figures. Talc was right. This trip is a waste, and we're no closer to finding all the people who've gone missing.
We're no closer to finding Stellae.
Frustration itches at my fingertips. I try not to let it control me. It isn't over yet. I can still find her.
But it's been two years, two years of scouring the underworld, two years of killing to reach the underworld. What's the point of any of it if I never find her?
I turn around, ready to go back to the underworld. Except I don't see the portal's entrance. There's only a blank wall with some boxes and crates surrounding it.
I groan. Of course it would be an exit-only portal. That's the trouble with the whole, esoteric system. Some are entrance only, like the one I use to enter the underworld. Others are exit only. Very rarely do portals allow both. I turn back to my watch and plug in my coordinates once more, trying to find the nearest way out.
The map of the CryoFuture Talc sent to me appears on my watch screen. I plug in my coordinates, but an error message appears. My eyebrows draw together. My location is not located within the CryoFuture, even though it is the nearest pinnable area. I reevaluate the coordinates, plugging them in a few more times.
After a moment, realization clicks. My coordinates place me about two-thousand meters beneath the CryoFuture. There's no way to the surface except by finding the way down here.
Why is the most used portal near the CryoFuture two-thousand meters below the city? That makes no sense, unless many people are dying down here. But what even is down here?
I stumble through the storage, dodging boxes and crates until I find a door. In seconds, it cracks open thanks to the voltage stealer. Bright light fills a white-walled hallway, which is all too bright considering the dark room I was just in. I squint against it until my eyes adjust to the light.
My boots barely echo against the hard, shiny floor, as white as the walls around me. Step by step, I inch past lines of doors, which blend into the walls except for their rectangular outlines.
Footsteps sound from down the corridor. My eyes dart to the sides, but there's no place to hide. Finally, I look to the ceiling. There's a beam crossing overhead. I leap, my knee braces providing the extra spring I need to reach the top. I wrap my arms around the beam, pulling myself on top of it just as a man rounds the corridor in a white lab coat. He places his ID to the door to open it, then shuts it behind him.
I wait for a minute. Just when I think he won't return, voices carry through the corridor.
"We can plan the surgery for this afternoon," a woman says. As she enters the hallway, I glimpse her face, round with just a few, fledgling wrinkles in her bronzed skin. I recognize her immediately, even though her expression is more hardened than in her picture and black hair is pulled taut in a bun.
I have found Raena Holos.
She raises a hand to a black device in her ear, pressing the side. She removes it and places it in the pocket of her light-pink blazer. Then, she enters a room on the side.
I watch. Time stretches before me, tense from the waiting. At last, Raena reappears, shutting the door behind her. Her shoes click down the hall as she disappears from sight.
Several minutes pass. Slowly, I begin to lower myself from the beam only for another door to open. Another woman in a white lab coat exits. Her shoes echo on the floor, approaching me. I hold my breath as she passes beneath me, holds an ID up to a door directly below, and disappears inside.
I drop from the beam, landing on the floor with the lightest click. I hurry to the door Raena entered, holding my voltage stealer to the ID panel.
It doesn't open. Not even a red light appears on it. I glance around, trying to figure out how to get into the room. Remembering the override code device given to me from Talc, I take it out from my pocket and place the microchip against the sensor. A second later, it beeps, giving me access to the code from my pod. I spring up to the ceiling, hacking the code while a few more professionals in lab coats pass below. Then, when the coast is clear, I drop down to the floor, running the final override. The door opens.
I hurry inside a control room filled with monitors on all sides. By the front of the room, a control panel sits with keyboards and two large, wide screens that are blank. I shut the door, then pass by each monitor, squinting at the tiny images. People on beds, people with their wrists strapped to chairs. On and on it goes, surrounding the room 360 degrees. An unsettled feeling shifts in my gut.
A boy lies on a bed in one image, wrists and ankles shackled to the sides. I lean in to examine his face. Talc. Talc is here! I rush to the monitor, toggling the mouse. A password box appears on the screen, but I use the same override technique Talc showed me in preparation for our break-in into the CryoFuture's headquarters.
And there it is, all the information right at my fingertips. I click on the files, consuming as much as possible.
Cybernetic operations. Volunteers. Population control. Spying. Trustworthy soldiers.
I insert a microchip into one of the ports, downloading an information gold mine. Then, I slip the chip back into my pocket and start for the door.
It opens before I reach it. I find myself face-to-face with Raena Holos.
Her eyes flicker over me before she says, "Cyber assassin 196197."
My fist flies at her face, but she grabs my arm, twisting it to the side. Pain rips through the bone, but I thrust my knee into her stomach. I wrap my arm around her neck while my other hand, still in pain, grabs my gun. I slam the metal down on the back of her neck as hard as possible. She crumples to the ground.
