The passage remained still through the night cycle, the old pipes sighing now and then as if the ruins themselves were trying to sleep. No Enforcers came. No alarms blared. For the first time in days, Maya allowed herself to believe that maybe—just maybe—they had earned a reprieve.
She sat awake while the others dozed, her back pressed against the cold wall, headset humming faintly at her side. The glow of the subnet still pulsed in the corners of her vision, soft threads she could see only when she didn't try too hard. They wrapped around the city like veins of light, pulsing with a rhythm she couldn't quite name.
Selene stirred first, waking without the sluggishness of exhaustion. Soldiers, Maya thought, always half-aware even in sleep. She rubbed her eyes and glanced at Maya, who hadn't moved for hours.
"You didn't sleep," Selene said quietly.
Maya shook her head. "Couldn't."
Selene studied her, then sat beside her without another word. For a while they listened together to the slow drip of water. It wasn't until the silence felt too heavy that Selene spoke again.
"You kept us alive in there," she said. Her voice wasn't praise, not exactly, but acknowledgment. "The subnet bent when you pushed. I've never seen that happen before."
Maya's throat tightened. She wanted to deny it, to say it had been luck, or desperation, or a trick of the mind. But she remembered the raw pull of energy under her skin, the way the world had shifted.
"It felt like it wanted me to succeed," Maya admitted. Her hands clenched in her lap. "Like it was waiting for me. I thought I was using it, but now I don't know if it was the other way around."
Selene's eyes narrowed. "That's why we need to be careful. Power like that never comes free."
Maya exhaled slowly. "Do you think it's shaping me? Kieran?"
Selene didn't answer immediately. Her gaze drifted toward the sleeping boy across the tunnel. He looked younger in sleep, stripped of the shadows that had settled in his eyes these last days.
"I think it's trying," she finally said. "But trying doesn't mean succeeding. You're still here. You're still yourself. That counts."
Maya wanted to believe her.
Kieran stirred then, his breath uneven, caught in the grip of a dream. Maya was about to wake him when his lips moved, words slipping free in a whisper:
"…Maya…"
Her heart lurched. She froze, leaning closer. His voice was low, like it came from somewhere far away, yet it carried a weight that made her skin prickle.
When his eyes opened, they were dazed, but he looked straight at her, as if he'd been speaking to her all along. "Your voice… it pulled me back."
Selene stiffened. "From what?"
Kieran rubbed his temples, trying to gather fragments of memory. "When the subnet had me. When everything went dark. I was… gone. But then I heard her. Not here." He tapped his ear. "Here." He pressed his chest. "Like a thread pulling me out of the dark."
Maya's breath hitched. She hadn't spoken—at least not aloud—when he'd been trapped. She'd thought about him, screamed his name in her mind, begged him not to fall. Could the subnet have carried that? Could her thoughts have slipped through its web?
Selene caught her hesitation. "Maya. Did you reach for him?"
"I… I don't know," she whispered. "I was desperate. I wanted him back, and then… he was."
The three of them sat in uneasy silence. The revelation hung between them like a drawn blade. If her voice could reach him through the subnet, what else could it carry? What else could it change?
Kieran finally broke the quiet, his tone fragile. "If you hadn't… I don't think I'd be here. So whatever it is, don't let it scare you. We need it."
Selene frowned. "Needing it doesn't make it safe. The subnet isn't a gift. It's a chain. And the tighter we hold, the harder it binds."
Maya closed her eyes, hearing both truths in their words. She had reached Kieran, but at what cost? Was she tethering herself deeper into the system, one thought at a time?
The hum in the walls seemed to grow louder, as though the subnet itself was listening.
And in the dark, Maya made herself a silent promise: she would find a way to use this bond without losing herself. Or she would burn the entire web before it claimed them all.