Razor Nyx's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Razor dropped the MRE Finn handed her. Food was easy. A way down was not. She needed the undercity, and every door she knew was gone. The old stairwells had caved in. The maintenance shafts ran full of black water. She had spent two days crawling the surface, and the surface had nothing to offer but open sky and watching eyes. "I can't build a sanctuary on a rooftop," she told Finn. "I need to get under. All the ways in are dead." Finn chewed slowly. "Not all of them. I found something yesterday. Followed a little wolf cub into a hole." Razor flexed her hand. The claws slid out with a soft click. "A hole." "A tunnel," Finn said. "Old subway line. Nobody uses it." He led her to a gap in a broken wall. The cub was still there, thin and gray, pressed into the shadow. It watched them with lonely eyes, then slipped inside. Razor followed. The tunnel opened wide and quiet. Worn concrete curved overhead. Faded station letters clung to the tiles. Rubble covered half the floor, but the other half was dry. No water. No cave-in blocking the throat of it. Air moved through, cool and steady, pulling from somewhere deep. "It goes down," Razor whispered. She crossed to the far end. The track bed sloped into the dark, past the broken platform edge. She dropped a loose chip of concrete. It rattled a long time before it landed. The tunnel connected to the undercity. It had to. The air proved it. She turned to Finn, grinning. "This is it. A way in that isn't flooded or buried. We can hold this." Then she heard the cub growl. It stood stiff by the entrance, hackles up, facing back toward the surface. Razor killed her grin and went still. Boot steps scraped the broken wall above. Not one set. Several. A beam of light swept the gap and stopped on the hole the cub had shown them. Someone had followed. Of course they had. Finn walked unseen through crowds, but Razor did not. She had spent two days on the surface, climbing, searching, leaving tracks across every rooftop. Someone had watched her look. "Down," she hissed. She grabbed Finn's sleeve and pulled him toward the sloping track bed. The cub bolted ahead of them into the dark. Razor's claws caught the rusted rail, and she lowered herself into the throat of the tunnel. She had her way into the undercity. She also had company coming down behind her. The place she meant to build her refuge was now the only road out, and it ran one direction. Deeper. Finn melted into the shadows. In this light it was no great trick but was still unnerving. But Razor needed only follow the direction the wolf pup’s snout was pointing to know where he was. While Razor looked around frantically for concealment, the pup wandered back the way they came. The steps were getting closer. Razor found what appeared to be an old access panel for utility work. She could barely pry it open. She could barely fit in among the broken pipes and conduits. The steps approached again. Voices. A hand reached into her nook. The panel moved and a bounty hunter met her gaze. Before he could react, Razor clawed him viciously, releasing a dose of venom. The neurotoxin acted immediately. The intruder was unable to speak, unsteady on his feet. He stepped back, staggered around, and fell headlong off the platform and lay motionless.