Ada moved with Hope in her arms and adjusted the weight every few steps — not from fatigue, from the arm. The right side kept shifting, the dead weight of it pulling the balance wrong. She redistributed and kept moving.
The corridor ran straight for forty meters and then turned into a reinforced section — heavier construction, sealed conduit along the walls, the floor above the waterline for the first time since the control room. The door at the end had a key-card reader mounted beside it. The light on the panel was dead.
Ada stopped.
She tried the panel with her elbow, one arm still under Hope. Nothing. She tried the manual release below it. Nothing.
She looked at the door. At the lock housing. At the gap between the frame and the wall where the conduit ran through.
Not forcing it. Not yet.
She turned back.
The room off the corridor was maintenance storage — three meters, one entrance, shelving along the left wall, most of it cleared. No second exit. Ada pushed the door with her shoulder and swept it in one pass.
Nothing immediate.
She set Hope down against the wall. Controlled. One arm behind her back until she was seated, then lowered the shoulders, then the head. Hope's right arm slid to her stomach when the support came away, finding the same position it had held through the corridors.
Hope didn't wake.
Her breathing was still wrong — shallow, the intervals uneven. Ada watched it for a second.
Then looked away.
She pulled the communication device from inside her jacket. The screen showed one bar of signal. She keyed it and waited.
The line connected on the second attempt.
Ada shifted Hope slightly in her arms.
"I lost Annette Birkin," she said. "She got out."
A pause.
"And?"
"I picked up something else," Ada said. "A girl. Already bitten when I found her."
Silence.
"And she's still with you."
"She never turned."
"It should have happened fast," she continued. "It didn't. Hours later she was still moving. Better than she should've been."
"That's not consistent."
"I know."
"Resistance slows it," he said. "It doesn't stop it."
Ada glanced at Hope.
"It didn't just slow," she said. "Something pushed back."
Silence.
"You said a girl."
"Small," Ada said. "Eight, maybe nine. Hospital gown. Scars. Old ones. Not random."
A longer pause.
"What happened after."
Ada exhaled once.
"We got separated," she said. "Things went bad. She lost control."
"Her arm changed," Ada said. "Swelled first. Then it kept going. Like something pushing under the skin, trying to force its way out."
"Veins went dark," she added. "Thick. Up to the elbow, maybe more — and she wasn't breaking down. It was the opposite. Like something was building."
A longer pause.
"And now."
"She burned through it," Ada said. "Breathing went out of control. Then it stopped."
Silence.
"Stopped."
"She's not normal," Ada said. "But she's stable. For now."
"And it doesn't match what you've seen."
"No," Ada said. "Not anything I know."
Silence.
Then:
"…Project Heir."
Ada's eyes narrowed slightly.
"That doesn't mean anything to me."
"It wouldn't," he said. "It was buried. Higher clearance than most of what came through."
"It doesn't come from T," he added. "T came after it."
Ada didn't answer immediately.
"That's not something you move into a city," she said.
"No," he said. "Not to hide it."
"Of course."
Ada looked at Hope.
"The outbreak."
"They needed a subject," he said. "Something that doesn't turn. Something they can use."
Silence.
"To work on a cure," he added. "To run experiments while the infection is active."
He let that sit.
"And now it's loose."
Ada didn't respond.
"Stay on your objective," he said.
Ada's eyes moved to the door.
"And this isn't part of it."
A beat.
"…Bring it," he said. "If it survives."
The line cut.
Ada lowered the device. Looked at the door. Then at Hope.
Hope's arm had shifted — the elbow out a degree from where gravity should have put it. Her breathing unchanged.
Ada pushed off the wall and crossed to the door. Checked the frame, the conduit run, the panel housing. She pulled a flat tool from her jacket and worked the edge of the panel cover until it lifted. Behind it — circuit board, relay switches, a bypass port she could work with if the signal came through and opened the secondary system.
If.
She replaced the cover and went back to the wall. Sat down beside Hope.
She kept the gun in her hand.
From somewhere above, transmitted through concrete — a single impact. Heavy. The same interval as before.
Still moving.
Hope's fingers tightened slightly against her own stomach.
Not awake. Just responding.
Ada watched the door and didn't move.
Behind her, Hope's arm scraped the floor — not shifting. Extending. An inch. Maybe two.
Then stopped.
Ada didn't turn around.