The tunnels appear to stretch on for an eternity.

  Rivin’s fingers skim the sides—there’s skittering amidst the drip, drip, drip and slosh of footfalls. Chip lights another glowstick, but no-one dares shine a torch; not this far down, not when it sounds as though there’s something breathing in the darkness.

  “It stinks.”

  “This route bypasses Sector 8 entirely.” Rivin squints at the map again before scrolling it up and slipping it back into his belt.

  The pipes are a mess, often rerouting and splitting into narrower tunnels, sometimes walled off completely at the wrong ends. The earth above groans from the weight, dust and debris spitting out from cracks like something ancient shifting in the stone, stretching awake. Strange tally marks are etched into the concrete every few paces; some clusters have been rubbed almost completely smooth, as if to be erased.

  “What are these markings?” Chip’s fingers trace an etching in the metal, a code none of them understand half-hidden beneath graffiti — and while newer, the paint has begun to moult and peel. It reads:

  TURN BACK (unless you’re funny).

  “Don’t know. But some brat has defaced them,” Slink chuckles.

  “Not me!” Ricket defends.

  “Of course it’s not you, Ricket,” Mouse sighs. “We’ve never been here before, remember?”

  “Oh. Right.” He doesn’t sound convinced as his hazel eyes take in the gritty artwork.

  Some tunnels are covered in complex writings — all are defaced and barely legible beneath the stripes of colour. The art grows oddly advanced the further they venture into the depths. Handprints over directions, monsters over code, smiley faces dotted on the arcs like constellations.

  Finally, the tunnels narrow and then open like a split throat, gaping into a wide stone clearing. Unnatural and too flat, likely carved into the earth by Halidom machines decades ago.

  As they round the final corner of the frightening mosaic of tubes, light bursts in—it’s low and synthetically white, but it shines directly over a wall completely overtaken by chalk and ash.

  “Woah!” Slink gasps, and Rivin shushes him, glaring past the forefinger pressed to his lips. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, not sorry at all.

  The chalk he gawks at grows scrawled and manic nearer to the end—there’s blood from scuffed palms mixed into the white. The image itself appears to be little more than anger and smoke, possibly storm clouds, but there are gaps in the white and the soot where the wall shines through purposefully.

  “What is it?” Mouse scratches her chin.

  “Nothing. Keep focused.” Rivin crouches low before peering into the clearing. The others are quick to follow, peeking in order of height over him.

  The synthetic light appears to belong to multiple flickering spotlights rung around a collapsed coliseum reinforced with steel grates. The old marble is chipped and worn with age; gaudy beams made effigies slumped into corners, faces melted or cracked — some still clutching ceremonial grails as though waiting for offerings that will never come again.

  There’s a dry, chalky smell in the air, like old incense turned to dust. It’s so quiet, Rivin can hear the soot move.

  Many of the pillars have collapsed over faded murals of golden figures in various stages of prayer, scripture now blistering and peeling, the pigment bleeding into newer graffiti — angel faces gouged with red Xs.

  Several excavators lay abandoned in the shadow; one appears to be crisscrossed with browning red paint, a scrawled warning in jagged hand. There’s a finger-smudged smiley face in the dust of its mirror. Winking.

  Two cargo cranes loom like gallows over the sector, captured in stasis. He can also see the narrow road leading towards Sector 8 and freshly turned-up earth. Evidence of life without the presence of it.

  Pillars block much of the path, cracked torsos and wings as large as the cranes themselves resting stubbornly over gravel.

  “Slink, get eyes on those gates.” Rivin is already moving across the shadow and coming to rest besides the enormous wheel of one of the diggers. There are fresh boot prints stamped into dried mud and fences with new wire strung over old rot. Mercifully there is no Halidom blue in sight, save an old banner hanging over the coliseum entryway, streaked with mould.

  Slink pulls out his scope, peering through the spyglass. He studies the fences bolted to what’s left of the coliseum, all of which scale the length of the first floor, woven with dead ivy burned and blackened against the links. He also spies grounding rods tightly fenced in alongside what he suspects is a battery; finally, a pin pad fixed to a beam.

