The heavy fire door to the P3 parking level hissed shut behind me, sealing out the sound of the office massacre.

  The silence here was different. It was subterranean. It smelled of damp cement, old exhaust, and the faint, sweet rot of a city that didn't know it was already dead. I stood on the concrete landing, my chest heaving, my hands around the iron crowbar.

  I looked at my watch.

  2:24 PM. The sky outside the garage entrance was a violent, swirling bruise of violet and neon green. The "Integration" wasn't just a broadcast; it was an atmosphere. I could feel the necrotic energy of the System pressing against my skin, trying to find a way in.

  I didn't move for ten seconds. I just breathed.

  My body was weak. My heart was hammering at a rhythm it couldn't sustain. I felt like a masterpiece painted on a rotting canvas. My soul knew how to kill gods, but my arms were trembling from carrying a ten-pound bar of iron down four flights of stairs.

  Then, I started to laugh.

  It wasn't a hero’s laugh. It was a dry, jagged sound that cracked in the quiet of the garage. I laughed because the smell of car tires and damp concrete was the most beautiful thing I’d ever experienced. I laughed because I wasn't in the cellar. I laughed because Sarah was somewhere in this labyrinth, and for the first time in two lifetimes, I wasn't guessing. I was hunting.

  "I’m here," I whispered.

  I oriented myself immediately. Most people in this garage would be wandering toward the elevators, looking for a way out. They’d be meat for whatever was coming down from the upper floors. I turned left, moving toward Section C.

  I moved with a predatory economy I hadn't possessed ten minutes ago. I kept my back to the pillars, my eyes scanning the shadows under the SUVs. I knew the layout. I knew where the blind spots were. I knew that in Section B, the overhead pipes would leak and create a slick spot that would kill a man if he tried to run.

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  I bypassed it, stepping over the puddle without looking.

  [SYSTEM NOTICE: MENTAL MAPPING INITIALIZED.]

  [USER LEVEL: 1]

  [CURRENT FEAT: 'UNSHAKABLE ORIENTATION']

  I ignored the box. The System loved to narrate, but I was busy listening to the building. The office building was groaning. High above, I heard the first of the windows shattering. I heard the distant, wet screams of the "Culling."

  I reached the stairwell door for the North Tower—the one where I’d left the message.

  I stopped. I looked at the handle.

  The duct tape was torn. The small pry bar I’d taped to the door was gone.

  A surge of something hotter than adrenaline hit my gut. She had been here. She had seen the message. She had taken the weapon. She was exactly the stubborn, brave, terrifying woman I remembered.

  "Section C," I muttered, my pace quickening.

  I didn't run. Running in a parking garage during an Integration was a death sentence. You didn't want to be the loudest thing in a concrete echo chamber. I moved in a half-crouch, the crowbar held low.

  I passed a black Lexus. The driver’s side door was open. A man was slumped over the steering wheel, his body twitching in that slow, rhythmic way I’d seen Dave move. He wasn't a Stray yet, but the transition was mid-way. His fingers were lengthening, scratching deep grooves into the leather of the steering wheel.

  I didn't stop to help him. I didn't stop to kill him. Every second I spent on a "mercy" was a second Sarah spent alone in the dark.

  I rounded the corner into Section C. The lighting here was flickering, one of the ballasts humming with a dying, electric buzz.

  "Sarah?" I called out. It wasn't a shout. It was a controlled, low-frequency probe.

  "Jax?"

  The voice came from behind a concrete pillar near a silver SUV.

  I saw her. She was crouching, her back against the tire. She was holding the small pry bar in both hands, her knuckles white. She looked terrified, but she wasn't crying. She was waiting.

  She looked at me, and for a second, I thought I was going to break. I wanted to drop the crowbar and pull her into my chest until the world went back to normal. I wanted to tell her about the cellar, about the Butcher, about how many times I’d died dreaming of this specific moment.

  Instead, I looked at her hands.

  "Your grip is wrong," I said.

  I walked to her, reaching out. She flinched, then relaxed as she recognized me. I didn't hug her. I didn't kiss her. I took her hands in mine and adjusted her fingers on the pry bar.

  "Don't wrap your thumb over your fingers," I told her, my voice hard and flat. "If you hit something hard, you’ll break it. Tuck the thumb. Pivot from the elbow. Like this."

  She stared at me, her eyes wide and wet. "Jax... what is happening? The sky... I saw Dave... he was..."

  "Dave is gone, Sarah. Everyone who didn't leave is gone. Or worse." I looked her dead in the eyes, forcing her to see the "Veteran's Calm" I was using to stay upright. "I need you to be the girl who grabbed this bar. I need you to follow me. Don't look at the bodies. Don't listen to the noises. Just look at the back of my head."

  She nodded. It was a small, shaky movement, but it was enough.

  "Let's move," I said. "We're not the only things in this garage."