The water was a shock of absolute, filthy cold. It stole the breath from Yin Lie's lungs and tried to pull him under with the weight of his gear. He surfaced, gasping, the stench of chemical runoff and ancient decay filling his senses. Beside him, Dr. Thorne flailed weakly, his eyes wide with a terror that went beyond the immediate threat of drowning. He was a man of sterile labs and academic theory, and he had just been baptized in the city's foulest artery.
Yin Lie grabbed the back of the scientist's collar, hauling him toward the tunnel wall. "Don't fight the current," he grunted, his own muscles screaming in protest. "Stay with me."
They were in a main storm conduit, a river of refuse and rainwater rushing toward the city's estuary. The darkness was near-total, broken only by faint slivers of light from grates high above. The wolf inside him was a miserable, soaked animal, but its senses were still sharp, tasting the pollutants in the water, hearing the groan of the city's foundations around them.
He was a creature of cold, but this was a dead, draining chill that offered no power. It only sapped his strength. Every movement was an effort. He could feel the ragged edges of his control over his powers, a fraying rope that threatened to snap.
He found a ladder embedded in the slick wall and pushed Thorne toward it. "Climb. We need to get out of the main flow."
As Thorne scrambled weakly up the rungs, a new sound cut through the rush of water. A high-pitched, electronic whine, multiplying, echoing down the tunnel. Yin Lie looked back the way they had come. A series of small, red lights were cutting through the gloom, moving with unnatural speed just beneath the surface of the water.
Directorate Stingrays. Aquatic pursuit drones. Small, fast, and relentless. They weren't armed with lethal force, but with electro-shock prods and grappling tethers. They were designed to corner and capture, not kill.
One of them broke from the pack, accelerating toward him. Yin Lie didn't have the energy for a grand display. He plunged his hand into the water and unleashed a short, sharp pulse of cold. The water in front of him flash-froze into a thick, jagged pancake of ice. The drone, unable to stop, slammed into it and shattered, its red light winking out.
But there were a dozen more.
"Hurry!" he yelled up at Thorne.
He followed the scientist up the ladder into a narrower service tunnel, the whining of the drones growing louder behind them. They were in a maze now, a network of passages that smelled of rust and stagnant water. They ran, their splashing footsteps echoing, the red lights of the pursuing drones casting frantic, dancing shadows on the walls.
They rounded a corner and stumbled into a cavernous, circular chamber. A decommissioned water pumping station. Massive, rusted turbines stood silent like ancient idols, and a catwalk circled the upper level. It was a dead end. A perfect place to be caged.
"We're trapped," Thorne wheezed, collapsing against a turbine, his face pale in the gloom.
The whining of the drones grew louder as they closed in on the entrance. Yin Lie's mind raced. He was too drained to freeze the entire entrance, too exposed to fight them all.
Suddenly, a new sound joined the chorus. A low, guttural laugh that echoed from the catwalk above.
"Nowhere left to run, little pup," a familiar, gravelly voice rumbled.
Yin Lie's head snapped up. Lounging on the railing, wreathed in the faint, shimmering haze of his own heat, was Scab. His metallic fists glowed a soft, menacing orange. He wasn't wearing Directorate gear or a uniform. He was here for himself. For Qi Yan.
"The boss wants the professor," Scab grinned, dropping to the floor with a heavy, floor-shaking thud. "And he wants you broken. I'm happy to oblige on both counts."
The Directorate drones swarmed into the room's entrance, their red lights pinning the three men in a bloody tableau. They paused, their programming likely struggling with the new, unsanctioned variable.
Scab laughed again. "Looks like we got a party." He ignored the drones, his entire focus a burning lens on Yin Lie. "Let's warm this place up."
He slammed his fists together. A wave of searing heat and concussive force erupted from him, superheating the air in the chamber. The Directorate drones, sensitive to extreme temperatures, shorted out, their lights flickering and dying as their circuits fried.
In one move, Scab had eliminated the third party and turned the room into a furnace. Steam billowed from the damp walls. The air grew thick and hard to breathe.
Yin Lie shoved Thorne behind the massive bulk of a turbine. "Stay down!"
He met Scab's charge, not with force, but with ice. A shield of frost shimmered into existence before him. Scab's glowing fist punched through it, the ice sublimating into a massive cloud of steam with a deafening hiss. The raw heat washed over Yin Lie, scorching his jacket, the wolf inside him howling at the proximity of the fire.
This was a primal battle. Fire against ice. Brute force against a power that was already unraveling.
Scab was relentless, his blows sending waves of heat that boiled the puddles on the floor. Yin Lie was forced back, his defenses cracking and reforming, each block draining more of his precious energy. He was losing.
He needed to change the field.
He looked up. The chamber was fed by a massive, primary water main, a pipe six feet in diameter, held in place by rusted, stressed supports.
It was a desperate, suicidal idea.
He dodged another fiery punch, letting it slam into the turbine Thorne was hiding behind. The metal glowed cherry-red from the impact. While Scab was overextended, Yin Lie focused every last shred of his will. He wasn't aiming at Scab. He was aiming at the supports holding the water main.
He didn't need to break them. He just needed to make them brittle.
A focused beam of absolute cold, no thicker than his finger, shot from his hand and struck the rusted iron support. The metal instantly contracted, groaning, a web of frost spreading across its surface.
CRACK.
The sound was like a gunshot. The support fractured. Under the immense weight of the water, the second and third supports buckled in a chain reaction. With a scream of tearing metal, the main pipe ripped free from the wall.
A solid, unstoppable torrent of water, a river unleashed, slammed into the chamber.
It hit Scab first, a wall of liquid force that tossed the massive brute aside like a toy. He roared in fury and pain as the cold water hit his superheated fists, the thermal shock sending cracks racing up his armored braces.
Yin Lie grabbed Thorne just as the wave hit them, the last of his strength used to anchor them to the turbine. The pumping station became a churning vortex of water, a maelstrom in a bottle.
Then, with a final, echoing groan, the floor gave way.
They were plunged back into the dark, swept away by the deluge they had created, tumbling through a collapsing tunnel system as the city's own infrastructure tore itself apart around them.
He had escaped the hunters. But he had done it by breaking the cage, and now he and the key were lost in a flood of their own making, being carried to a fate he could no longer control.