  He turns once more, studies the leftovers of a guard post with a broken radio still faintly humming its dead station. Near it, a heavily locked gate near the banner. Beyond, and skirting the darkness, he squints at what appears to be the abandoned Halidom Convey locked tightly away within its electrified tomb.

  Slink collapses the scope and jogs towards the dark-haired teen. “The fence is likely electrified.” He crouches besides Rivin. “One gate. No blue.”

  “Did you find the battery?”

  “Right. Locked behind a keycode.”

  “Should we try the numbers?” Mouse is already besides them. “On the map?”

  Rivin thinks for a moment. “We’ll know it when we see it, right?” He’s looking at Ricket, who trips up trying to reach them but manages to keep himself upright before landing headfirst into the tyre. “You need a helmet.” Rivin sighs, grabbing the boy’s collar and steadying him.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Yeah!”

  “What about the drones?” Asks Mouse, retrieving something blinking yellow from under the rim of the tyre — a gum wrapper folded into a cat. She raises a brow, dropping it into her pouch pocket. Something to ponder later, no doubt.

  Rivin glances towards Chip, who’s still by the entry point. He feels his throat catch at the shape materialising at the mouth of the tunnel. The blonde is staring through the scope of his rifle with his back turned to the once indecipherable drawing now made legible by angle alone.

  From this side and this distance, the chalk and ash come together to look like a man with his back turned, devoured by smoke.

  “Leaving...” Ricket murmurs, following Rivin’s gaze.

  Steel hues snap back towards the braided child whose hazel eyes are glossed over. Milky.

  “It’s called leaving…”

  Rivin holds his breath, squints hard at his forehead. “How do you know that?”

  Ricket doesn’t answer.

  “You dreaming again, Ket?” Mouse begins to wave her palm urgently in front of the boy’s face, sagging with relief when he blinks and flinches back with clearer eyes. Neither teen dwells, but both share a look of fleeting concern. There isn’t time. Later.

  Rivin turns away and tosses a stone that pebbles against Chip’s shoulder. The blonde quickly packs his rifle to join them at the wheel.

  “Two drones guarding the convoy,” he reports, “saw them through the pillars. We need to get that fence off.”

  “Quietly,” Rivin reminds them, looking at Slink and Chip directly. “Mouse, try the number; see if they fit. Get that fence down. Chip, cover her.” Two nods. “Slink, with me to the gate. Ricket, stay low. I’ll call you over when it’s safe.”

  “Hey, I want to come!”

  “You’re too clumsy. Stay where you’re told,” teases Slink.

  “Don’t argue.” Rivin snaps his fingers between them. “Do.”

  Mouse splits off, darting into the darkness like it’s her favourite disguise — it is. Chip, less graceful, lugs behind. Rivin can see him smiling. The chip in his tooth is just barely visible before it disappears. Something twists in his chest. Only foolish boys smile like that.

  Boys in love.

  Rivin and Slink break off towards the abandoned post. The static of the radio is the only thing that greets them.

  Ricket remains by the excavator, watching with bleary eyes that betray the coil in his heart. The heaviness of being somehow a burden in moments such as these.

  Rivin keeps low at first. The post appears mostly abandoned, save for clusters of tin cans and ration trash left scattered amongst overturned stones and beams. He rises. The coast is clear. Only the watchful Seraph eye bleached into stale fabric watches on.

  Clink.

  Slink produces a lighter from his pocket and commands a flame.

  “Slink—” Rivin starts but doesn’t stop as the older teen brings the flickering red to the banner’s edge.

  “Mercy burns, huh?” He scoffs, enraptured by the devouring of the rotted sigil.

  When Slink exhales deeply, it’s only to blow the soot and smoke and send it dancing over the quiet landscape.

  Rivin doesn’t speak, only moves to switch off the broken radio and pocket it into his pack. Up close, they can hear the thrum of electricity through the chain-link fence — the voltage singing within the coils. Rivin can’t spy the others from here, but shortly after, the air—which once appeared to vibrate and hum—powered down into a true and deep quiet.

  His fingers hover over the gate before settling down — nothing.

  He softens with relief and whistles Ricket over; the boy, already poised to pounce, quickly sprints towards them, skidding to their side.

  Mouse and Chip follow along shortly after. “Code worked a treat. No trouble. “Voltage go bye-bye,” she sounds pleased with herself.

