Clark counted their supplies by the dim work light. Three ration bars. Half a jug of water. Not enough for a day. The storeroom had one door, hidden behind the steel tree and the unicorn. The creature still drifted through the ring above them. If it lingered, they starved in their own shelter. Safe was not the same as free. "We need to draw it away," Clark said. "Someone has to move it out of the ring." Elena shook her head. "Open that door and it maps us. Then this place is worthless." A fist knocked on the wall. Slow. Heavy. Not wet, not dragging. A human knock. Clark pressed his ear to the door. A low voice came through, plain and quiet. "Kent. It's Andre. I'm alone." Clark knew the name. Andre Roussimoff, the giant who wrestled here. He had come hunting the same thing they hid from. A good man he knew had vanished, and Andre had walked in alone to find whatever took him. Clark cracked the door. Andre filled the whole frame. Behind him stood Hulk Hogan, bandana damp with sweat, watching the dark hall like it might bite. "We saw the props moved," Hogan whispered. "Figured someone hid here. That thing's still circling, brother. It won't leave." "It's waiting for us to open up," Clark said. "We can't. And we're out of water." Andre looked past him at Elena on the crate. "Then it waits for the wrong door," he said. "I'll give it one." Clark understood. Andre could not sneak. He never had. But the creature fed on fighters. It wanted flesh, and Andre was the largest meal on the station. "It'll follow you," Clark said. "You can't fight it. It reforms." "Don't need to fight it," Andre said. "Just need it to chase me." He pointed one thick finger down the far corridor. Painted gold bricks curved along the floor there, an old stage path winding out of the hall. "That road runs to the lift bay. Long way. It'll be busy the whole time." Hogan set his jaw. "I'll run the other end. Split its eyes." Clark's chest tightened. Two men were offering to be bait so three of them could live. "When it clears the ring, we move," he said. "Cargo bay. Water's stored there." Andre nodded once. He stepped into the open hall and slammed his palm against the steel tree. The clang rang through the whole ring. From the dark, the wet dragging started fast. Andre walked away down the golden path, loud and slow, and the hollow-chested thing came after him. Hogan bolted the opposite way, shouting. The ring emptied. Clark counted ten seconds, then pushed the door wide. "Now." He pulled Elena up and ran with Orion into the cleared hall. The creature was gone, drawn off down the bright winding bricks after a man it could not eat quietly. The shelter had held. But its secret was spent, and Clark was running again.

Clark stared down the open altar passage. Both hunters were sealed below now, sharing one dark cage. But the glass was all that held the wraith from the door above. Cold air rose through the passage, and with it came a sound. Slow breathing. Something tested the seam where the passage met the floor. Elena knelt by the crack and pressed her ear close. "It's here. Right under us." She pulled back fast. "The join is soft. Rust. It won't hold long." Clark had trapped both creatures in one place. He had not sealed the place well enough. If the passage split, everything he sent down would climb back up. A lanky mechanic pushed through the gate, a rusted key ring clanking at his belt. Orion had built half the traps in this chase. He dropped to the floor beside Elena and ran his fingers along the seam. "Rust all the way through. I can weld it. But I need it held shut while I work." Footsteps sounded behind them. The drummer from the wrestling shows crossed the chapel, orange hair wild, spiked bands on his wrists. He had heard breathing behind a curtain once and gone to face it alone. He stared at the crack in the floor and grinned. "Animal hold it," he said. "You weld." He dropped both hands flat on the passage cover and pushed. The metal bucked under his palms. Something below shoved back. The seam widened a finger's width. Gray fingers curled through the gap. "Now," Clark said. Orion struck his torch. Blue flame hissed against the seam. The wraith below shrieked and clawed at the lip. Animal leaned his whole weight down, teeth bared, feet sliding on the stone. "Move the glass," Elena said. "Bring the spiral here." Clark and Hogan dragged the cracked pane from the sealed door. They set it flat over the passage cover. The spiral faced down into the dark. The clawing fingers snapped back. The shriek dropped to a low whine. "It fears the shape," Elena said. "Weld while it hides." Orion ran the flame along every edge. The metal glowed and fused. Animal kept both hands pressed until the seam went solid and still. "Done," Orion said. He killed the torch. "Held together with heat and one welder. But held." Clark tested the join with his boot. Nothing pushed back. The breathing was gone. Both hunters were sealed under welded steel with the spiral pinning them down. Animal lifted his hands and flexed them. "Quiet now," he said. "Stays quiet." Elena stood slowly. She looked at the sealed floor, then at Clark. "You've buried them both. But the whole crowd is still packed in one room, breathing one room's air, with no way down and one gate up." Clark looked at the sealed passage. The air that had risen through it was gone. He had closed the only vent that fed the sanctuary. The crowd behind him had stopped moving, listening, waiting to breathe.

