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[indent]Scotti moved.

So did Selene.

She was on him in seconds, cutting through the market’s tangled arteries. Her boots pounded the metal grates, each step sharp but steady as she dodged carts overflowing with junk parts and shoppers haggling over prices. A cloud of greasy smoke from a fried-scrap stall blurred her vision, but she lunged right, squeezing between two towers of dented engine cores. She didn’t yell his name—wasting breath was for amateurs. Ahead, glimpses of his faded hoodie flickered like a signal: there, then gone, boots skidding around a corner.

He leaped over a vendor’s table. Selene veered left, ducking under sagging cables that snagged her jacket. Her shoulder clipped a shelf of flickering holoscreens, sending one crashing to the floor. A voice shouted insults behind her. She ignored it. 

The kid slammed into a dented door at the corridor’s end. Selene lunged, fingers grazing the frame—but metal shrieked as it sealed shut. No hesitation. She rammed her body against the door, once, twice, until the hinges snapped with a groan. Stale heat hit her face as she stumbled into a dim hallway. Steam hissed from fractured pipes above, cloaking the air in fog. The reek of rust and overheated wiring clawed at her throat.

A shadow flitted ahead, rounding a corner. Selene sprinted, boots slipping on damp metal. The hallway narrowed, walls closing in like a trap. Flickering orange lights revealed tangled pipes, some dripping with condensation. A crooked sign dangled by one bolt, its faded letters barely legible: [i]Restricted. Maintenance Zone.[/i] Her pulse thudded in her ears, louder than the distant hum of generators.

Selene took one step forward.

Then she stopped.

The ducts stretched ahead, dark and narrow, like the gaping mouth of a creature forgotten by time. Selene hesitated at the entrance, her gaze tracing the crooked edges of the corridor beyond the bent warning sign. These weren’t the clean, regulated tunnels of the upper city—those were safe, mapped, and controlled. No, these were Dominion’s skeleton, ancient veins left to rot after newer systems replaced them. Rust coated the walls, and the air smelled faintly of burnt metal, a scent that made her throat itch.

The old vents were abandoned for good reason.

They twisted in every direction, a chaotic snarl of passages that burrowed under storage bays, brushed against sealed-off zones, and vanished into pitch-black depths. Stories claimed they linked to the first tunnels ever dug into the planet’s crust—tunnels that supposedly [i]shifted[/i] when no one was looking. Selene had heard whispers of scavengers who’d entered these ducts and returned babbling about echoes that didn’t match their footsteps. Her jaw tightened. She’d never believed the rumours… until now.

Going deeper was dangerous.

The lower levels trapped heat like a furnace, and the air turned heavy, making every breath feel like swallowing ash. People who ventured down here either vanished or crawled back broken, their eyes hollow as they muttered about shapes in the shadows—things the Council pretended didn’t exist. Selene’s boot scuffed the dust-covered floor, stirring up a cloud. [i]Not a soul[/i], she thought. [i]No one’s been here in years. But the hair on her arms prickled anyway.[/i]

She didn’t move forward.

The black case under her arm felt heavier suddenly, though she knew it weighed barely anything. Krell hadn’t told her what was inside. She’d dealt with his kind before, though. Smugglers. Hackers. People who traded in tech the Council banned or ignored. What he’d given her was likely off-grid. Illegally modded. Old Dominion systems spoke in dying languages, and this case might contain something that understood them.

A map, maybe.

A translator.

A way through.

Whatever it was, she wasn’t about to let it slip into someone else’s hands—not when someone had already tried to put a tail on her before she even touched it.

Selene exhaled through her nose. Then she crouched, pressing her palm to the floor just past the sign.

Warm. Dust-thick. Stable enough—for now.

She rose.

And stepped into the dark.[/indent]
[hr][sub][right] Mentions: Scotti ([@The Savant])[/right][/sub]