Special thanks to Justin_Lawyer_6808 for the power stone. Appreciate the support.
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Ada released her wrist at the first turn.
Hope followed. Then she didn't.
Ada turned. Hope had stopped two steps back, looking at the floor. Her left hand at her side. Her right arm held against her stomach, the elbow sitting slightly wrong.
"Hope."
She looked up. Started walking, her left hand finding the wall.
The water ran knee-deep through this section, the current pulling south, the walls close enough that Ada moved with her head slightly forward. She listened to Hope's footsteps behind her — the timing, the distance. Too close at first, arriving inside her own rhythm. Then the gap opened without reason and she stopped once to let it close. The third time she didn't stop.
At the next corner Ada slowed and stepped sideways into the wall.
Hope kept walking. Two steps past. Realized. The stop came late, the correction too fast, her shoulder coming around harder than the movement needed. She ended up closer than she'd been before she stopped, her right arm shifting with the turn, the forearm not tracking with the elbow.
Hope looked at it. Pressed it back against her side.
"Does it hurt," Ada said.
Hope flinched — small, just the shoulders. Her grip on her arm tightened. "Less," she said, then seemed to lose the rest of it. "Not like first time." Her breath came back slightly wrong. "Still hurts."
Ada looked at the forearm. "You're keeping it still."
"Yes."
"Keep doing that."
Hope nodded, too fast. Her breathing hadn't settled. Ada turned and kept moving.
The passage widened briefly into a junction alcove — four-way, the water here shallower, the emergency lighting overhead dead except for one tube at the far end casting pale yellow across the floor. Two of the openings were blocked, one by a collapsed pipe housing, one by something that had been stacked deliberately and then pushed over. The remaining two were passable.
Ada took three steps into the alcove and stopped.
One of the shapes near the far wall wasn't a shape.
It turned at the sound of the water moving differently. Then another, behind it, coming out of the dark at the mouth of the left passage — both tracking the same direction, both pulling toward the light and the sound and whatever else they used when those ran out.
Ada moved Hope behind her with one hand without looking. "Wall. Stay on the wall."
She didn't wait to confirm. The first infected was already inside the distance she wanted — too close for a clean shot without the sound carrying through the whole section, and sound in this part of the system traveled further than it should.
She pulled the contact device from her jacket instead.
Small. Flat. Two contact points at the front edge. She'd used it twice before tonight and it had one charge left, maybe two if the battery was reading wrong.
She let the infected come two more steps and then stepped into it — inside the swing, inside the grab — and pressed the contact points against the side of its neck and held the trigger.
The device discharged with a sound like a thick wire snapping. The infected dropped without completing the movement it had started, legs gone first, weight following, hitting the water and staying there.
The second one was already moving.
Ada dropped the device into her pocket and pulled the gun, checking the angle — Hope was at the wall behind her right shoulder, far enough, the line was clear — and fired once. The shot was flat and controlled and the second infected went down two steps from where it had started.
The sound traveled.
She listened to it go — down the left passage, the right, back the way they'd come, the echo returning in pieces from different distances. Then silence. Then, far away, something that might have been movement or might have been the structure.
She looked at Hope.
Hope was against the wall where she'd been put. Her right arm pressed hard into her stomach, her other hand flat against the concrete. She was watching the two shapes in the water with the particular stillness of someone who had stopped making decisions and was waiting to be told what came next.
"Move," Ada said.
Hope moved.
The maintenance section narrowed to single-file, the ceiling dropping where a pipe run crossed below. Ada moved through first and waited where it widened.
Hope came through slower. She stopped too close, caught herself, stepped back. Her breathing held a beat too long and then came back too fast, the rhythm off in a way it hadn't been before.
Ada stepped closer — one deliberate step inside the distance she'd been keeping — and watched the arm.
Hope went still. Her right hand found the pipe along the wall, fingers closing too tight, knuckles pale, the arm lagging when she shifted and then snapping into place. One inhale too deep that didn't correct.
"Right passage," Ada said at the next junction.
Hope moved left. Stopped. Her shoulder caught the wall when she corrected, harder than it needed to, and she came back around and fell in a half-step behind where she should have been.
Ada watched her. Then continued.
"Loud," Hope said after a few steps, the word coming out thin. She swallowed and tried again. "Inside. Too close." She stopped talking. Shook her head once. Her grip on her arm tightened. "Sorry."
Ada stepped back. Not far. Hope didn't look at her, just followed, the delay still there in every response — small enough to miss if you weren't tracking it.
The corridor narrowed again where the pipe run cut the width to single-file, the ceiling low, the walls pressing in. Ada moved through first and swept the far end, the near end, the ledge above the water channel running alongside the walkway.
Three of them. At the far end. Grouped near a collapsed section of railing where the walkway had partially given way, the water there deeper, the footing bad. They hadn't registered yet — their backs mostly turned, drawn to something in the wall cavity beyond the railing break, the slow patient attention of things that weren't in a hurry because they'd never needed to be.
