Sweat dripped off of her as she stepped back.
Her chest heaved intensely as she kept her eyes locked on what was ahead of her, a dark, soulless look in those stormy gray eyes. Her tank top was stuck to her skin with sweat. The sweat ran down her arms, dripped to the ground every few seconds. Under the cold lighting of the room, her arms glistened.
She circled her target, moving slowly, allowing herself a few seconds to regain her breath. Then finally, she surged forward, right at the punching bag.
A flurry of furiously-delivered blows and kicks followed, each one stronger than the last. As she hit the bag, she remained on the move, not letting herself stick to one spot. She continued to circle the bag, punching from every direction of it, sweat flying off of her as she moved with intensity.
She went at this for ten entire minutes without taking a break. For most, it might have been a feat. For Yuri Voss, it was nothing. She, after all, had been going at the bag for the past four hours. In fact, she only stopped hitting the bag because of the disturbance she sensed.
As soon as she sensed that she was no longer alone, she hit the bag hard enough to cause it to tear from the chain that suspended it from the ceiling. She grabbed it hurriedly, before it could fly a distance from her then she spun around and hurled the bag without looking to see who was there.
Someone else caught the bag, but the sheer force with which it'd been thrown caused the boy to stagger back a few steps. But he remained on his feet, regained his balance and then tossed the bag aside, before fixing her a cold look.
"Yuri Voss," he said, his eyes dark and narrow. "We'd like to have a word with you."
Yuri walked toward a stool that she'd placed against one of many columns in the room, grabbing the towel atop of it and wiping off her face and arms with it before draping it around her neck. She seized a bottle of water from the stool, opened it and gulped it down in one go, before tossing the empty bottle into a bin at least twenty feet away.
She turned her attention back to the intruders in her gym. "Who are you?" she demanded, hints of an old Eastern European accent evident in her voice. "How did you know where to find me?"
"I'm Jonathan Taylor," introduced the boy who'd caught her punching bag. He was definitely younger than she was, perhaps by a few years but he already had a somewhat hardened look. No doubt because of what he'd been through recently.
"Taylor," she repeated. "I know who you are. From the seventh district. What are you doing here? I was not privy to any knowledge that you and your unit were being transferred here."
"We're not here from the seventh," Andre said, stepping forward. "We're from Capital."
Yuri's expression darkened at once and she leaned against her stool, folding her arms. "Capital," she murmured. "Then you're here about—,"
"Yes." Chloe nodded. "We're here to help you."
Yuri snorted. "I'm retired, honey. Whatever it is you're here to do, it is not me you would be helping. And to be frank, I do not think you would be helping anyone at all. If you know what's good for you, I'd hightail it back to your precious little utopia before you get caught up in whatever's going on here."
"Trust me, there's a lot more things we'd rather be dealing with right about now," Chloe said, narrowing her gaze at Yuri. "We're kind of sick and tired about being given the attitude by everyone here. We're here to help, try not to make it harder than it needs to be."
"I'm not giving you an attitude, kid." Yuri moved away from the stool and toward them. "I'm giving you a warning," she added, her voice suddenly going coarse, eyes watering just a little and going slightly slack. "If you value your lives, you'll walk away from this."
"Yuri." Jon spoke softly, tenderly, and walked toward her. "What did you see?"
The former Captain flinched for a moment, briefly breaking eye contact with Jon. When she met his gaze again, it was pretty evident that she was doing all she could to keep the tears at bay. Her lips quivered slightly when she spoke. "I don't know," she answered coarsely. "But whatever they were, I can tell you it wasn't something natural. They were fast, strong, ruthless…my unit was gone in less than ten minutes."
"Were they human?" Jon asked, raising one eyebrow over the other. "Like us, I mean. Enhanced?"
"I…I don't know." Yuri shook her head. "They could have been…but I don't know. They said nothing, and they were in this sort of weird glowing mask."
"Yuri, I'm going to ask something of you now that maybe you might not want to do," Jon said. "But we want you to take us where this happened, walk us through everything that happened. It could help us figure things out."
"No." Yuri shook her head, taking a step away from Jon. She grabbed onto one of her arms and squeezed firmly, turning her face away from him. "I'm sorry. I can't go back there. Never again."
"Yuri—," Jon began.
"How did you survive exactly?" Jin interrupted him, her arms folded, a suspicious look on her face as she studied Yuri. "You called the things that attacked you ruthless, said your squad stood no chance. So how exactly did you make it out, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Jin, don't—,"
"Did you fight them?" Jin pressed on. "Did you run? Were you even ever down there with them? Or better yet, did you off your unit yourself and then decide to play for a little pity."
At the final statement, Yuri fixed her gaze on Jin and snarled. She took one step forward but before she'd taken another, Jon was right in front of her, one hand stretched toward her to discourage any violence.
