The steam died the deeper he went. The maintenance tunnels beneath Sector 7 were a graveyard of dead infrastructure.
It was a different kind of blind. Above ground, the snow offered a sick, ambient reflection. Down here, the darkness was absolute. It was heavy. It pressed physically against his eyes.
Risay dragged himself forward. The ceiling was too low to walk. He crawled, using his left elbow and his knees, keeping his ruined right arm pinned flat against his ribs. Every scrape of his canvas coat against the concrete felt violently loud.
He counted the structural pillars by touch.
One. Two. Three.
Building 402.
The tunnel dead-ended at a cinderblock foundation wall. Just above his head sat the raw wooden subfloor of the first level.
Apartment 1B.
Risay pressed his back against the freezing cinderblocks and stopped breathing.
Through the floorboards, inches from his skull, the wood shrieked.
Creak. Pause. Creak.
Heavy boots. Measured intervals. The enforcers weren't just sweeping the lobby. They were already inside his mother's apartment.
The Lurker had anticipated the blackout. He had sent the hunters straight to the bait.
Risay looked at the iron crowbar in his hand. He couldn't swing it. One strike against the subfloor, and the enforcer above would fire straight down through the wood.
He needed a silent breach.
Risay reached up with his left hand, dragging his bare fingertips across the rough timber. He was looking for the geometry of decay. The building was condemned. The plumbing had been leaking for a decade.
Near the corner, beneath where the bathroom radiator sat, his fingers found it. Soft, spongy wood. Black rot.
He gripped the crowbar just beneath the hooked iron head, choking up on the metal. He couldn't swing. He had to carve.
He pressed the flat edge of the iron into the rot and twisted his wrist.
Damp wood flaked away. It fell silently into his eyes. He didn't blink.
Above him, the boots stopped.
Right over his head.
The wooden board bowed slightly under the enforcer's weight, pressing down against the knuckles of Risay's left hand. He froze. The damp dust settled on his cheeks.
A synthetically amplified voice murmured through the floorboards. "Target is not in the perimeter. Vital signs of the bait are stable."
Risay's heart slammed against his ribs. She's alive.
The boot shifted. The pressure lifted from the board. The heavy footsteps moved away, pacing back toward the apartment door.
Risay dug the iron back in. Harder. His left hand cramped, the muscles seizing from the unnatural, sustained angle. He forced it to work. He carved out a jagged, narrow hole, feeling the freezing draft of the apartment above bleed down into the dead air of the tunnel.
He had breached the surface.
He set the crowbar down silently on the dirt. He reached his left hand through the jagged hole, hooking his fingers over the edge of the cracked linoleum floor.
He pulled.
His right arm screamed as his body weight shifted, nearly blinding him with a flash of hot pain, but he locked his jaw. He hauled his shoulders up through the splintered gap, dragging his boots up behind him.
He lay flat on the freezing floor of his own home.
The apartment was pitch black. The suffocating, artificial heat of the Lurker's terrarium was completely gone.
In the corner of the room, a faint, ragged breath rattled in the dark.
"Mom," Risay whispered.
The breath hitched.
And then, from the absolute black of the opposite corner, a calm, digitized voice replied.
"You're late, Risay."