Ada assessed the distance, the footing, the gun in her right hand, the contact device in her pocket with one charge that might be zero.
She could move back. Take the other passage, add time, avoid it. She looked at Hope behind her — the arm, the half-step delays, the way she'd been losing ground since the alcove.
Time was the problem.
She moved forward.
The walkway was narrow enough that she had to go single-file, the water channel two feet to her right and the wall to her left, no room to step wide or absorb a hit without going into the water. She kept the gun low and her pace controlled and covered half the distance before the nearest one turned.
She fired once.
The shot was good and the infected dropped but the sound hit the walls of the narrow section and came back doubled and all three of them were oriented now, two still standing, the grouping spreading as they moved, one tracking left toward the wall where there was no walkway and going into the water channel, which left one between Ada and clear passage.
She checked behind her. Hope was at the entrance to the narrow section, not moving. Right arm against her stomach. Left hand on the wall. Watching.
The contact device had one charge.
Ada let the remaining infected on the walkway come until the distance was wrong for both of them and then used the wall — her left shoulder against it, absorbing the impact of stepping in — and pressed the contact points to its chest this time, lower, and held.
The device made a different sound this time. Thinner. The charge was lower than she'd thought. The infected staggered — didn't drop, staggered, the legs going unreliable without failing entirely — and she stepped around it while it was recovering and hit it once with the base of the gun across the back of the skull and it went down into the water.
The device was done. She pocketed it.
The third one was still in the water channel, moving toward the walkway edge, arms finding the concrete lip.
Ada fired twice. It stopped moving.
She stood in the narrow corridor with the gun up and her breathing under control and listened to the echo come back and die out.
Then she looked back at Hope.
Hope was still at the entrance. She hadn't moved. But her right arm was no longer fully against her stomach — it was extended slightly at the elbow, the hand partially open, like something in it had responded to the sound and the movement and hadn't fully stood down yet.
She saw Ada looking at it.
Pulled it back.
"Come through," Ada said.
Hope came through. She stepped over the shape on the walkway without looking at it, her left hand trailing the wall, her right arm held against her stomach again. The delay when she moved was worse than before.
She was checking the far end when Hope hit her from behind.
Not hard — for Hope. Enough. Ada went sideways into the wall, shoulder catching the pipe housing, gun coming up on reflex with nothing to aim at.
A fourth. She hadn't seen it. It had been in the wall cavity beyond the railing break, further back than the others, and she'd stopped counting when she'd cleared three.
Hope had crossed it. Not pushed — struck, her right arm across the infected's chest, the force carrying it off the walkway ledge into the water. Too much. The sound it made was wrong for her size.
Ada straightened. The water settled. Nothing came back up.
Hope was against the opposite wall. Her breathing didn't settle — shallow, then too deep, then catching halfway through like it didn't know where to go. Her right arm was still extended, the angle slightly wrong, fingers open too wide. She looked at it. It moved — a small twitch, not with the rest of her. She pulled it back against her stomach and held it there with both hands.
"I didn't — " She stopped. Her breath broke the rest of the sentence. She shook her head. "It moves wrong. Before I do."
Her arm jerked once under her hands. She flinched with it.
Ada stepped in, putting herself between Hope and the ledge. "Look at me."
Hope looked up. For a second her focus moved past Ada's shoulder, then came back, slower.
"You stopped. That's what counts."
Hope didn't answer. Her breathing eased in uneven increments, still catching in places, her eyes dropping and coming back. Ada held the position and didn't move away.
"We keep moving," Ada said.
Hope nodded once — small, delayed — and pushed off the wall.
The facility opened into a wider service hub, four junctions, emergency lighting at two points. Ada stopped and ran them. North compromised. East and west, maintenance laterals with no value. South went deeper — further from any exit, further from Leon.
She looked at Hope.
Hope wasn't looking at the junctions. She was watching Ada, waiting. Her arm held against her stomach, her jaw set, the muscle shifting once like it didn't match the rest of her face.
Ada moved south.
Hope followed. Two steps. Three. The third didn't land clean — Ada heard it in the water, the step that didn't finish — and turned.
Hope was still at the junction. Her shoulder had gone into the wall, her weight folding into it, her breathing without pattern now. Her eyes were up but not focused, moving past Ada's shoulder to something further down the corridor.
"...Leon?"
Quiet. Not a call. Just the name, placed somewhere it could be heard.
There was nothing there.
Her focus slipped. She tried to move. One step, and then her knees went.
Ada closed the distance before she reached the floor. She caught her under the shoulders, the body not helping and not resisting, and shifted her grip — one arm behind Hope's back, the other under her legs — and lifted. Hope's head came down against Ada's shoulder. Breath still there, shallow and uneven, but nothing else following it.
Ada adjusted once for balance. Listened.
Nothing immediate.
She turned south and started moving.