VOL. 1: CHAPTER 12: THE CITY DOESN'T FORGET ITS GODS
They didn't stop running until the city itself told them to.
Not with sirens.
Not with soldiers.
Not even with infected cries echoing through alleys and tunnels.
Kaloi's City stopped them with exhaustion.
They reached an abandoned tram station just south of the river divide, a relic from before budget cuts and redlining turned infrastructure into rumor. Rusted tracks disappeared into shadow. Old transit maps peeled from the walls like shedding skin. A turnstile lay twisted on its side, bent inward as if something heavy had leaned on it too hard and never apologized.
Drego slowed first, chest heaving, one hand braced against a concrete pillar.
"Here," he said between breaths. "This place… dead signal. Mostly."
Blitz leaned forward, hands on her knees, steam rising faintly from her shoulders as her body tried to regulate after everything she'd forced it through. Ultimo dropped onto a bench with a grunt, the metal groaning under his weight in a way that had nothing to do with rust.
Sionu stood still.
Too still.
His heart was pounding, but his body felt oddly calm, like the moment after lightning strikes when the air hasn't realized yet that it's supposed to scream.
Hale's face lingered in his mind.
Not angry.
Not triumphant.
Certain.
That was worse.
Blitz noticed first. She straightened slowly and stepped closer, lowering her voice.
"You with us?"
Sionu nodded, but it took effort. "Yeah."
Ultimo frowned. "You don't sound like it."
Sionu rubbed his hands together, grounding himself in the friction. "He wasn't chasing us."
Drego glanced up sharply. "Hale?"
Sionu nodded. "He didn't need to."
Drego cursed softly. "That means he already won something."
Blitz's jaw tightened. "What?"
Sionu exhaled. "Clarity."
1) THE KIND OF POWER THAT DOESN'T GLOW
They sat in the tram station for a long time.
Not resting.
Processing.
Outside, the city continued to argue with itself. Distant sirens overlapped. Helicopters thudded somewhere overhead, far enough away to feel symbolic instead of immediate. The infected cries were fainter here, like echoes traveling through old bones.
Ultimo finally broke the silence.
"So," he said, rubbing his palms together, "we just gonna pretend the government ain't officially got his eye on you now?"
Blitz shot him a look. "You saying that like it wasn't already true."
Ultimo shrugged. "It's different when they say it out loud. With their face."
Sionu stared down at the cracked concrete floor. "He wasn't trying to scare me."
Drego nodded slowly. "No. He was trying to introduce himself."
Blitz scoffed. "That's psychotic."
Drego didn't disagree. "That's strategy."
Sionu clenched his jaw. "He wanted me to know he sees me as a system, not a person."
Ultimo frowned. "Explain that."
Sionu searched for the words. "He doesn't care what I believe. Or who I save. He cares how I function."
Blitz's eyes narrowed. "Like a grid."
"Like infrastructure," Sionu replied quietly.
Drego exhaled sharply. "That's bad."
Sionu nodded. "Yeah."
Because weapons got destroyed.
Infrastructure got captured.
2) THE CHOIR'S SHADOW
They weren't alone in the station.
Sionu felt it before he saw anything.
A subtle pressure, like standing too close to a subwoofer you couldn't hear yet. The electricity under his skin stirred, uneasy, like a dog sensing footsteps before the door opened.
He raised a hand slightly.
"Hold up."
Blitz's posture shifted instantly. Ultimo straightened, muscles tensing. Drego killed his flashlight.
The darkness pressed in.
Then a sound.
Soft.
Rhythmic.
Footsteps.
Not running.
Not shuffling.
Walking.
Measured.
A figure emerged from the far end of the station, silhouetted against faint light leaking from a cracked service tunnel.
Tall.
Thin.
Dressed in a long coat that looked too clean for the city above.
When the figure stepped into clearer view, Sionu's stomach tightened.
The man's eyes glowed faintly.
Not like the infected they'd seen before. Not wild. Not hungry.
Focused.
He smiled when he saw them.
"Starborne," the man said, voice smooth, almost gentle. "You walk loud."
Blitz whispered, "That ain't no regular infected."
Ultimo muttered, "That's a boss."
Drego's jaw clenched. "I don't like his vibe."
The man tilted his head slightly, amused. "You can hear me, can't you?" he said, looking directly at Sionu. "Not just my voice. The underneath."
Sionu swallowed. "You're part of the choir."
The man's smile widened.
"Ah," he said. "You are learning."
3) THE CHOIR SPEAKS BACK
"My name doesn't matter anymore," the man continued, taking a few slow steps closer. "Names are for individuals. I am… conductor now."
Blitz scoffed. "That's corny as hell."
The conductor chuckled. "You think so?"
The air shifted.
Pressure built suddenly, not gravity like Ultimo's, not mist like Blitz's, but something stranger. A vibration that resonated directly with the nervous system.
Ultimo gasped, clutching his head. "What the—"
Sionu felt it too.
The pull.
Not on his body.
On his attention.
The conductor spread his arms slightly. "We don't hunt you, Starborne. We listen to you. You are loud in the unseen. Every choice you make echoes through us."
Sionu stepped forward despite Blitz's hand on his arm.
"What do you want?" Sionu asked.
The conductor's eyes gleamed. "Harmony."
Blitz laughed sharply. "You eating people."