  They all look towards several locks on the gate before them. “Through?” Slink rubs his hands together. “Petunia could rock this baby in a heartbeat.”

  Rivin shakes his head. Looks up. “Over.”

  Slink groans in disappointment, but no one utters a word of complaint as they begin the tall climb up the coliseum fence. Small hands riddled with calluses and exhilaration pull them all forward with that familiar ease that always carries children up vertical things, be it tree or wall or ancient ruin.

  Rivin is the first to reach the top — the marbled stone platform spiderwebbed with cracks. The archways too are sharp and jagged, fragile and crumbling beneath fingertips. On the opposing side, Rivin can finally see into the centre of the shrine. It could be described as part temple, part checkpoint, part dumping ground.

  Stained glass shards litter an aged and indescribable mural on the floor like spat teeth; the panes that do remain show saints in Halidom colours, hugged by glass that has blistered, bubbled or shattered away completely. Surrounding the centred mosaic where an altar has been transformed into a loading platform — now chipped and whittled away at by salt-crusted offerings and ceremonial trash — several purification tanks ring around the dock: titanium pods scabbed with salt lines, their windows cracked.

  Between them, various crates of differing sizes, many stacked, old and weathered — perhaps forgotten by Halidom altogether. The convoy itself sits the furthest way back from the circular cathedral; groups of vehicles swallowed by the collapsed temple.

  Rivin can see the bones of those caught in the ruins as it fell long ago. Older than all of them, somehow bleached in the dark, and circling through those ruins are two flight-based drones. Black, rectangular and buzzing.

  One appears to be in working order, the spotlight flitting between the crates, lending light to the colours in the cracked glass. Beneath the beam at its centre, a pocket of folded metal gave way to one red eye glinting through steel. Various lines in the metal followed the shape of folded appendages slotted into place. Resting.

  “Spectators,” Rivin murmurs to himself, but all of them hear.

  The bot, sleek and titanium, is shadowed by its pair, a far less graceful guardian that follows with great difficulty, fizzing and sinking through the air. Its light is now a crater in its head, packed with leaves and shiny bits of trash. It’s descended, and its remaining claw is wrapped with twine, strapped with aluminium ribbon and small vials that tinkle like the start of a lullaby.

  Strangely, the light at the fold of its eye blinks blue instead of ruby.

  “Mouse, after me.” Rivin descends like ash into dirt. Falling. He lands without noise. The girl follows close behind him, hand steady over her holstered dagger.

  In a flash, Rivin strikes, leaping from a crate. When he unsheathes his blade, the centre of the sword—a deep divot in ebony—tries to spark—crackles and then fails, but doesn’t slow him down. The first drone drops altitude, darting to the sound of children shifting in the dark.

  The teen thrusts downward as he descends, splicing the bot clean in half by the time he returns to the platform. Each piece of the drone falls heavy to the ground, exposed black and blue wires spitting and spasming with dying volts. Black gruel pools out of the circuits, twined around a tiny yellow core that glints pitifully from between metal organs.

  Mouse has the second drone — although it’s not exactly fighting back. Instead, it attempts to uncover its laser with jarring twitches and clicks, but as the mechanism opens, several folded gum wrappers cascade onto the ground. Its gun has been replaced with what appears to be an ill-fitting boot.

  “Neutralise—” it crackles. Robotic. Nothing happens.

  Mouse grabs the boot, smashing the drone into the earth.

  “Unstable—” it tries again before she drives her heel into the blue glow and cracks right through. The bot doesn’t move.

  Unlike its brethren, its core has already been pillaged and replaced with something more pewter in colour. They decide to pocket both.

  Rivin and Mouse quickly scout the area, but it appears that for now they are truly alone.

  He whistles the others over, and five sets of hands begin to palm over stacked crates. Plenty of the containers hold expired rations, scrap metals, tools and parts for maintenance machinery, all dusty and forgotten.

  It’s not long before they come to the centre of the miscellaneous pile.

  “Wait a minute—” Rivin mutters before urgently directing the others to assist him—swiftly clearing out the space in the middle where an opaque something has caught his eye.

  “What the hell?” Slink gasps.

  They all tilt back their heads to take in the view.

  There, standing before them and bowing, was an enormous Pale Knight.