The corridor exhaled.
It was not metaphorical. It truly released an actual breath—slow and wet—rising from the vents beneath their feet and brushing against their skin like the touch of something just waking up after a thousand years.
Kieran knelt, still glowing faintly beneath the skin. The gold in his veins faded into black. His shoulders twitched, not from pain, but as if his body were adjusting to new parameters.
Lana held Nyx close. The girl didn't speak. Her eyes followed the movement of light across the floor with eerie calm, as though she'd seen this place before. Lived here. Or maybe remembered it from a different body.
The air thinned.
Then, a soft click.
A seam appeared in the wall—one that hadn't been there before. It unfolded like a mouth opening. Cold, clean air spilled out.
A door.
And in its center, perfectly still—
Specter.
She stood with arms behind her back, feet together. Not moving. Not blinking. Like she had never left.
"You've balanced your blood," she said. "Now let's see if the world accepts it."
Her tone was even, clinical—but something cracked just beneath it. Something in her eyes. A flicker, maybe guilt, maybe memory.
Then she was gone.
Not vanished. Not faded.
Just—gone.
Jason swore softly. "How the hell does she do that?"
Lana didn't answer. She was already walking toward the door.
Kieran rose. Not all the way. His limbs still moved with the hesitance of a newborn.
They stepped through.
Gone were the bones, the breathing walls, the heat that whispered.
Now: cold steel. A decompression chamber.
Lana stopped short.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. One flickered, then popped. Condensation beaded along the seams of the ceiling. The floor was smooth, sterile. A Noctis floor. The kind made for hiding secrets under layers of industrial quiet.
Jason stopped behind her. His eyes scanned the hallway. "Oh no."
Kieran squinted. "You recognize this?"
Jason nodded slowly. "Sublevel 5."
"Under the tower?"
"No." Jason's voice dropped. "Not the Manhattan HQ. This is under the site Evelyn built—the one we broke into."
Lana turned sharply. "You're telling me we never left?"
"The corridor is rooted beneath this lab. Not the skyscraper. This place predates everything."
She stared down the hallway.
The idea chilled her. Not because it was underground. But because it had been here all along. Waiting. Growing.
She stepped to a wall. Her reflection stared back at her from brushed steel.
Her eyes weren't brown anymore.
They were red.
Not glowing. Not painted. Just… red. Like rust under glass. Like something inside her had decided she wasn't who she thought she was anymore.
She didn't flinch.
Behind her, Kieran pressed two fingers to his neck.
"My pulse feels wrong."
Jason raised his scanner, flipping the top open. "Let's find out how wrong."
He waved it over Kieran's chest.
The scanner stuttered. Then turned completely white. The display blinked. Reset. Then died entirely.
Jason blinked.
"This scanner's from Specter's line. It reads everything—shifters, hybrids, bio-synthetics. I've used it for seven years. Never seen it do that."
Lana looked at him. "So what does it mean?"
Jason swallowed.
"This scanner thinks you're a wall."
Kieran's mouth twitched. His eyes didn't move.
"Not sure how I feel about that."
He said it quietly.
But Lana caught the tremor underneath.
He wasn't proud.
He wasn't smug.
He was shaken.
Like part of him had been scraped off, and what was left didn't know if it was still Kieran.
Nyx touched his arm.
"He's not a wall," she said. "He's a bridge."
Jason turned to her, trying to follow the logic.
Nyx just looked up at him like he'd asked her if the sky was made of soup.
Then Lana heard it.
Her name.
A whisper.
Close. Inside her head.
No—just behind her ear. From the vent.
"Lana."
She turned, slowly.
The others hadn't noticed.
A hallway curled off to the left. Narrow. Lit by dying bulbs.
"Lana," the voice whispered again.
It wasn't hostile.
It wasn't comforting either.
It was… tired.
She walked away from the group. Each step deliberate.
She reached the end of the corridor.
A glass chamber stood ahead.
Inside—
Her.
Not a mirror.
Not a trick.
Another Lana.
Same face. Same scar. Same expression.
Except this one smiled.
Not with joy. With recognition.
Like a predator who saw herself in a zoo enclosure.
Lana stepped closer.
Her double raised a hand.
She mirrored the movement.
Their palms met, glass between them.
Then the other Lana spoke.
Just one word.
"Why?"
Lana's stomach dropped.
The glass bled.
Not cracked. Bled.
Veins burst across its surface like bruises on a corpse. Red spidered out, filling the panel. The image melted.
Gone.
Lana stumbled back.
Jason stood at the hallway's entrance. "You okay?"
She shook her head. "Not even close."
He didn't press.
She walked back.
Kieran leaned against the wall. Breathing slow.
Nyx was sitting now, humming to herself.
Jason raised his comm.
A burst of static answered.
Then a fractured voice.
"—sublevel breach—lockdown—drones activated—kill order if—"
Then silence.
Jason's face went pale.
"They're sealing the floor."
Kieran's head lifted.
"Eclipse?"
"Noctis."
Jason's jaw clenched. "Both."
Lana's hands curled into fists.
The corridor might've accepted them.
The world hadn't.
A chime echoed in the distance.
The soft, sterile ping of an elevator arriving.
Ding.
No doors opened.
Jason looked at Lana.
"That's not ours."
"No," she said. "It's bait."
They turned to Nyx.
She was at the wall again, fingers tracing invisible lines.
A panel unpeeled beneath her palm.
Behind it: a narrow tunnel.
Alive.
Wet.
Moving.
It breathed.
Not deeply.
Just enough to feel like a lung.
Lana didn't hesitate.
She stepped to the opening.
"What's inside?"
Nyx shrugged. "Not death."
Jason looked up. "I'm so sick of everything in this building being moist."
Kieran smiled. A flicker.
They crouched.
Crawled in.
The wall behind them sealed.
No hiss. No lock.
Just… gone.
Lana looked back. There was no back.
Only forward.
Just before the tunnel curved, her eye caught something on the wall.
Fresh. Etched in wet bone.
The spiral crown.
The mark from the corridor.
The one on Kieran's chest.
And—now that she really looked—one carved into the scar on her shoulder.
The place Evelyn had injected her.
She touched it.
It was warm.
The tunnel pulsed once.
And began to move.