Jon shot a disapproving look at Jin. "That's enough."
"Jin, come on," Chloe said, grabbing the girl by her arm and dragging her off toward the exit. Andre followed them, leaving Jon alone in the gym with Yuri.
Once they were outside, Chloe let go of Jin and glared at her. "What the hell do you think you were doing in there?!" she demanded.
"Trying to save your lives," Jin answered. "Maybe you've forgotten but the only reason your little government isn't currently trying to kill me is because I'm with you guys. Anything happens to you or your brother, they'll be gunning for me and while I'm pretty sure I can handle those oafs, I'm not quite interested in making things easier for my dad."
"What are you talking about?" Andre frowned. "How's pestering the captain supposed to be saving our lives?"
"Because the captain's lying," Chloe and Jin said in unison.
The two of them met eyes and exchanged a subtle glance before turning to Andre, who looked a little out of the loop.
"Were you listening to her heartbeat?" Chloe asked him.
Andre nodded. "Uhm, yeah? It was steady."
"Right," Chloe agreed. "But she just finished working out. So if it was steady, then it's because she was—,"
"Controlling it on purpose," Andre murmured, eyes widening slightly as the realization dawned upon him. He glanced back at the gym entrance, and a dark expression swept across his face. "You don't think there's a chance that she really did…you know, kill her own team?"
"If she did," Chloe began, "Then we need to be really careful with her. Being able to wipe out a squad of Pandorans singlehandedly is no small feat."
"I could do it." Jin shrugged, a smug, cocky expression on her face. "And if the rest of you would care just a little less about the lying captain's emotions and give me five minutes with her, I could get the truth out of her."
"Without killing her?" Andre asked, raising one eyebrow over the other.
"Jesus, are you actually considering that?!" Chloe asked, eyes wild as she stared at Andre. "We're not doing that!"
"So we're supposed to just knowingly let her lead us into a trap?" Andre asked. "Look, I don't want to do anything awful but if you both know for certain that Yuri's lying to us then shouldn't we do something about it right here, right now? There are missing children involved here, I'm sure you need no reminder of that."
"I know," Chloe said flatly. "But we don't know for sure that she'd be leading us into anything. For all we know, she might have her own reasons for lying. I say we go through with this as planned, check out the scene where it all happened, try to piece things together ourselves."
Andre scoffed and shook his head. "This how your unit typically operates?"
"We operate how Jon wants us to," Chloe said in a tone of finality. "If he wants to continue as planned, we continue as planned. You're here to observe, not call the shots."
"Fine." Andre snorted. "I'll observe. But if she turns out to be crazy, don't expect me to put my life on the line for yours."
Before Chloe could provide a retort, Jon emerged from the gym, accompanied by Yuri who'd now thrown a brown biker jacket on over her gray tank top. In one hand, she held a lengthy scabbard, a sheathed sword within it. Jon nodded at Chloe and the others. "Come on," he said. "We've got a crime scene to investigate."
-----
It'd been a long time since Chloe had seen the inside of a subway tunnel, but it was nothing like she remembered. Most of the entrances to the tunnels in this district had either been sealed long ago, or they'd collapsed. There were a few entrances here and there, although they required a great deal of maneuvering to get through.
Yuri led them through an entrance that had recently been cleared up to aid investigation of what had gone on down there. Down in the tunnel, there was absolutely no light. The district's power supply served the district and the district alone. That meant all they had for light in the tunnel was a dim flashlight that had been in Yuri's workout bag.
"Always got essentials on me," she'd said when she'd pulled the flashlight out.
"That include your sword?" Jin asked, glancing to the sheathed weapon that hung to a side of former captain's waist. "Bit old-fashioned even for you humans, isn't it?"
"When did old fashioned ever go wrong?" came Yuri's response.
The glow of the flashlight cast illumination on cracks in the walls, and piles of rubble and trash that littered the place as well as the oversized rodents that scurried back and forth and raced across puddles of water over damaged train tracks. Every now and then, they'd come across the skeletal remains of a rodent that had died down there, of which there were many. But even more concerning were the human remains they came across.
"There's no Servants down here, are there?" Jon asked, staring warily at a human skeleton that was lying on the train tracks.
"None." Yuri shook her head. "Used to be a few who'd get in here a while back. Then we started to conduct patrols down here, wipe them out before they became a problem. There haven't been Servants here in a long time, but we never stopped with the patrols. Considering what happened, maybe we should have."
"What were you doing down here exactly when the attack happened?" Andre asked, bending then to avoid cobwebs.
"Had a hunch a few of the missing kids might have found a way in here and gotten themselves lost," Yuri answered. "Loads of kids in the district like to scheme on how to get into the tunnels. Have it in their heads somehow that there's valuables or cool stuff to be found down here. Caught too many trying to get in, and thought maybe the missing kids somehow had."
