If ever there were a time to have my old strength back, it would be now.

The hatch yawns open to reveal a vertical, hexagonal shaft cut into the concrete crust of the city. I feel naked without my sixth sense of ki, the comforting warmth of my aura, the light within my heart that never let the darkness close its jaws. Worse, I feel trapped. Cal braces above me, mirroring my every move as we descend, a knife ever behind my back. Every careful shift down the walls of the tunnel feels like I’m sliding down the gullet of some city-sized monster. Willingly moving towards my own digestion. My instincts scream at me to get away from the unknown below, not sink deeper into its grasp. But there’s no backing out now. I’m in too deep. The only way out is down.

Hand over hand we descend into the darkness. It’s unbearably quiet. Claustrophobic. My breath echoes off the shaft mere inches away, reverberating up and down for seconds at a time. Cal’s shoes scrape near my ears. She hisses out a curse when her toes slip against the concrete; instantly corrected. I focus on the climb.

It’s only when my palm flattens against a surface far smoother than the concrete that I call for a pause, bracing my feet against the opposite wall. Cal nearly collides with me anyways. Her voice whispers out of the darkness.

“What’s the holdup?”

I pull my JOY out of my pocket and toggle on the shell’s meager light, splaying a thin sheet of electric-blue color over the weird patch of concrete. Takes a little awkward shining before I can see the whole thing. A large -1 in dark orange paint.

“This must be the first sublevel,” I say, glancing a little further down the shaft. Endless darkness and seamless concrete walls as far as I can see. “Don’t know how we’re supposed to get out, though.”

Cal’s JOY flicks on for a moment, then back off. “She’s pretty far below us, and the maps of this building are classified by the seal of the Director. Jolie must have done it herself years ago. I can’t see anything except our relative locations.”

I look up between her knees. Pale yellow eyes gleam back with serpentine brightness. “How far?”

“Sublevel seven, or close enough.”

I glance down into the dark, lips tight. “Let’s hurry.”

An invisible weight presses down on my shoulders the further we go. The silence wraps us like a morgue. Stifling in its cold. My body tenses with unease. My mind races far ahead of the repetitive shifting of hand-foot-foot-hand, wondering what waits below, keenly aware of what pushes me on from above. Another sublevel marker passes beneath my real palm. I’m breathing heavier, now. Or maybe it’s Cal. I can’t tell in the dark. All I can do is climb.

“How far down do you think this goes?” I ask, once we’re past the fourth sublevel. Cold sweat beads on my arms.

“…I don’t know,” Cal mutters back after a moment. She pauses as we pass another painted marker. “We have to be in the crust of the city now. Maybe it goes all the way to the Vents. Or further.”

Minutes later, we finally arrive at the marker for the seventh sublevel. I blindly feel around the concrete walls until my fingers finally slide into the grooves of a familiar handhold, just like the one that opened the entry hatch. Out of habit I look up in search of the closet we entered through; there’s nothing but blackness above. I motion Cal down so we can brace back to back, and together, we force the ancient hinges into motion. Corroded stone grates like a tomb as it inches open. The solidification in the joints tells me that these tunnels haven’t been used in centuries. Maybe ever. We’re in something as old as the capital itself.

Another hexagonal tunnel, just as cramped but now horizontal, lies beyond the hatch. Faint illumination from some further source helps me guide myself inside first. Cal follows, effortlessly swinging in. I hold a finger to my lips once she rights herself. Black hair dips in acknowledgement. Her eyes are wide in the darkness, fingers tensing, reaching for a knife she left behind. She feels it too. The unease.

Lowering down into prone, I lead the way into the crawlspace one lanky elbow at a time. I’m tall enough to barely be able to move here. Cal has it easy. We crawl around a tight corner and the roof of the crawlspace changes from solid concrete to slitted grating just above our heads. That faint light from before now cuts through in precisely spaced slices of pale, late-night color. Tiger stripes of illumination inch over my body as I crawl forward. Hair raises along the top of my arm from nearby electromagnets. Some kind of quiet machinery hums somewhere out of sight, punctured by the occasional hiss of degassing air.

