The city devoured them.
Concrete mazes of abandoned towers, twisted bridges, forgotten streets swallowed Elian and the others as they scattered into the belly of the urban wasteland.
Rain fell in sheets, masking their footprints and washing the blood from their skin.
But it could not wash away the fire in Elian's heart.
Nor the cold weight of survival in his mind.
---
They regrouped in an old subway tunnel, hidden deep beneath the city.
Broken tracks stretched like dying veins in both directions.
The smell of damp rust and mildew clung to the air.
Elian sat with Kael and a handful of the others — a boy missing an ear, a girl with jagged scars across her cheek, a man whose left hand was mangled beyond use.
Wounded, starving, hunted.
But alive.
Barely.
Kael pressed her hand to her side where the wound still wept blood. Her face was pale but defiant.
"We can't stay long," she said through gritted teeth. "They'll track us."
Elian nodded.
He knew it too.
The Order never lost prey without hunting it down.
They would come with dogs, drones, soldiers.
The city itself would become a trap.
Unless we move first, he thought.
---
For two days they scavenged.
Stealing what little food they could from the ruins.
Always moving. Always hiding.
At night, they took turns keeping watch.
Elian barely slept.
Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the faces of those who hadn't made it.
Was this really freedom?
Or just a slower death?
Kael caught him staring at the horizon once, where the towers bent like blackened teeth.
"You think about going back?" she asked, voice low.
Elian shook his head.
"There's no 'back' anymore."
Only forward.
Only revenge.
Only survival.
---
On the third night, a stranger found them.
A tall man wrapped in a heavy coat, the hood shadowing his face.
He claimed to be a sympathizer, said he knew of a safehouse where they could rest, regroup, heal.
Kael was wary.
But the group was desperate.
And Elian — still naive enough to hope — voted to trust.
Just this once.
The stranger led them through forgotten alleys and sewer passages, deeper into the veins of the city.
Elian noticed too late the silence.
No rats.
No dripping pipes.
No sounds of life.
Only the echo of their own footsteps.
---
The walls exploded inward with the roar of smoke bombs.
Figures in black tactical gear swarmed them — gas masks, stun batons, rifles with silencers.
Elian reacted instinctively, shoving Kael down and spinning to fight, but there were too many.
The first shock baton struck his ribs, sending volts tearing through his body.
He fell hard, choking on his own breath.
Around him, the others screamed, fought, fell.
Kael's knife flashed once — she gutted a soldier clean — but a rifle butt smashed her temple and she collapsed like a rag doll.
It was over in seconds.
They had been herded into a slaughter.
A betrayal.
---
Elian struggled, every muscle screaming, as the stranger approached, pulling back his hood.
For a heartbeat, the world froze.
It wasn't just any man.
It was someone Elian knew.
Someone he'd trusted once — a memory from before the Order had shattered his life.
Ryen.
The boy who used to teach him how to sneak past the market guards when they were kids.
The boy who laughed with him under stolen starlight.
The boy who had vanished the day Elian's family was ripped apart.
Ryen's face was harder now, colder.
He crouched beside Elian and murmured, almost apologetically:
"You should've stayed in your cage."
Then he drove a syringe into Elian's neck.
A burning numbness raced through his veins.
The last thing Elian saw before blackness swallowed him was Kael's limp form being dragged away, her blood leaving a jagged trail on the cracked concrete.
---
Elian fell into the darkness screaming.
Not from pain.
Not from fear.
But from betrayal so deep it carved something vital out of him.
Something that would never, ever heal.
---