"Uh-huh," Jin said, rolling her eyes.
Chloe nudged her on the shoulder quickly and gave her an annoyed look that said: Cut it off. Jin simply rolled her eyes again.
They continued through the tunnels another half hour. Twice, they happened upon an all too narrow passage packed with rubble and they had to maneuver gently to get across. Finally, they reached a section of tunnel that reeked rather powerfully of blood and looked even worse.
There were blood stains, dried off now, that went across train tracks and off them onto the platforms. The stains continued up the walls, and even across the ceiling above. There were white marks too in the concrete. Scratch marks, and they went rather deep into the concrete.
Chloe saw one section of wall that was particularly bloodstained and cracked. Something strong had hit it and hard.
She picked up on the sound of a quickening heartbeat and struggled breathing and looked to find Yuri with her eyes closed shut, one fist firmly clenched, the hand that held the flashlight trembling. Beads of sweat rapidly formed on her forehead, trickling down the sides of her face.
Chloe took a step toward her in a bid to calm her, but Jon was with her first. Jon held on to the hand with which she gripped the flashlight and steadied it.
Yuri cracked her eyes open slightly then, looked sideways at Jon. Jon simply nodded at her. Yuri released her grip flashlight and Jon took it from her, holding it in his left hand which he aimed forward, illuminating the tunnel that still stretched onward. He prepared to continue ahead. Yuri held onto his right hand and followed.
Chloe's face darkened when she saw this.
Jin snorted and glanced at Chloe. "I already told you what we need to do. Might be best to do it before someone gets hurt."
Chloe shook her head and continued forward, her eyes darkly trained on Yuri.
The trail of blood led them another fifty feet deeper into the tunnel before vanishing abruptly. Jon aimed the flashlight around, scanning to see if the trail continued anywhere else but it didn't. He aimed the light at the ground, checking for any sort of hatch door that led downward. When he found none, he aimed the light upward. There was nothing there too.
"How far's a search gone?" Jon asked.
"Tunnel goes on a little longer before ending in a dead end, caved in there. So pretty much entirety of the tunnel's been combed, and there's been no sign of them," Yuri answered. Her voice was shaky.
"And we're certain the dead end's a dead end?" Jon queried. "The trail just vanishes. There's no way that just happens, unless of course, there's some exit we missed."
"Or maybe we're dealing with something that can just…vanish?" Andre suggested.
Everyone went quiet. Jon turned and looked to Jin, his expression dark. "Is that possible?" he asked.
Jin folded her arms. "In theory, yes." She nodded. "And back home, to an extent, we'd managed stuff like that. But not spontaneously, there had to be gate points and stuff to do things like that. The idea that there's Pandorans running around who can just teleport…I don't think that's possible."
"Back home?" Yuri repeated, raising one eyebrow. "What—,"
"Doesn't matter," Jon said quickly.
"Well, you could see the dead end for yourself," Yuri suggested. "But I don't think it means much, the trail doesn't lead to it. It just cuts off right here."
"Couldn't hurt to see it for ourselves," Jin said.
Jon nodded in agreement. "Come on."
The tunnel stretched a little longer, and it took another half hour before they arrived at the dead end Yuri had spoken about. This time, she hadn't been lying.
There was a train flipped over on its side, all of its windows shattered, rust already scattered across its metal frame. And there was rubble just ahead, through which the train had been lodged. Jon led them into the train in hopes that they might have been able to get through to the other side, but it'd been crushed up ahead by the rubble, leaving absolutely nowhere to go.
Chloe glanced around the train, at backpacks that had been left on it, old purses, dollar bills strewn across the floor. She even saw the front page of a newspaper. Dirt and time had made it so the page was almost unreadable but in the top right corner, she could still make out the year: 2028.
"Sheesh," she said, before letting go of the paper.
"These tunnels," Jon said. "There's got to be other access points, right? Sure, it's a dead end over here but there's got to be some other opening somewhere else in the district that leads into the other side?"
"Like I said, most of the tunnel entrances are non-functional," Yuri answered. "A whole lot of them have been built over too, which meant those had to be sealed."
Jon's shoulders slumped slightly and he tossed his head back the way he always did whenever he was stumped or frustrated. After a moment, he let out a great sigh and nodded. "Alright," he said, turning to the others. "Nothing's down here for us to find. Let's head back up. Later, we ask around, see if we can find other leads."
Afterward, they got off the train and started to make their way back toward the exit. As they went, Chloe couldn't help but be unsettled. There was something odd about the tunnel, something very glaring that they should all have been able to notice and yet, had missed. She couldn't quite put a finger on it herself, but she knew there was something there, something wrong.
Trails of blood didn't just vanish into thin air. So either there'd been some sort of hidden way out they didn't know about or that Yuri was lying about, or someone else had been coming down here to do some cleanup.
Whichever it was, Chloe was going to find out.