“Interesting,” he said, and the last thing I saw was him flicking his fingers again.
Pain like razor blades slicing me from the inside out shot through my lungs and throat. Sweet, vibrant pain that meant I was still alive. Then I was coughing. I coughed again and again, my sides aching, until I heaved blood and bile all over the floor in front of me. But there was air. I gulped as much as I could and coughed again, my limbs shaking with adrenaline. I pressed my forehead to that sick, hot mess on the floor, unable to push myself up. But I was alive. Breathing. Still fucking breathing.
I don’t know how long I lay there, but no cold hands or hot blood found me. Eventually, I pushed myself up and saw him—still standing at the end of the tunnel, just as he had been before. He had his back to me.
Legs shaking, I walked toward him, pulled by fear or something deeper. I should’ve run, but something inside meknew we’d reached some sort of truce. I reached his side, hobbling, and he didn’t even acknowledge me.
He was standing on a catwalk that overlooked the most open part of the underworld, a massive tunnel that had lived another life decades ago as a sewer for another city, the one that died to be reborn as Neo Stellaris. Three hundred feet below, civilians swirled about. The Kitsune owned the underworld, but even emperors needed people to rule. Shops and stalls lined the massive chambers, branching in every direction into apartments and businesses. In the center of it all, some kids played a game with a ball.
I thought about Ishi then, about me, raised in this buried city. No light, no air. Just the fumes so graciously granted to us by the city above. Mold grew on everything. The whole place was always damp, reeking of mildew and toxins. I couldn’t hear it from here, but I knew every one of those kids was wheezing as they chased that ball.
The suit just stared down at the metropolis, a calm look on his face. I reached into my jacket and pulled out my VaPurr, taking a long drag to settle the vibration of my implants and dull the pain from my still-bleeding stomach.
“What do you think comes after death?” His words were soft, but they cut through the static hum of the tunnel like a knife.
I shrugged, leaning over the catwalk railing as I blew smoke into the damp air. “When you’re dead, you’re dead. Nothing to it. Black void.”
“But you were not afraid to die?” He still didn’t look at me.
“Scared shitless, actually. But what can you do in the face of the inevitable?” Funny, the things you’d say to a complete stranger who almost nulled you.
“So you don’t believe in hell?”
I gave him a look, even though his eyes never met mind. “Compa, look around. We’re already in hell.”
He let out a soft laugh—not menacing, not angry. Fragile, even. “Did you know the Mayans believed that the underworld wasn’t fire and brimstone, but a deep, endless well? Xibalba—a place of fear so vast no light could escape.”
“Thanks for the history lesson, but what—”
A distinctly metallic ping sounded near my ear as a screw flew off the nearest pipe. It groaned and then snapped as water forced its way out. Every pipe overhead burst in a torrent.
Aquatekniks were often viewed as weak. Their environment restricted them because they needed that element to wield their Flux. Hell, I hadn’t even fathomed this suit could’ve been aquateknik when I was hunting him. I never made that mistake again.
At first, there were screams echoing through the enclosed space of the underground. But slowly, they faded into nothing—nothing but the white noise of water cascading down into the pool below, swallowing all the light in a black and endless void. The only light that remained was above our heads.
He walked toward me and placed a hand on my shoulder as he passed. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. His eyes mirrored the water below—deep and dead.
He held out his hand, a matte black card pinched between his first two gloved fingers. My hand moved without conscious thought as I took it from him. I didn’t hear him walk away over the endless silence of the pit below as I clung to the railing in front of me.
I tried to wake up then. I could feel consciousness calling to me, but something pulled me deeper into the abyss—into a memory I hadn’t let myself think about. Not ever.
I waded through the water, not thinking about the bacteria and toxins swirling within.
I didn’t care.
The door to the apartment was cracked open, debris wedged in the narrow gap. I shoved against the flimsy material and it crumbled, soaked beyond recovery. I stepped past the wreckage into the kitchen I’d known all my life.
“Ishi…” My voice was quiet, because I already knew there wouldn’t be an answer.
Small bodies floated face down in the living room. I didn’t look at them.
I didn’t care.
The refrigerator had tipped over, trapping my mother beneath it. A pipe pierced her stomach, the filthy water around her darkening as her lifeblood oozed out. In her arms, the baby.
I didn’t care. I didn’t even know why I was there.
Then she coughed, her body shuddering. There must have been an air pocket in the refrigerator that had lasted until the water receded.
