The basin was wide enough that the walls weren't immediately findable.
Leon moved toward the nearest one, arm extended, and hit it with his right shoulder before his hand reached it. The pain came in two stages — the impact, then the shoulder's opinion of the impact — and he put his back to the concrete and breathed through both.
Shallow. Easier than deep. He'd learned that in the channel.
The room resolved slowly. Emergency light overhead, one of two that still worked, giving the space a yellow half-dark that made distances unreliable. Water at his knees. The floor beneath it uneven — he could feel the grade shifting under his boots without being able to see it. Three passage openings. North wall, south wall, east. The drainage codes stenciled above each one were identical.
He checked behind him.
Just water. Just the tunnel mouth he'd come through, still trickling from the surge.
He forced himself to look forward.
The north passage had moving air. South had standing air and a smell that meant blocked drainage. East was dark and quiet in the wrong way — not empty, just absorbing sound without giving any back.
North.
He pushed off the wall with his left arm, crossed toward the passage, and his right foot found a drop in the floor where the concrete had buckled — four inches, no more, but he was compensating for his shoulder without knowing he was compensating and his weight was wrong for it. He went sideways, caught himself with his left hand on the pipe housing, stayed up.
The gun almost left his hand.
He held position. Let the water settle around his legs. Then moved again. Slower.
North passage. The walls close enough to feel. The sound changed when he entered — his own movement echoing back at wrong intervals, the drip of water somewhere ahead arriving with a delay that didn't match the size of the space. He stopped twice to re-establish direction from the air movement alone because the echo was lying to him.
At the first intersection he stopped.
Two options. Both dark. Both moving air, slightly.
He stood there.
He checked the left branch. Then the right. Then left again. He knew he was doing it and couldn't stop — the spatial confidence that would have made him choose fast wasn't there anymore. He waited for something to make one option obvious.
Nothing did.
He picked left and committed to it before he could pause again.
Thirty meters in, the passage dipped without warning — a full step down in the floor, a maintenance transition between two construction phases, the kind of thing you'd see in the light. Leon's boot hit the lower floor expecting the upper one, and his knee went before he caught the wall.
Both knees in the water. He stayed there a second.
The gun was still in his hand.
He got up. Continued.
The passage opened into a flooded corridor — longer, wider, the water here at his waist. Industrial cabling along the ceiling. A door halfway down the left wall, open. A shape at the far end he checked twice before accepting it was a support column and not movement.
He'd never checked columns twice before tonight.
The first one came from the open door.
Leon heard it before it cleared the frame — the drag and correction of something that moved by damage rather than intention. He raised his left arm, compensating the aim across his body, and fired.
Too high. The round sparked off the wall above its head and the muzzle flash lit the corridor for a half-second, enough to see it still coming.
He fired again. This time it dropped.
One shot wasted. One infected, six feet of open water between them, and it had still gotten close enough that he'd had to rush the second shot.
He kept moving.
The second one he heard rounding the far corner and he pulled himself against the right wall and held still. The water at his waist was the problem — any movement and it announced him. He pressed into a maintenance recess in the wall, a two-inch setback in the concrete, not enough cover, just enough to break his outline.
The shape moved past him.
Two feet. A brush of displaced water across his hip as it passed. The smell of it that close.
He didn't fire. He watched it keep going and let out a breath so slow it barely moved the water.
His hands were shaking and he hadn't noticed until then.
He continued.
The third one he didn't hear.
The water was the problem. His own movement through it covered everything else. He turned a corner into the next section and it was already there — inside the distance he needed, arm up, mouth open, lunging.
He got his left arm between them and the bite closed on his jacket sleeve. The arm below it went numb with the grip strength. He tried to bring the gun up and couldn't get the angle — too close, his own arm in the way — and the thing's weight was driving him back, his footing gone in the current, his right shoulder screaming where it was trying to compensate.
He didn't choose what happened next. His left leg found something solid — a submerged pipe, a ledge, something fixed — and he drove off it sideways with everything his shoulder would let him give, using his body as a hammer instead of his hands. The grip broke. The infected went sideways into the wall.
He fired at a range where missing shouldn't have been possible.
He missed.
Fired again. Didn't miss.
He stood there with his chest moving too fast and the water settling around the dropped shape and his left arm coming back in pins and needles from the grip. The jacket sleeve had held. He checked his wrist anyway. Checked it again.
Intact.
He looked at the gun. He'd fired six rounds since the basin. He didn't know his starting count.
He kept moving.
The room was a maintenance cell — three meters by four, set off a drainage junction behind a steel door that had been propped open with a corroded bracket. Leon pulled the bracket, let the door swing, felt the resistance of a frame that had warped slightly over years of moisture.
It didn't seat flush. A gap of two fingers at the bottom.
He checked the corners. A collapsed metal shelving unit along the left wall, half its contents on the floor. An emergency work light on the ceiling — battery-powered, mounted, still on. A drain in the floor, water at his ankles pooling toward it.
He pushed the shelf unit against the door with his left arm. The noise it made was too loud and he winced through it. But it would catch.
He went through the shelving contents. Slower than he would have liked — his left hand sorting through debris that his right couldn't help with. A corroded first-aid box. He pried it open.
Bandages, partially used. A disinfectant pad, sealed. No spray. No painkillers.
He pulled his jacket off his right shoulder. Slow. The shoulder didn't cooperate with slow — the transition from jacket to nothing felt worse than being shot again. His vision went white at the edges.
The entry wound was high on the shoulder, rear angle — the bullet hadn't exited, which was a problem that was going to stay a problem. He pressed the disinfectant pad to it one-handed, left hand only, and the pressure required was more than he'd expected. He kept it there. Breathed shallow.
He wrapped it. The bandage was wrong — too loose in places, too tight where his one hand couldn't manage the tension — but it would hold the pad and slow the bleed. He used his teeth for the last piece and pulled it tight.
His arm was still there. Still not reporting for duty.
He leaned back against the wall. Gun in his left hand. The water at the drain was making a sound — small, cycling, inconsistent, the level outside adjusting in response to something further in the system.
The door was still on. The bracket against it wasn't enough, but it was something.
He tried to stay upright.
His back slid down the wall two inches and he caught it. The wall took him again and he pushed off and the third time his leg went and the wall gave him a seated position he hadn't chosen.
The gun was still in his hand.
The work light buzzed, dimmed, held.
Water found the drain in uneven pulses.
Somewhere in the gap at the bottom of the door — air moved. Not much.
Leon's head dropped once, came up, dropped again.
His grip on the gun loosened by degrees but didn't open.
The light stayed on.
The door held.
Nothing else did.