Earlier...
Ima crouched in the crawlspace, her knees aching from the sharp grid of the tal floor. Dust clung to the inside of her throat with every breath. She didn’t dare shift her weight. One wrong move, one creak of the rusted tal panel under her boot, and it was over.
She pressed her eye against the sliver of light bleeding through the vent grille.
Below them, the hangar was a different world entirely—flooded with sterile light and the hum of engines. Armored cars lined the polished concrete floor like sleeping beasts, black and unmarked, ready to lurch into the night with whatever—or whoever—they were ant to transport.
And at the center of it all stood Adrian.
She hadn’t had the displeasure of eting him in person, but she had heard enough and seen his picture before.
A specter from every nightmare they had tried to outrun.
He wore the matte black uniform of the Central Authority, trimd in red, his shoulders squared beneath the high collar. His n stood behind him in a disciplined phalanx. Not twitching. Not speaking. The kind of silence only soldiers trained to kill knew how to hold.
Ima swallowed hard, her heart slamming against her ribcage. She turned her head slightly, just enough to whisper to the others cramd in the narrow duct around her.
"Tell I’m hallucinating."
"No," hissed Sam, the doctor dude from Winter’s other group, his voice tight with disbelief. "That’s him."
"What the hell is he doing here?" murmured Miles, his dark eyes wide, trained on the scene below.
"Maybe they tracked us," said Mike from the back, his whisper strained with fear. "Maybe we are caught."
"We would’ve heard sothing. Sirens. Claxons. Anything," Ima muttered, forcing herself to breathe. "He’s waiting."
"For who?"
That was the million-dollar question. The question they didn’t want to know the answer to.
The steel vent felt cold against her cheek. She adjusted her grip on the rifle slung across her chest. Mike had snagged it from a guard they knocked out and stashed in a storage room. Her fingers had gone stiff from holding it too long.
She wondered what would happen if she took a shot right now? What if he had so kind of protective barrier on him? They wouldn’t be able to flee the vents fast enough to not get riddled with bullets.
She couldn’t risk it, not with the kids here.
Adrian hadn’t moved. He stood like a statue, unflinching, face blank. His black gloves caught the reflection of the lights as he slowly clasped his hands behind his back. His eyes flicked toward the bay doors.
Then—
A sharp hiss broke the stillness.
Ima stiffened.
"What was that?" whispered Kalea, already adjusting her position.
Another hiss—closer now.
Then, unbelievably, a section of the floor right in front of Adrian groaned and began to lift.
"No, no, no—" Sam gasped.
A small figure clambered up from the vent in the floor.
Tiny hands. Floppy curls. Bare feet.
Leo.
Ima’s stomach dropped.
The baby stood wobbling on the edge of the open vent, blinking up at Adrian like he’d wandered into the middle of a thunderstorm. His bottom lip trembled. He turned slightly, as if searching for soone to tell him what to do.
And then Zara’s bloodied hand appeared, gripping the edge of the opening. She hauled herself up, muttering sothing that didn’t carry. Her braid swung over her shoulder as she turned and reached back down, likely helping Winter up.
She hadn’t seen him.
Zara hadn’t seen him.
From the crawl space above, Naomi slapped a hand over her mouth to keep the scream in. The other hand reached behind her to block her children’s eyes from what might soon be a cri scene. If that was the monster they were running from, then who knew what he was about to do.
"Zara! Look up—look up, dammit!" Sam hissed.
Leo took one step forward.
Adrian moved.
He didn’t lunge or shout. No barked orders. He simply raised one arm in a fluid motion and drew his sidearm. Calm. Smooth. Unhurried.
And pointed it directly at Leo.
Ima’s lungs stopped working.
"What’s he doing?" Mike rasped. "No—he’s not gonna—he wouldn’t—"
"He would," Ima snapped, voice trembling. "You don’t know him like I’ve been told. He would."
Down below, Zara finally stood upright and turned—and froze.
She looked up. Her face registered confusion, then horror, then rage in rapid succession.
Winter surfaced behind her, his dark hair slicked with sweat, eyes wide as he saw Adrian and the muzzle of the gun trained on Leo.
Zara threw herself in front of the child. Or tried to.
She didn’t seem to move right, must have been hurt down in the tunnels.
Adrian said sothing, she could barely make out the movent of his lips.
But the crawlspace was too high, too sealed, to hear it.
"What’s he saying?" Kalea whispered furiously. "Can anyone lip-read?"
"I don’t care what he’s saying," Sam muttered. "We need to get down there—"
"No!" Ima grabbed his wrist. "We blow our cover now and we all die. They’ll be ready for us."
Down below, Zara and Adrian were now arguing.
Winter tried to move between them and gestured wildly toward the cars, then toward Leo, then back at Adrian. From the tension in their bodies, the way Zara clenched her fists, the way Winter’s voice (inaudible as it was) rose with barely contained fury, it was clear they weren’t going down without a fight.
