The descent into the undercity wasn't a sleek, frictionless mag-lift ride. It was a plunge.
The industrial funicular tram—a massive, rusted cage suspended by screeching chains and gears the size of buildings—plummeted down the vertical chasm of New Aether's lower strata. Through the reinforced grating, the pristine smart-glass and manicured sunlight of the upper sectors blurred into overlapping ferrocrete superstructures. Then went the crisp air, replaced by a suffocating humidity that tasted of sulfur and synthetic exhaust. Inside the cage, the silence was toxic.
Ravion stood rigidly near the heavy doors, arms crossed. The pure, simmering disgust radiating from his clenched jaw and the cold, unblinking glare he directed at the passing strata said enough. He looked like a prince locked in a slaughterhouse, too proud to acknowledge the stench, but ready to execute whoever put him there.
Zeri slouched against the rusted railing on the opposite side, hovering an inch off the grated floor on her monorover. Her eyes were shadowed, staring blankly at nothing. She popped a bubble of synth-gum with a sharp, aggressive crack that echoed over the screeching gears.
Darian stood between them. He forced a breath, trying to channel the authority Halden wanted him to find.
"We keep this tight," Darian said, his voice barely cutting through the mechanical roar. "We find the asset, we secure it, we extract. No unnecessary engagements."
Ravion didn't turn his head. He just shifted his gaze slightly, looking at Darian out of the corner of his eye.
"Are you giving me an order, Veynar?" Ravion asked, his voice low.
"I'm just stating the parameters," Darian said, holding his ground.
Ravion slowly turned to face him, his hand dropping to rest casually on the hilt of his spear. "Listen. Down here, you're just baggage. Stay out of my way, and try not to get stepped on."
"God, both of you just shut up," Zeri snapped. She didn't look at either of them. "Your voices are giving me a migraine."
Ravion's eyes narrowed, but he didn't snap back. He turned back to the grating, his knuckles white on his crossed arms.
The massive braking thrusters violently kicked in. Darian didn't need a comms alert to know they had hit the undercity; his lungs remembered the exact, acidic bite of the smog. Unconsciously, his posture shifted. Up in the Institute, he practiced standing tall. Down here, his shoulders hunched, his hands moving to double-check the seals on his pockets, and his boots adjusted to a wider stance.
The heavy grating shrieked open. They stepped out onto a sprawling, dimly lit transit platform. The air was a thick, polluted haze of glitching neon and steam. Waiting nervously near the exit turnstiles was a tearful teenager in a high-end synthetic jacket—the block warden's daughter.
Zeri didn't wait for introductions. She leaned forward, the monorover whining as she shot past Darian and stopped inches from the terrified girl, trapping her against a turnstile.
"Glowing dog. Where?" Zeri demanded.
"It... it got spooked," the girl stammered, shrinking back. She pointed a trembling finger toward a sprawling concourse built into the hollowed-out ribcage of an ancient cooling tower. "It ran down into the sewage system."
Zeri didn't say a word. She pivoted her rover and shot off the platform, hovering over the ankle-deep sludge of the concourse.
Ravion scoffed quietly and followed.
Darian trailed behind them, feeling the crushing weight of the city pressing down from above. The high-end holograms of the upper city were gone, replaced by illegal, seizure-inducing neon signs advertising black-market cybernetics and cheap synth-noodles. The denizens of the undercity—scavengers, mechanics, and off-shift laborers—parted around the three POND uniforms. It wasn't out of respect. It was hardened, resentful fear.
As they walked, a trio of heavily augmented gangers lounging on a rusted pipe sized them up, their optics glowing menacingly in the dark. One of them stepped forward, holding a heavy wrench.
Ravion stopped. He didn't draw his weapon or shout. He simply turned his head, locking eyes with the ganger.
The ganger froze, the color draining from his face. He slowly lowered the wrench and backed away into the shadows.
Ravion clicked his tongue in disgust and kept walking.
Darian scanned the shadows beneath a collapsed stairwell. Huddled beneath a thermal blanket, a young boy was using a pair of rusted pliers to strip copper wiring out of a stolen Ares drone.
Darian crouched near the stairwell, deliberately keeping his hands open and visible. He shed the crisp Institute diction, letting his voice drop into the low, rapid dialect of the slums.
"Hey. Core's running hot today," Darian murmured.
The kid blinked, surprised to hear undercity slang coming out of a black uniform. He tightened his grip on his pliers, eyeing Darian suspiciously, then darting a terrified look at Ravion's brooding silhouette.
"Core's always hot for uniforms."
"I know," Darian said, pulling an Institute-issued nutrition bar from his pocket and sliding it across the damp floor. "No sweep today. Just looking for a lost pet. Glows like a broken neon tube. You seen it?"
The kid snatched the bar, his eyes flicking to Ravion again before leaning in close.
"Blue ghost ran deeper into the sewage system," the kid whispered, pointing a greasy finger deeper into the dark. "Down the maintenance tunnels. But you shouldn't go down there."
"Why?"
"Because the blue ghost was crying," the kid said, peeling the wrapper off the bar. "And the clicking things were chasing it."
Darian stood up, a cold knot forming in his stomach. The sewage system. An abandoned, rusted labyrinth where the floor was more toxic sludge than solid ground.
"It went further into the sewage system," Darian told the others. "Something's down there hunting it."
Ravion didn't ask for details. He unclipped his spear, the metallic clack echoing sharply in the damp air, and walked into the cavernous tunnel.
They moved deeper into the strata. Towering silos of corroded metal loomed over them, wrapped in a labyrinth of broken pipes and forgotten machinery. It felt like walking through the ribs of a decaying leviathan. The silence here was different from the concourse; it was heavy, suffocating, and predatory.
"Up there," Zeri announced.
Darian followed her gaze. Huddled on a fractured beam thirty feet above in the rusted rafters was the Hound. It was a shivering, fragile creature, its fur emitting a soft, pulsing cyan light that barely pierced the smog.
But it wasn't alone.