Darkness still clung to the ruins of the Historic District when Damian gave the signal. At his side, Sasha double-checked her equipment, now that they were moving quickly. The latest Dark Stalker, a recently converted husk of a nearly-dead vagrant, crouched behind her—its breathing low and rhythmic, its eyes faintly pulsing with violet light, and its cloaking active.
"Map the drone rotations one last time. I don't want any last-minute changes," Damian ordered.
Sasha nodded, pressing her palm against the Stalker's head. The creature shuddered as it released it's subtle echolocation. In its mind, a network of patrol patterns bloomed—routes, sweeps, and blind spots. She blinked and smiled faintly.
"It's clear for another twelve minutes. Then we hit an overlap."
Damian nodded. "That's more than enough."
When they went downstairs, Grace was busy organizing the Conduits. Jason took the front, fists clenched, every motion taut with readiness. Marissa flanked him, tuning her resonance triggers. Rachel lagged slightly behind, coin flicking silently in her palm, while Elliot kept close to Grace's side.
Damian handed Grace a folded map, corners marked in blood-red pen.
"You're the fallback leader," he said. "If Sasha or I get separated from you all, lead them across."
Grace nodded, the weight of that authority pressing into her shoulders.
They moved swiftly through the broken blocks of the Historic District, slipping between half-fallen walls and rotting debris. At the end of a shattered alley, they reached the rusted manhole cover Sasha had scouted two days earlier. Jason and Damian lifted it while Sasha and Rachel secured the descent.
The sewers were colder and smellier than expected. The air hung heavy with damp concrete and the faint scent of decay. As they sloshed through the ankle-high water, the group tightened their formation. Grace whispered directions, Sasha mapped the best exits. Then came the sound—boots.
Damian raised a hand, halting them.
Through a distant tunnel, First Sons patrols moved with flashlights and gas-masked precision. The sewer network, once forgotten, had become a search vector.
Rachel stiffened. She flipped her coin. "Turn left at the fork. Wait ten seconds. Then forward."
Grace didn't hesitate. She motioned the others and followed Rachel's instructions.
Just as they paused behind a column of rusted pipes, a searchlight passed over the junction they'd abandoned. Silent breath held. A drone whirred by overhead.
Then: a splash.
Elliot had stumbled. His foot slipped on algae and hit the water hard.
The light swung back.
Jason acted on instinct, pressing Elliot against the stone wall, shielding him with his body just as a beam passed through. They froze, breathless.
The patrol moved on.
They exited the sewers near a collapsed apartment just shy of the bridge. From the roof, they had a front-row view of war.
Cole MacGrath blazed across the battlefield like a storm incarnate. His lightning arcs disintegrated Dust Men by the dozen, his movement a blur of electricity and rage.
Opposite him, Alden Tate floated inside a telekinetic sphere, debris orbiting his body like armor. He bellowed commands, and suicidal Dust Men surged forward. His golem-enhanced form launched whole vehicles toward Cole, forcing him into acrobatic dodges and mid-air discharges.
Damian narrowed his eyes.
"So that's the power of raw instability," he murmured. "Grace… one day, you'll probably be able to outmatch that."
She said nothing, eyes locked on the chaos.
Below, Sasha deployed the collapsible ladder, extending it over the unmanned DARPA gate. The battle had drawn away the guards—just as she'd hoped.
"Go," she said. "One at a time."
Jason climbed first, followed by Marissa and Rachel. Grace signaled Elliot, then climbed up behind him. Sasha helped steady the ladder while the Dark Stalker crawled vertically alongside them, invisible.
They had barely touched down when a Dust Men scout team noticed them.
"Enemies sighted!" one screamed.
Bullets sprayed.
Grace raised both hands, halting the incoming rounds mid-air with a concentrated telekinetic barrier. Marissa unleashed a piercing sonic blast that warped the air, sending the Dust Men sprawling.
Jason charged, catching stray bullets in his chest and redirecting the kinetic energy in a hammering blow that cracked the ground beneath the attackers.
By the time Sasha stepped forward, it was already over.
"Keep moving," Damian said. "That was just the edge."
The bridge was hell.
They moved fast—Jason at the front, absorbing stray lightning bursts. Grace followed, telekinetically batting aside shrapnel and debris. Rachel walked a calculated path, veering only when her coin whispered wrong. Elliot, Damian, and Sasha brought up the rear, with Marissa launching shockwaves at Dust Men foolish enough to get close.
Overhead, cars were flung, areas of the bridge collapsed, and every ten steps came with a new hazard. The Dark Stalker slithered ahead unseen, eliminating stragglers with stealth and ferocity.
The world was fire and steel.
At one point, a Dust Men grenade landed near Elliot. Before he could react, Grace hurled it skyward, and it detonated in a harmless burst above.
Damian began to wonder where Alden and the Dust Men along with Sasha and her Reapers managed to get such weapons. If it were just guns he could understand but grenades too made it strange. There must be someone out there dealing in high-grade weapons even able to outfit a few with miniguns which should be military-grade weapons.
The only ones who came to mind that could do something like that would be DARPA. Moya was probably behind it hoping to use the Dust Men and Reapers to weaken the First Sons but now that she made contact with Cole she must have stopped arming them. At this point, Cole should have figured out her ruse to trick him into finding John White and the Ray Sphere meaning she was spiraling. This was the best opportunity to fully change Grace's allegiance.
Regardless he needed to focus on that later so he kept moving.
Ten minutes felt like an eternity.
When the last of them crossed, the bridge shuddered violently. Behind them, a truck flipped, crushing several Dust Men, and Alden screamed, launching another volley of psychokinetic blasts.
But it was too late.
They were through.
The Warren greeted them like a mouth ready to swallow.
Damian led them through a winding path until they reached a graffiti-covered garage tucked away in a back alley. Inside, it was shockingly livable—an old thug hideout, once belonging to Jake a man Damian had consumed.
Jake's safehouse was scouted by Sasha. It wasn't much. It had four old cots, a working shower, and a functioning fridge but due to the power outage, it had stopped functioning so everything inside was spoiled.
As soon as the steel door clanged shut behind them, the tension broke.
Grace exhaled and dropped her pack. "We made it."
Sasha's face was unreadable. "Only halfway."
Damian nodded. "But that's far enough for one night. Rest. Janet and I will scout the next route."
"Shower's mine!" Marissa gasped, half-joking as she collapsed onto the floor.
"You can have third," Sasha said, already peeling off her jacket. "Alex and I will go first. Just to be quick. Since we'll be heading out to scout and grab some food."
"No arguments here," Jason muttered, already shaking sewage water out of his boots. "Smell like a corpse in a junkyard."
"I think that's a compliment around here," Rachel said, her coin clinking once in her hand.
Sasha and Damian disappeared into the bathroom, the rusted door screeching shut.
Damian turned to her. "Five minutes?"
"Three minutes each," Sasha said. "They need to believe we're human."
Inside, they took turns in the shower handle just enough to release a sputtering stream of tepid water.