Relief flashes across her face.
“You made it.”
Hannah’s chest tightens painfully.
Because nobody ever came back for them before.
The teenage boy limps beside her, injured but standing.
And in his arms—
the smallest little girl clings tightly to his neck asleep against his shoulder.
Safe.
Actually safe.
The bunker suddenly BOOMS somewhere below us.
The floor jerks violently.
Gabriel checks the structural monitor.
“We need to get out NOW!”
The freight tunnel floods with movement instantly.
Children.
Operators.
Survivors.
Together.
Clay grabs my hand tightly as we run into the subway tunnel system beneath Bucharest.
The ceiling cracks behind us.
Concrete collapses through the corridor we just escaped.
Ascension is finally dying.
The emergency tunnel stretches endlessly ahead beneath flickering old subway lights.
And slowly—
very slowly—
fresh air starts hitting the tunnel.
Real air.
Not filtered bunker oxygen.
Outside air.
The children notice too.