But they were outnumbered.
Zara had only her fists.
Winter had that rifle of his slung on his back, but against Adrian and a squadron of trained Authority agents, it might as well have been a spoon.
Adrian said sothing again and a look passed Zara and winter’s faces, they clearly faltered in that mont.
One of the soldiers stepped forward.
Another followed.
Then—
Cuffs.
One pair slapped onto Zara’s wrists with brutal force. Another soldier grabbed Winter and shoved him face-down against the nearest armored car.
Leo scread.
The sound did reach the crawl space this ti.
It cut through the air, high and broken, filled with fear.
Zara reached for him, then her body went limp as she fell face first to the ground.
Ima’s hands clenched so hard she could feel the rifle biting into her palms. Her whole body was trembling now—not with fear, but with fury. This was wrong. This was so wrong.
"They’re separating them," Naomi breathed.
"I told you we were caught," Mike said numbly.
"We’re not caught," Ima snapped. "They haven’t swept the hangar. They don’t know we’re here."
"But they have them."
"Then we get them back."
The armored cars’ engines roared to life, the sound shuddering up into their crawlspace like a tremor.
One by one, the vehicles began to roll forward. Zara was shoved into the back of one, the doors slamming behind her. Winter was dragged into another.
Leo—
Leo was taken by Adrian.
The man simply scooped him up in one arm, like a package.
Leo scread and twisted in his arms, likely looking for Zara but Adrian didn’t even seem affected by his squirming movents. He just turned and disappeared into the cabin of the lead vehicle, the door closing behind him with a final tallic thud.
Then they were gone.
The convoy pulled out of the hangar, tires screaming as they disappeared into the night.
For a long mont, no one in the crawlspace spoke.
Then Miles said what they were all thinking:
"What now?"
Ima forced herself to breathe.
What now?
Her brain scrambled to process everything they’d seen. Zara and Winter were gone. The kid—Leo had been taken. Adrian had them all. And they were trapped in a ventilation duct like rats, covered in sweat, breathing recycled air.
But they were alive.
And that ant they had a chance.
She turned to the group.
"We follow them."
"What?" Miles stared at her. "We don’t even know where they’re going."
"We’ll find out," she said. "Our plan was to escape right? Winter was raging, going to get his family and still rembered that we were a part of it too and asked that we try to find a way. Are you going to leave him?"
Miles’ eyes narrowed. "Winter is a brother to . I’m not going to abandon him ever! But we have other people here with us," he gestured to his wife and kids. Non combatants. "We can’t just go after Adrian, especially since we don’t know where he’s taking them."
"Then we don’t go in through the front door," Ima replied. "We shadow. We stay dark. We hit where they’re weakest."
She looked at each of them in turn.
"You all saw what happened. He was going to shoot a child. A baby. And if Zara hadn’t moved fast enough or probably agreed to his bull-terms, he would’ve done it."
Silence.
"That’s who we’re up against. And that’s why we don’t leave them behind."
More silence swallowed the crawlspace once more.
The convoy was gone. Leo’s screams still echoed in Ima’s ears, faint and fading like smoke. Below, the hangar was empty again—eerily so, as if nothing horrific had happened there at all. Just the shine of the concrete floor and the lingering scent of exhaust.
Naomi shifted where she crouched, one arm still curled around her daughter, the other resting protectively on her son’s shoulder. "Ima," she said softly, "I want to save them too. But I can’t—I won’t—leave my children. I’m not trained for this. I’ve never been part of the fight."
"And no one’s asking you to be," Miles said, rubbing his jaw. "We’re not taking the kids into danger. That’s not even a question."
"But we can’t all go," Mike added. "If sothing happens to all of us, then what? Naomi and the kids get left behind in so duct to starve?"
Ima’s jaw clenched. "Then we split."
Sam frowned. "Split?"
"Two groups," Ima said. "One follows the convoy. Shadows them. The other gets Naomi and the kids out of here and sowhere safe. We regroup later. Burn this place behind us if we have to."
Miles hesitated. His gaze flicked to Naomi, who gave him a small, solemn nod. He took a breath and nodded too.
Sam beat him to speak.
"I’ll get Naomi and the kids out," he said. "I know the terrain best. I’ll take Mike. He’s good with maps, and he’s fast."
Mike looked like he wanted to argue, but then he glanced at the kids and nodded. "Okay."
"I’ll go after the convoy," Miles said, quietly but firmly.
Ima t his eyes and gave a slight nod. "Then it’s us."
Naomi’s eyes shimred, but she didn’t cry. "You bring them back," she said, voice barely above a whisper.
"We will," Ima said.
They sat in silence for a heartbeat longer, each one processing the weight of what ca next.
Then, without another word, they began to crawl—two directions, one cause.
One group to survive.
One group to fight.
And a promise hanging in the air between them:
We co back. All of us.
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