The chain struck home and the water exploded upward in a geyser of brine and broken stone. Jax felt the impact jolt through his shoulder like a live current. The terror's hide was tougher than rusted rebar; barnacles the size of fists scraping along the links, each one etched with tiny screaming mouths that opened and closed in silent agony. Not normal barnacles. These things whispered when they touched the chain, fragments of old victims begging to be let in.
He planted his boots and yanked harder, teeth clenched. *Calculate the angle,* he thought, cold and precise. *Too much slack and it slips free. Too little and it drags me under before Mira can move.* The terror thrashed. Its blunt wedge of a head rose fully, pale eyes the color of drowned moonlight fixing on him with something too intelligent for a beast. One eye still smoked from Mira's earlier strike.
*Pull,* Kael whispered, voice like dry bone scraping against the inside of Jax's skull. No laugh this time. Just patient hunger. *Harder. Make it feel you.*
Mira vaulted a tilted pillar, lightning already crawling up her arms in jagged white lines. But she moved wrong, left shoulder dipping every third step, a small tic she probably didn't know she had, like her body remembered some old injury from the real world and refused to forget it even here. She landed on the terror's flank and drove both fists into the wounded eye socket. Electricity punched deep. The smell of scorched meat rolled thick across the plaza.
The creature screamed. Jax used the distraction to twist another loop around a spine ridge. Power flooded in: cold, heavy, tasting of centuries of drowned screams. His muscles burned with it. For one frozen second inside the chaos he saw Lena again: not the soft memory from the alley, but her face underwater, lips moving in silent accusation while black water poured into her lungs. *You left me for this?*
He blinked it away, jaw tight. The vision wasn't random. The new echo was feeding it to him on purpose, testing which memory hurt most.
Lira stayed low against a cracked slab, one hand pressed flat to the stone. Her other hand kept tracing the same small circle on her thigh over and over; three fingers, same rhythm, like she was counting heartbeats she couldn't afford to lose. Blood trickled steadily from her nose now, thin and dark. "Left flank opening in three seconds," she said, voice flat. "After that the mouths multiply."
Jax didn't waste breath answering. He shifted his weight, yanked left. The terror's side rolled partially out of the water, exposing a cluster of parasitic maws ringing the main jaw. Smaller, faster, each one lined with needle teeth that dripped something glowing faint green.
Mira was already there. She slammed a palm against the cluster and released everything she had left. Lightning arced through the smaller mouths in a chain reaction. They popped like overripe fruit. Black fluid sprayed.
The surge of power hit Jax harder this time. The chain drank it greedily, links darkening further until they looked wet even in the air. He felt the terror's echo settle inside the bind: angry, ancient, but leashed. One mental tug and he could call a piece of it later. The cost arrived immediately: another flash of Lena, older this time, her hand reaching for his as the underlevel flood rose, and him already turning away because Rico had offered better pay for one more run.
Jax's stomach twisted. *Not my memory,* he told himself. *The echo's twisting it. Use the guilt, don't drown in it.* He forced his breathing steady. Three calculated breaths. In. Hold. Out.
The terror gave one last violent shudder and sank, wounded but alive somewhere below. The plaza fell quiet except for the drip of water and their ragged breathing.
Jax dropped to one knee, chain coiled heavy in his fist. It felt different now; denser, like it had gained mass from the bind. Kael stayed silent, but Jax could feel the echo watching from the back of his mind, patient as rust.
Mira slid down the pillar, left shoulder still dipping with that odd tic. She flexed her fingers and winced. "You held it long enough for me to cook the eyes. Not bad for fresh meat." Her voice came rough, but there was new respect under the edge.
Lira pushed herself up slowly, still tracing that small circle on her thigh. The blood from her nose had slowed but not stopped. "The futures narrowed again," she said. "Before the bind there were seventeen paths where we all walked out of this plaza. Now there are nine. In three of them the chain is wrapped around your throat instead of your wrist."
Jax stood. The new terror echo pulsed faintly inside the links, cold and waiting. He could sense it the way you sense a knife at your belt, comforting and threatening at once. "Then we make sure it's one of the nine where I'm still holding the leash."
He looked at the two of them. Mira's lightning was banked low, flickering weakly around her knuckles like it was conserving itself. Lira's eyes, milky and distant, kept darting to shadows that weren't there. They had dragged him through the gate when they could have cut him loose. That bought them provisional trust. Provisional. In the underlevels trust had always been something you loaned at high interest and collected with interest in blood.
A low rumble rolled across the plaza, softer than before but deeper, like the entire Expanse had taken a breath and was deciding what to exhale next. Far off, another sound answered—something massive moving through drowned corridors, barnacles scraping stone in rhythmic patterns that almost sounded like language.
Kael finally spoke again, voice close and dry. *You felt it. The way the echo fed you her face. That was only the beginning. Every new bind will show you more of what you fear becoming. Keep feeding me and I'll make sure you become it faster.*
Jax ignored the whisper outwardly. Inside he filed it away. *Calculate the cost. Every echo makes Kael stronger. Every echo makes me stronger. The difference is who breaks first.* He coiled the chain tighter around his wrist until the links bit skin. The small pain helped clear the lingering visions.
"We move," he said. "That thing isn't dead. It's just sulking. The next bridge looks stable enough. We cross before whatever's making that noise decides we're easier prey than whatever it usually eats."
Mira fell in beside him without argument, her left shoulder still dipping every third step. Lira took the rear, fingers never stopping their small compulsive circle on her thigh. The plaza ended at a broken bridge spanning a chasm of black water. On the far side the ruins rose weirder—towers twisted like they'd been melted and refrozen mid-fall, surfaces covered in faint glowing script that rearranged itself when you weren't looking directly at it. Not algae. Not barnacles. Something that remembered being words once.
Jax stepped onto the bridge first. The stone felt slick under his boots, almost oily. Halfway across the rumble returned, louder. The water below churned. Not the terror this time. Something sleeker. Faster. Multiple silhouettes gliding just under the surface, drawn by the fresh blood and the new power signature leaking off his chain.
He didn't slow. *If it attacks mid-crossing, the bridge becomes a choke point. Bad for us. Use the height.* The calculation ran automatic in his head, cold and specific. Lena's face flickered again at the edge of his mind—her hand slipping under black water—but he shoved it down. Guilt was a luxury. Survival was math.
Mira's lightning crackled faintly behind him, ready. Lira's voice came soft. "Six of them. They smell the new echo on you. One path ends here if you hesitate."
Jax reached the far side and turned, chain already uncoiling in his hand. The first sleek shadow broke the surface, long and eel-like with too many fins that ended in human fingers.
He smiled, small and ugly.
"Come on then," he muttered. "Let's see how much more this costs."
The chain lashed out across the gap as the things surged up the bridge pillars, and the Expanse answered with fresh hunger.