I roll onto my back to peer through the slits, skin pressing flat against the cold floor. Goosebumps crawl up my arm. Can’t see much outside. Just the distant ceramic ceiling of some vast technological space, colored by those pale running lights. Doesn’t sound like there’s anyone around.

I glance back at Cal, tap my JOY. She buries hers under her palm and squints at a tiny geo-tracker. We’re almost on top of Jolie. Shutting it back down, she looks up with a shrug. Points at her ear. Yeah, me neither. My luck might finally be changing if we’re only a room or two away. No better place to make our entry than here.

I press a fingertip to one of the screws holding down the ceramic grates. Nodding, Cal crawls between my legs and rolls onto her back too, prying at the screws with a knife. For once, I’m almost happy to have a professional assassin along. Four screws pop free into her hand in the time I would struggle to do one. Once she’s finished, I wrap my fingers around the grate, tense my arms, and immediately jerk my hands back down as the loud hiss of a hydraulic doorway suddenly opens right above us and a single titanic thump reverberates through the floor, the concrete, and the metal city beyond.

“Apprentice.”

Absolute fear freezes me in place.

It’s him.

Time slows as the dread presence of a gladiatorial god thunders ten centimeters over my head. Massive gargoyle feet hammer the deck with a weight that could pulverize a skull simply by stepping on it. Thousands of pounds of titanic platinum gleam as the creature passes beneath motion-activated lights. I know the rest of his shape even without seeing it. Huge draconic wings. Nine feet of unmatchable killing potential. A sinuous meters-long tail that undulates behind like a serpent of prey, scraping across the floor.

My whole body locks up. Unable to move. Not even daring to breathe as the shadow of the reigning Champion, Gami, sweeps over me with all the subtlety of a solar eclipse.

I feel every colossal footstep rattling my bones. Shaking nails dig into my palm till it bleeds. Warmth trickles and drips between my fingers. The pain reminds. Tearing at my fear, spurring my mind back into action. Summoning up more useful emotions.

How easy it becomes when a second voice joins the beast who killed my father.

“Forgive my delay, master. Matters at the arena needed tending to.”

Out goes the terror. Replaced by distilled, icy fire as for the first time in three agonizing years I hear the one voice I know better than my own. It belongs to the boy who left me for dead. The enemy he became and who I’ve chased so, so far. I’ve seen his face so often since I stepped into this city. But only with my own two eyes can I grasp just how much Thane has evolved since I last saw him.

He is his master’s disciple now. A thoughtful, calculating killer with savage, jet-black hair and passionate eyes forged from cracked and molten gold. Tall and powerful, yet humble in his stance. Preternaturally graceful in every movement. Peerless in his precision. A perfect emulation of the legends who raised him. Everything a Champion’s apprentice should be.

Thane’s arms are crossed beneath a rough, homespun cloak that whispers just above the floor. His shirt is equally rough, bound by strings at its simple collar. Weathered boots of village make press softly against the ceramic underfoot, keeping pace with the lumbering beast at his side. The passing scent of coffee and thatch frays the strands of my self-control to the brink. It snaps as I hear the clicking of hard heels following behind him.

Fresh from the gala, Valance brings up the rear side-by-side with my aunt. They pass so close I could almost reach out and touch Jolie’s stilettos. My aunt’s face is set in pale reservation. Grimly following along like she has a loaded weapon pointed at her.

I can’t stop myself. Timing the bone-jarring thuds of Gami’s stride, I wait for scant seconds after they pass before refirming my fingers around the grate.

Cal’s nails dig into my leg. “Don’t you dare,” she hisses, the faintest possible sound. “We can’t move too early.”

“Let me up,” I snarl back.

“No. Hell no. We are NOT gambling our lives on your death wish when the fucking Champion is here, you rice farming-”

Wrong answer.

