I meet her gaze.
“Yeah,” I confirm.
She exhales slowly, her shoulders tightening slightly.
“Think they’re expecting us?” she asks.
I hesitate just long enough to make the answer obvious.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think they are.”
Her expression hardens, something sharper settling into place.
“Good,” she mutters. “Makes things simple.”
“Not exactly the word I’d use,” I reply, shifting my stance as I glance back toward the tunnel we came from.
“Then pick a better one,” she says.
“Complicated,” I answer. “Very, very complicated.”
She huffs a breath.
“Yeah, okay.”
I move past her, angling toward a secondary passage that branches off the chamber, narrower and darker than the main route.
“Not going up there,” I say. “Not yet.”
“Then where?” she asks, falling into step beside me.
“Under,” I reply. “There’s another access point closer to the inner sectors.”
“And fewer patrols?” she asks.
“Different patrols,” I correct. “Less visible, more controlled.”
“Great,” she mutters. “Love that for us too.”
We move deeper again, the air growing thicker as the tunnel tightens once more, and I feel the shift in pressure as we pass beneath structural layers of the city above. The echoes changehere, sharper, more contained, and the faint crackle of systems bleeds through the stone, a constant vibration that settles into the bones if you stay down here long enough.
“You’re quiet,” I say after a while.
“Thinking,” she replies.
“That’s dangerous,” I mutter.
“Yeah,” she says, her tone dry. “You should be worried.”
I glance back at her, catching the way her expression has shifted, less reactive now, more focused.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer immediately, her gaze tracking the path ahead.
“They didn’t just cover it up,” she says finally. “They’re locking it down.”
“Yeah,” I reply. “Hard.”
