Down, down, down into the concrete crust of the city. Salty tears wetting my gore-smeared face, I slide into the vertical service shaft with Cal cradled in my one working arm and drop into the darkness. Earlier, she wondered if this tunnel went all the way to the undercity. The Vents. The lawless criminal underworld of the capital. Aunt Jolie had no shortage of warnings about the place. But I can’t flee upwards. My choice is made for me.

I plummet down the narrow passage as fast as I dare, outracing the shadows behind. For all his talk, Thane won’t just stand there and wait for me to flee. He wants me. He needs me- or my old strength, at least. That raw potential still lurks inside my soul, even if I can’t touch it now.

Thane is intimately familiar with that potential and the temperamental levers that control it. He’s also the only Shifter of his caliber and nearly untouchable unless he wills it. So if he thinks he needs an even greater power than the one he already has, no lingering attachment will stand in his way. He’ll send the wolves this time.

Cloistered in the dark, I brace against the concrete with my lacerated back, ignoring the glass shards that push deeper into the meat. Pain and anger keep me together. Barely. I’m unraveling at the seams, mentally and physically.

Just more blood, I mumble, half-delirious. A delusion that holds until my wrecked body finally gives two sublevels down and my legs crumple inwards.

I plummet. Darkness flashes past. Then faint, sickly light begins to glow from below. The shaft widens. I clutch Cal to my chest and tense. Blocky silhouettes race upwards to meet me. I twist past the first pipe worming out of the wall and straight into the second, nearly breaking in half over a solid concrete rain drain before slapping off a handful more ledges and power conduits on the way down.

The drop feels like it lasts forever. It ends in concrete and cracked bones and choking silence. A tangled canopy of data transfer cables and black electric wiring snag me right at the end, catching around my neck like a noose. I rip them away and crash down into the waterlogged passage at the bottom of the shaft. Cal flops from my arm with a groan.

Spluttering on water, I shove out of the puddle before my body remembers that it’s more dead than alive. Agony explodes through my head like a flashbang. Then I’m clawing up onto an elbow with a fresh rash down my face. My prosthetic arm creaks and groans on its last legs. Jointed fingers firing in small spasms as the biological circuits woven with my body- half-melted by the amount of energy that was just coursing through me- start failing on the somatic level. A feedback shock jolts through my ribcage.

Blanketed in mops of white hair, I blink through bleary vision and force my head up. The brick walls of the passage widen ahead into a grungy, neon-choked alley. Through its mouth, I get my first look at the capital’s lawless urban hell.

I stare in silence at the scale of it.

The Vents is a ravine of human greed. Far above, almost out of sight through a maze of interconnected towers, bridges, and layered city blocks, an endless plane of metal punctured by smog dumpers and rain drains replaces the sky I know with a pressure cooker lid. Giant scars rive through the false sky, pierced by the rare glowing trail of a flying class. Mass transport tubes for cargo and humans riddle the crust of the city like IV drips. Below those, massive upside-down towers of apartments and illicit businesses and fight clubs and club clubs and more stretch on and on through the boughs of the undercity. Like some giant debaucherous forest whose trees are pointed at hell, not heaven.

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Smoggy rivers of rainbow lights worm between the bridges. Dim trails of ki and technology from flying classes crisscross between the blocks higher up. Storefronts pour neon advertisements and cyan holoscreens like runoff. So many lights to distract from the darkness that stretches on to infinity below: the Abyss, the yawning void that lurks beneath the capital.

Back home, I always thought the Abyss was a myth. There was no way it was real. An infinite darkness? Anything that went into it never came out? Surely someone had explored it by now. Surely it wasn’t as large as the stories made it seem. Yet even at the furthest limits of my vision, I can still see that darkness lurking beyond the lights. Hungry and waiting.

A shiver runs down my spine the longer I stare at it. Around me, acidic runoff drips into inch-deep puddles around the alley. Grungy neon spits colored light near the exit onto the rest layer I landed in, a heavily trafficked thoroughfare filled with undercity natives who stride with jagged gaits. Some start peering into the alley as they pass. Lurid hands. Greedy eyes.

An airless cough comes from behind me, dragging me back. Reminding me all over again of the hell I’m trapped in. Of the even worse one I just left behind. Black hair. Gold eyes. I jam my nails into my collar until the skin splits, teeth gritting, trying to blank it out even for a second. But I can’t escape. Not even in my own head.

Lurching upright, I slam my back against the closest wall, reseating my dislocated shoulder with a sick fluidic pop. I almost black out and fall again. But I have to keep moving. Even when I’m shattered and teetering on the breaking point. Because no one’s coming to save me, and I know the moment that I look back at Cal and see the color of her irises, that I have to get away. Before I do something I’ll regret.

I stumble towards the mouth of the alley. Cal claws at my shirt with her working hand. “Don’t you leave me,” she pants through chattering teeth. “Don’t you fucking leave me here.”

My mouth works in silence, but no words will come. I shake my head and tear away. She tries to follow, can’t even get off the ground she’s so wounded.

“Tay!”

“STOP!” I whirl back, trying not to scream. “Stop talking to me! Just leave me alone!”

“Leave you alone? The only place you’re going like this is your funeral.” She shuts up and swallows hard when I lean my fake arm against the wall, burying my head in the elbow joint.

“-Let me go,” I shudder. My fingers tense like claws. “Let me go before I kill something.”

Her fingers release with a resigned look. “Tell me you’re gonna come back.”

“Quit pretending you’re my guardian angel, Cal. You’re not. You’re just an killer using me for your hero fantasies.” I don’t care how she recoils; it’s the truth. “If you’re going to keep lying to me, do me a favor: get lost.”

A disbelieving chuckle shudders through her shoulders. “Everything I’ve done, and that’s all I’ll ever be to you. An enemy.”

Her gaze weighs heavy between my shoulder blades as I turn away. Her voice reaches out like one final olive branch, stopping me at the streetlight’s edge. Tone softening to that lilt that’s fooled me so many times. Or maybe it’s never fooled me at all. Could Thane really have been right? Could she really have been trying to protect me all this time, and for so simple a reason?

“Don’t get hurt out there. Okay?” Cal murmurs.

I breathe out a hitching breath before disappearing into the undercity.

“I’ll come back.”