The floor was sealed. The crowd was dying. Clark watched a woman slump lower against the wall. A child's breath came too fast. The welded cover trapped the dead below, but it also trapped the stale air above. No vent meant no fresh air. He needed a new source of clean air, one that did not open a path for the wraiths. He looked at the sealed room and found no answer in the walls. Peter Parker knelt by the floor again, his black suit dark against the metal. He spoke without softening it. "The air down there is bad. Below the seal is worse. You can't pull from there." He pressed his gloved palm flat. "You need a clean source. Something that moves air on its own." A big man pushed through the crowd. Winston Graves wore a wrestling singlet marked with a flag, his thick mustache damp with sweat. He had carried two fainting fans to the wall minutes ago without being asked. "The ring," he said, breathing hard. "Below the fight ring. There's a fan unit. Big one. Blew cold air on us during matches." He gripped Clark's shoulder. "It runs off its own line. Nothing to do with these shafts." Clark's chest loosened. A fan on a separate line meant air with no door to the dead. "Can you move it here?" Winston nodded once. "Me and Jake. We'll haul it." He waved a hand. A lean man with a coiled rope on his belt stepped up beside him. Jake the Snake said nothing. He cracked his knuckles and headed for the gate. They came back dragging the fan unit on a bent cart. It was the size of a barrel, caked in grease. Orion ran his hands over the housing. "Motor's good. Needs a line run to that dead outlet." He traced a cable along the wall and clamped the leads. The fan sat silent. Animal dropped flat by the sealed floor, palms spread, keeping watch for cold that meant a crack. "Still warm," he said. "Still good." Nothing scraped below. Orion struck the switch. The motor coughed, caught, and roared. Air pushed out cold and clean across the packed room. The woman on the floor lifted her head. The child's breathing slowed. People turned their faces into the stream and pulled it deep. "It holds," Peter said. He checked the fan's intake. "Pulling from the ring side. Not from below. You did it right." Clark leaned against the wall and breathed with the rest of them. The floor held. The air flowed. For the first time the room could stay sealed and still live. Then Orion frowned at the motor. "It draws hard. This cell won't feed it long." He tapped the battery clamp. "Few days. Maybe less." Clark looked at the fan, loud and alive, and knew it was now the only thing keeping the crowd breathing. If it died, so did they.

The fan roared all night. By morning its roar had thinned to a cough. Orion knelt by the battery clamp and shook his head. "Two days," he said. "Maybe one." Clark watched the crowd breathe the cold stream and knew the battery was now the only wall between them and the dead air. He needed a power source that would not quit. The sealed floor could never open again. He had to find current that ran on its own. Orion traced the fan's line back to a dead outlet in the wall. "The station's main line is cut down here," he said. "But some systems still hold charge. We need a live cell. A big one." He looked at Clark. "I can wire it. I can't carry it. That thing could sit behind a flooded panel." Arthur Curry pushed off the wall where he had slouched for hours. His scaled suit still dripped from the lower decks he had waded through to reach the chapel. Clark barely knew him, but Arthur had hauled two fallen men to the fan without a word. "Flooded," Arthur said. "That's mine." He cracked his neck. "Where?" Orion pointed past the gate. "A junction box behind the ring. Half underwater when the coolant burst. The cell inside holds more than this battery ever will." Jake the Snake coiled his rope over his shoulder and stood. "I'll run the line back. You pull the cell, I feed the cable." He jerked his chin at the gate. "Zephyr watches the heat. Nobody opens for a cold face." The small alien pressed close to the gate, his wide eyes fixed on the corridor. "Clear," Zephyr said. "Go now." They went. Clark followed Arthur to the flooded junction. Black water filled the room to the waist. Arthur dropped in without flinching and vanished under the surface. Clark held the rope while Jake fed it foot by foot. Bubbles rose. Then Arthur broke up, a dark cell the size of a toolbox in his arms. "Terminals held," he said, breathing hard. "It's dry inside." They hauled it back. Orion clamped the leads and held his breath. The fan caught, steadied, and roared full. The cold stream pushed harder than before. The woman by the wall lifted her face into it. A child laughed. Orion read the gauge and grinned. "This cell feeds it for weeks. Months, maybe." He tapped the housing. "Steady power. The air holds now." Clark leaned against the altar. The sanctuary breathed on its own at last. No door to the dead. No battery to watch die. He had built a wall that would not fail. Then Zephyr turned from the gate, his eyes narrow. "The corridor," he said. "Heat moving. Many bodies. People are coming down from above." Clark looked at the sealed room, now safe, now drawing a crowd he had never counted. A fortress that kept them alive would draw everyone who wanted to live.