I jab an elbow into the nerve cluster in her stomach and her body spasms out of control, grip releasing. The grate lifts free as quiet as a whisper unspoken. Cold hate spurs me into movement. I am not myself as I roll out of the crawlspace and into the wake of a living god. I should be frozen with fear. Most people would be. But the petrification that gnaws at my limbs evaporates every time I catch a glimpse of the young man who walks at Gami’s side, just as he did with my father.

I’d almost forgotten what my own strength felt like. It roils inside me now like I’m waking from a years-long slumber; pushing and straining at its confines. Alive again. The shock of a frozen lake against naked skin burns through my nerves as my soul begins shuddering back to life, reacting to the emotion. The old pulse of ki worms into my veins like poison, spreading further with every beat. A rusted, instinctual reawakening of power fueled entirely by killer instinct.

I slip out into a formidable, technological space filled with vast dominions of cutting edge medical machinery. Tracking from just within earshot, straining to hear Thane’s voice. Mazes of ancient computational consoles stand interspersed between groves of dried-out vats for liquid storage, growth pods for unborn children, and dozens of workstations that knit the technological forest together. Thick clusters of data transfer cables snake across the floor like tree roots. Palm-sized Innovator drones dart around less-dense sections of the laboratory at the command of grey-cloaked technicians, recreating missing features of the space in holographic form: blackboards, datapads, curio on the workstations, and filling in segments of half-destroyed machinery. The ceiling of the sublevel lurks somewhere out of sight in the darkness above.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Two steps back, Cal replaces the grate a second time and shadows my movements as I slide into cover behind a nearby stack of computational consoles, quiet as a knife drawn. I don’t look back. The tempo builds inside. The lethal pulse of ki pushing faster, shoving through my body like it’s clogged with arterial blockage. I spare a quick glance over the glass-sided machine I hide behind. Defunct, pre-era circuitry hides inside. No one’s used these kinds of massive computers in all of our history- they’re clumsy, ancient relics of the times before the Creators, far outperformed by JOYs. And the growth pods- they’re for making children, not science experiments. Cold unease slithers down my spines as I see my warped face reflected in one of the curved glass capsules.

I return to watching Gami when metal suddenly glimmers ahead. Steel and copper pools towards the giant from the machines he passes, flittering between his massive four-fingered paws like liquid before returning from where it came. Perfectly replaced, down to the atom.

I glance down, shifting on my toes. One single slip. That’s all it will take.

When the Champion finally deigns to speak, his voice rumbles through the lab like an earthquake.

“Your work is keeping you busy.”

“Dynasty’s stragglers are putting up no shortage of resistance,” Thane sighs. His voice is firm, but quieter than anyone who sees him in public would ever expect. They wouldn’t know as I do; that he does not enjoy being loud. “Your people have done admirable work in recreating their facilities.”

“Admirable enough,” Gami rumbles. Nine feet tall, he looms over the nearby technicians like children. Every moody flick of his tail a death sentence. “Though it could have been better preserved.”

Thane lifts a recreated datapad from a half-melted workstation, sets it down on a different wing of the desk. “You can thank their enforcers for the mess. And Valance.” The Psi flinches, saying nothing. Dark hair brushes over his eyes as he peers down. “She’s hungry. Too confident at times. Too eager at others.”

“As you are not?”

“I know my own capabilities perfectly well, master.”

I pause at that desk while a technician walks past, eyeing the datapad Thane picked up. Technical specs of some sort of biological substance scroll past in holographic form; hexagonal charts of human genetic strings, the word DELFINA headlining the top of the page. I glance back to find Cal’s eyes screaming at me to stop and her hand drawing a very clear line across her throat. I ignore her and slink forward through a long row of vats in perfect silence, tracking Thane and Jolie by small glimpses of their legs. Like a wolf through tall grass. Black umbilical tubes ending in nervejacks eerily similar to those in my arm dangle on either side, jungle vines stirred by distant climate control units.