I stand there, panting, while only one word plays through my mind. Cyborg. Raena is a cyborg.
They're all cyborgs. All except the top leaders of Gang One and The CryoFuture.
I shut the door, dragging Raena's body under the table. I look at the monitors again, noting the room Talc is being kept inside. Getting him out won't be easy while he's unconscious, but I must try.
What about Stellae? I look through the rooms, trying to glimpse her face. While I see plenty of other small-framed individuals, none resemble my sister. There are so many screens, so many monitors. It would take forever to track her down.
I glance at Raena on the floor. It's only a matter of time before people discover her. Once they find her knocked out, they'll know someone else has broken in. The entire facility will be teeming with guards.
It feels wrong, but I peel my eyes from the screens, refocusing on the exit plan. If I'm caught, I'm of no help to Stellae or Talc. I need to get out, uncover the information I found to the city. This conspiracy is far bigger than myself, and I can't bring down Gang One's entire operation on my own.
At the front of the room, a monitor displays the empty hallway outside the room. I slip outside, then spring up to the ceiling again. The next beam in the ceiling is an arm's reach away, so I stretch out my arm, tightening my fist around the metal. I release the previous beam, supporting myself with my right arm until my left hand joins it. I work my way through the hallway, swinging from beam to beam, pausing when lab technicians pass below. Pressure builds in my arms, gravity threatening to rip my muscles to shreds, but I hold tight, gritting my teeth against the pain.
Around the corner, an elevator dings, and the doors part for two women and a man in business suits. Their shoes click through the corridor, passing below. I force my breathing into a steady rhythm, in and out my lungs. The elevator doors close ahead.
A man in a white coat passes the trio. "Checking in?"
"Yes," a woman says. "Just need to check a few things in the control room, then go straight back to HQ."
The man in the white coat dips his head, then continues on his way.
Control room — that's where Raena is. If they find her, my presence will be known.
My eyes zero in on the elevator. That's got to be the way to the surface. I swing closer to the elevator so that I'm directly over it. There's an ID panel on the side, but otherwise, no sign of a button to open the doors. I have to wait for someone else to come along and use it. But time is not on my side. Any second, the trio from headquarters will uncover Raena's body.
The man in the white lab coat exits from a room, strolling back down the hall. One hand still gripping the ceiling beam, I draw my gun. I fire once, and the shot hits true, right in the base of his skull. He collapses with a yelp.
I drop to the ground, racing to the fallen body. Turning him over, I tear through his pockets. A door opens down the hall. The first pocket has medical equipment, so I try the next. My hand closes around a plastic card. I dart to the elevator, holding the card up to the ID reader. Voices and footsteps carry from around the bend. Adrenaline pulses through me, more potent than the shot that killed the lab technician.
The elevator dings. I duck inside, slamming my hand onto two arrows pointing at each other. Slowly, the doors close. I press myself into the corner, hiding myself from the view of the people rounding the bend. The elevator starts upward, then jolts to a stop.
They've stopped the elevator. More than likely, they'll bring it back to ground level to stop whoever's inside. I jab my finger on the arrows apart button. The doors fail to move. I try slipping my hands between the elevator doors next. They hold fast, so I remove my dagger, bracing it against one door.
The magnetic clasp of the doors breaks, and they slowly slide apart, revealing the elevator shaft. I climb down just as the elevator drifts downward. I hang on the side of the elevator, swinging my legs up to a series of bars crossing beneath the elevator. My body slides beneath the elevator just as it rests on the ground level. Stifling heat surrounds my body in the confined space, centimeters away from the floor level. Dust clouds my lungs with every inhale. Muffled voices carry over me. Then, the doors shut, and the elevator moves upward once more.
I squeeze hold of the elevator bars. The elevator car rises higher and higher, until I can't even see the bottom any more. My fingertips tingle from the height. A number circles back in my mind: two-thousand meters. Not even my knee-braces can save me from a fall at that height.
The journey upward lasts an eternity. My palms grow sweaty, threatening to slip from the metal. Sweat breaks across my forehead, and my body feels cramped, wishing nothing more than to get out into the open again.
At last, the elevator pauses. I wipe each hand on my shirt in turn, then crawl out from my spot. I dangle in the air, watching through the crack as people step out. After the last one passes, I crawl out into a dimly lit room. I duck behind one of the storage crates shrouding the elevator's entrance. The trio from before exit the room into the CryoFuture's main corridor.
Is it possible for me to sneak out undetected? I peer around the boxes in the storage room. Nothing of use there.
The door opens again, another woman in a suit. She stalks toward the elevator, port in hand. Right before she reaches the closing doors, I strike her on the back of the neck with my dagger's hilt. She crumples to the ground. I drag her behind the crates. Her attire is my ticket out of here. As long as I keep my head down and look like I'm on a mission, no one will question yet another employee in a business suit exiting the building.