The conductor didn't deny it. "Consumption is a crude word for integration."
Ultimo growled, "Nah. You parasites."
The conductor's smile faded just a fraction. "Careful, gravity bearer. You mistake necessity for malice."
Sionu felt the electricity rise in him, not violently, but defensively.
"You don't have to do this," Sionu said. "Whatever you are now, you were someone before."
The conductor nodded. "Yes. And that someone was small."
The pressure intensified.
Images flickered through Sionu's mind uninvited.
Crowds screaming.
Bodies stacked.
SOL ripped apart and rewoven.
A vast, unseen architecture humming with hunger and intelligence.
Sionu staggered.
Blitz caught him. "Sionu!"
The conductor watched with fascination. "You feel it, don't you? The scale. The inevitability."
Sionu gritted his teeth. "You're wrong."
The conductor raised an eyebrow. "About what?"
"You think hunger is destiny," Sionu said. "But hunger is just pain that never learned restraint."
The conductor laughed softly. "And lightning is just chaos pretending to be purpose."
That hit harder than any physical blow.
Because it wasn't wrong.
4) THE FIRST TRUE CLASH
The conductor raised his hand.
The shadows around the station shifted, detaching from walls and pillars like liquid silhouettes. Not infected bodies.
Something else.
Echoes.
SOL constructs, half-formed, twitching with shared intent.
Blitz swore. "I got bad news."
Ultimo planted his feet. "I can hold them."
Drego drew a knife, grip tight. "I don't know if that'll do anything."
Sionu stepped forward again, heart hammering.
"No," he said. "This one's mine."
Blitz's eyes widened. "Don't be stupid."
Sionu met her gaze. "I need to hear him."
Ultimo frowned. "Hear him later."
The conductor smiled approvingly. "Yes. Listen."
The shadows surged forward.
Ultimo slammed both palms down.
Gravity exploded outward in a controlled wave, pinning the constructs mid-lunge, compressing them like invisible hands squeezing smoke into shape. Ultimo cried out, veins standing out on his neck as he strained to maintain it.
Blitz inhaled deeply and exhaled sharply.
Mist burst outward, thick and scalding, curling around the constructs, disrupting their cohesion, turning their shared form into confused fragments.
The conductor frowned slightly.
"Impressive," he admitted. "But inefficient."
He snapped his fingers.
The pressure doubled.
Ultimo screamed as the gravity feedback slammed into him.
Blitz staggered as the mist condensed too quickly, heat rebounding toward her.
Sionu felt it all.
Their strain.
Their pain.
The electricity inside him screamed to be unleashed.
He raised his hands.
Then he stopped.
Because this wasn't about force.
This was about definition.
He closed his eyes.
Asked.
The electricity responded, not as a blast, but as a network. Lines of light spread outward from him, threading through the station, latching onto surfaces, grounding into metal rails and concrete foundations.
The shadows screamed.
Not in pain.
In conflict.
The conductor's eyes widened for the first time.
"You're not attacking," he said. "You're rewriting the environment."
Sionu opened his eyes, sweat pouring down his face.
"I'm denying you isolation," he said through clenched teeth. "You feed on separation. On people being alone in their pain."
The conductor staggered back a step.
"That's not sustainable," he hissed.
Sionu shook his head. "Neither are you."
The grounding field intensified.
The constructs unraveled, collapsing back into formless darkness.
Ultimo dropped to one knee, gasping.
Blitz fell back against a pillar, chest heaving.
The conductor stared at Sionu, something like respect flickering across his face.
"You will break," he said softly. "You feel too much."
Sionu didn't deny it.
"Maybe," he said. "But not today."
The conductor smiled sadly.
"No," he agreed. "Not today."
And then he was gone.
Not retreating.
Not fleeing.
Simply absent.
The pressure vanished.
The station went quiet.
5) AFTER THE GOD LEAVES
Ultimo collapsed fully, laughing weakly through exhaustion. "Man… I hate underground."
Blitz slid down the wall and sat, wiping sweat from her face. "Next time, we fighting in open air."
Drego stared at the spot where the conductor had stood. "That wasn't a grunt."
Sionu nodded slowly. "That was leadership."
Blitz looked at him sharply. "What does that make you?"
Sionu didn't answer right away.
He looked at his hands.
No sparks.
Just a faint warmth.
"I don't know yet," he said quietly. "But I know what I'm not."
Ultimo groaned. "Please say 'not dead.'"
Sionu almost smiled.
They sat there in the aftermath, the city breathing above them, the unseen realm listening below.
Sionu understood something now that terrified him more than Hale, more than the choir, more than the infected.
He wasn't just reacting to the world anymore.
He was shaping it.
And shaping the world meant the world would eventually push back.
Hard.
Far above them, in a room full of screens and quiet men, Commander Hale watched new data populate his display.
Energy readings.
Spatial modulation.
Environmental rewriting.
He leaned back slowly.
"Confirmed," Hale murmured. "He's evolving laterally."
An aide swallowed. "Sir… what does that mean?"
Hale smiled faintly.
"It means," he said, "we're not dealing with a weapon anymore."
He tapped the screen.
"We're dealing with a god in denial."
Deep beneath Kaloi's City, the Event Horizon pulsed again, brighter this time.
Not with hunger.
With recognition.
The Starborne had crossed another threshold.
And the universe had taken notice.
to be continued...