Venomous green light casts evil shadows across my face. I can’t keep from looking at the tech I creep past. The eerie, decrepit nature of the equipment- the rust, corroded circuitry, ancient crust of dried liquids, tanks big enough to hold grown humans- it must all have been brought from some site deeper within the undercity. The Vents, like Thane said. But why? For what purpose would some lowlife crime lord need so many growth pods, and so much high-tech medical equipment? And why does Gami even care? Why has he brought me aunt here?

My lips mouth the question at the very moment Thane asks it too, plucking a yellowed paper note from one of the vats. “…the Executor who managed their operations in the Vents finished perfecting her Psis decades ago, but these machines were made during Mars’ early years. Far more recent. And she abandoned them when she vacated the city.” I pull back when he glances over his shoulder, dangerously near to where I hide. Holding my breath as the weight of his golden eyes drifts past. “Whatever her intentions were, the nature of this work eludes me.”

“You are not alone in that failure.” Gami slowly shifts towards a nearby growth pod fitted with an archaic hand-scanner, a sound like a dragon’s displeasure reverberating from his core. “Even with everything my Innovators require- funding, equipment, isolated facilities away from the public eye- they can replicate none of her product. I am beginning to wonder if I might need to replace them.”

“I’m sure Director Mons would know more,” he says, darting a glance at Jolie. “Though whether that knowledge would be worth the cost of her cooperation is anyone’s guess.”

“Her unwilling contributions thus far have already intrigued me.” Gami’s tail slithers dangerously over the hand-scanner, booting up its ancient core. He continues working without looking. “Your hand, apprentice.”

Struck by curiosity, Thane slowly pulls the glove off his left hand with his teeth. My brow furrows. I lean forward, then clench when a flash of dark platinum suddenly bisects the laboratory air. Gami’s tail whips out faster than a bullet. Heavier than a sledgehammer, yet as precise as a surgeons scalpel. The tip files to a razor point in the microsecond it slashes across Thane’s palm. Droplets of blood snap off and slap into the glass nearby, two lone splatters of red leaving long tracers down Jolie’s cheek.

Not even flinching, Thane paces forward and presses his palm to the scanner. The circuitry within churns and clicks loudly. A pressure fills the space beside me; Cal finally catching up. Her hand starts to curl around my arm before freezing when the machine suddenly lights up red beneath Thane’s hand.

“Ten percent genetic match,” he muses. “How interesting.”

Gami’s tail snakes out again, coiling around Jolie’s arm. Two taps of a huge, golem-like finger reset the machine. The razor tip hovers like a scorpion’s tail over her palm. Commanding the fingers to open.

Jolie stares up at him with the confidence of a woman on the gallows. “Draw it yourself.”

Thane sighs. “Master, perhaps…”

He cuts off as a second spear of metal erupts from Gami and snatches one of the working technicians by her neck, dragging her away from her petrified coworkers. Not even bothering to look back, he lifts her off her feet and out of my sight, holding her by the neck like a disobedient rodent. She begins to cough. Feet kicking wildly in the air, clutching at the metal vice.

“You have forgotten the worth of a politician in our world, Jolie Mons.” Gami lets the girl dangle a little lower, allowing her to take in a single gagging breath. “Allow me to remind you.”

I hear a snap. The gory crinkle of crushing cartilage as the Champion suddenly clenches his grip and chokes the life out of the technician until she’s wrung dry. Like he’s balling up scrap paper. Lifeless meat hits the ground with a wet thump. His tail sweeps the body towards where I hide. It jams into the space between the vats I’m hiding behind. The girl stares up at me in shock, twitching and convulsing. Brown eyes wide open and begging for help. I go shock still and clamp a hand over my mouth to keep from vomiting at the gurgling noises escaping her.

I tear my eyes away from the body as Gami casually flicks his tail, whipping off the gore. His impassive helm shifts to Jolie.“Your hand, Director. Unless another of your interns need pay for your defiance.”

Face bloodless and mouth closed in silent shock, Jolie opens her palm for the Champion. Her eyes widen the moment before Gami’s tail tenses and the crackling sound of a tree snapping in mid-winter splits the air.

Jolie bites back a horrible scream so tightly that only a pained grunt emerges from her lips. Blood dripples from her mouth as she sinks to a knee. Rivulets of red leak from between the coils of Gami’s tail. As it unfurls and slathers the blood over the console, her right arm falls limply to her side, shattered in three different places. The machine clicks and churns.

“Seven percent,” Thane quietly notes.

Horror and dread swirl in a maelstrom of rage as I watch. That need for vengeance inside me morphing, coiling, corrupting into palpable loathing that pushes against the confines of my chest. The girl’s body finally stills beside me, saving me the horror of her death sounds.

“Consider that your reminder,” Gami rumbles, flicking his tail at Valance. “Take her away.”

The Psi shoots a lethal look at the Champion’s back before hauling Jolie back to her feet. Cal begins to slink away and follow. I clamp five fingers around her arm with a death grip, holding her in place, even as Valance leads my aunt to the edge of the laboratory. Two massive hydraulic doors split open down the center to let them pass. More warriors on the other side. The remaining technicians follow her out.

I mouth a silent apology to Jolie. I can’t save her, again. But there is still something I can still do.

I look down at the crumpled, discarded body, and my fingers curl tighter.

Gami’s hammering footsteps resume their slow pace, giving me the chance I need to keep moving. “Perhaps I was too hasty in having you dispatch the daughter of Mars,” the champion rumbles. “I would have liked to test her as well. My predecessor chose that girl for a reason, despite her disgusting mutation.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Thane’s eyes linger on the scanner before he rejoins his master’s wake, casually tearing off a length of his cloak and winding it around his hand. “From what he told me, not even Mars knew why he adopted her.”

“You desire her still.”

I feel without seeing the hesitation as Thane closes his eyes, not answering for a guilty heartbeat. “She’s gone. The past is the past,” is all he eventually says, cold as steel. “Only time will tell if her death was our loss.”

My death?

I lean back from the corner of a glass-sided tank filled with discarded data transfer cables. Working through the words. He’s talking like I’m dead. And Gami thinks he killed me? My ears perk back up as the air vibrates; the Champion speaking again.

“Time is a commodity that grows ever more scarce. My enemies gather to test their luck against me. Even now…” His attention drifts right to the vat I hide behind, then stops. “…their agents have an unfortunate habit of appearing at the least opportune moments.”

He senses something.

I haven’t made a sound. Neither has Cal, and she’s further back. I glance left, right, up. Searching for the cause. Then down. My toes rest atop a thin strip of metal inlaid in the floor. I suck in a hiss and jerk my foot back.

Cracked glass reflects the dismissive hand motion Thane makes. “I will deal with it.”

“Good.” Gami’s volcanic amusement shakes the entire lab as he heads for a distant exit, the only one large enough to accommodate his size. “I feel as if I should be insulted that they are so desperate as to send women and children to fight me now. Perhaps you should send them a message back.”

“Misguided spies aren’t worth the time.”

There’s a hard moment between them before the champion responds.

“No, I suppose not. Return to me tomorrow. We have more to discuss.”

Thane inclines his head in a cold bow. A quiet whisk of exhaling hydraulics escorts the champion out, closing the immense blast doors automatically in his wake. I watch him go in tense silence. Devouring Thane’s reflection while he rises from his bow, but mind racing far ahead, still churning through their words. Gami thinks I’m as dead as my father. But Cal said the order to kill me came from the office of the Champion. And if the Champion himself thinks I’ve been gone three years… then someone else had to have sent her after me.

“You can come out now,” he says, shrugging off his cloak.

Someone else has been pulling the strings that brought me here.

“Ordinarily, I would at least ask the courtesy of seeing whatever unfortunate soul I have to make an example of…”

And he’s been playing me this entire time.

“…but we’re far too familiar for that.”

With the weight of three years of separation behind them, those golden eyes finally find me in the shadows like he’s always known I was here. His lips quirk at the corners.

“Aren’t we, Tetsuka?”