Chapter 26:
The Fire Within
The tunnel reeked of blood and ionized air. Echoes of gunfire faded behind us, replaced by the distant clicks and static howls of the hive. Sarin's boots thudded against broken stone as he carried Nia's limp form, her head lolling against his shoulder like a broken doll. The crimson glow under her skin had dimmed, but it hadn't vanished.
"She's still burning," Vex said, voice tight, eyes narrowed behind cracked goggles that couldn't hide her fear. Her breath steamed in the chill air, fogging the lens for a second before she blinked the mist away. "But not out."
My legs trembled with exhaustion, my shoulder torn and seeping from a near miss. I could still feel the heat of that Antler's blade. My fingers were locked, muscles stubborn with shock, still remembering the impossible strength in Nia's body as I dragged her free of the swarm. She shouldn't have survived.
But she did.
And she took three of them down with her bare hands.
Inside the derelict utility hub, we collapsed. The space was hollow, breathing with old dust and silence, punctuated by the faint buzz of dead monitors and the rattle of wind through broken ducts. Concrete walls pressed in close. Rusted piping groaned overhead. The only light came from her.
Nia.
Her veins pulsed with molten light, as if her blood had become wildfire. Her skin was pale with strain, but she lay steady, eyes closed, breath ragged.
We gave her space, but none of us sat. No one dared.
Then she whispered, "They're quiet now."
Sarin was the first to move, rifle half-raised. "Who?"
"The hive," she breathed. "They're listening."
I crouched beside her, ignoring the ache in my knees. Her skin radiated heat, but not the kind that burns. It was wrong. Like standing too close to an electric coil.
"Nia," I said. "Are you... are you in control?"
Her eyelids fluttered. When she opened her eyes, I saw something I didn't understand. Not entirely human. Not entirely gone.
"As much as I need to be," she said.
Before we could speak, the ground trembled not violently, but with intent. Like something massive was paying attention.
Outside, the shadows stirred.
Antlers.
Six of them stepped into the broken doorway. Their masks gleamed in the ambient red. Their antlers arched like living antennae. They didn't move to attack. They didn't speak. They just stood.
Waiting.
Vex edged back, fingers twitching near her sidearm.
"No. No way. They don't freeze. They don't stop."
"This is a trick," Sarin said. His voice was low, hand steady on the rifle.
"It's not," Nia murmured, and pushed herself upright. Her movements were fluid now. Not hurried. Not human.
She stood.
The Antlers dropped to one knee.
My breath caught in my throat. I could taste the static in the air, like a storm hanging just above us.
"They recognize me," Nia said. "I'm a signal they weren't built to reject. Not hive. Not human. Not anymore."
Her fingers twitched. One of the Antlers—the tallest—twisted its head, then turned back to the others.
They stood.
And disappeared into the dark.
Sarin slowly lowered his weapon. "We should be dead."
"We were," Nia said softly. "But now I'm a beacon."
I reached for her, heart hammering. "What does that mean?"
She met my eyes. "It means I can walk into the hive."
***
The night that followed felt surreal.
We made camp in the shattered remnants of a decontamination station. A facility built to protect against the very thing now mutating Nia from the inside out. The irony sat heavy in my chest as I watched Vex set up a portable scanner, its screen casting sickly green light across her face.
"She's emitting," she muttered. "Low frequency. Constant. Like a heartbeat."
"Hive-adjacent," Sarin added, eyes never leaving Nia. "But not synced."
"Which is why they haven't come back," Vex finished.
Yet, none of us felt safe.
Nia stared at her hands as if they belonged to someone else. Light shimmered beneath the skin like hot oil. Her jaw clenched, her breathing shallow.
"They can still reject me," she said. "I'm not their Shepherd. But I'm close."
I knelt beside her. My fingers hovered over her shoulder, but I didn't touch. "What do you feel?"
Her voice was small. "Everything. Every cry in the network. Every Antler. Every echo of a human mind trapped inside. The ones still fighting... the ones who've already given in."
She looked up, and my chest tightened.
"I felt Kael die."
Vex froze mid-typing. Sarin turned his back. I sat down beside her, head bowed.
"But," Nia added, "something else is moving. Something deep. Old. It's not the Shepherd. It's... a splinter. A mind born from all this chaos."
Vex turned slowly. "Another version?"
"Or an evolution," Nia whispered.
***
We moved before dawn. The city above us was silent, buried in ash and fog. Nia led the way, her glow casting long shadows against the sewer walls. The hive watched us. I could feel it.
At an intersection, Nia stopped. Her body tensed like a tuning fork.
"They're testing me," she said.
"Who?" Sarin asked, voice taut.
She didn't answer. She walked forward.
They emerged from the dark like broken statues. Half-Antlers, twisted with corrupted code and splintered thought. Their limbs convulsed. Their masks cracked. I saw human eyes behind the bone.
My weapon was halfway up when Nia raised her hand. "No."
She walked to them. Alone.
One hissed. Another collapsed, its body spasming.
Nia knelt. Her hand hovered over its chest. "They're tethered to fragments of the Shepherd. I can stop the infection's spread. Not reverse it. Just quiet it."
She pressed her hand down.
Light exploded.
The body went still.
The others dropped to their knees.
Vex let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "You're not a weapon. You're a firewall."
Nia stood slowly. "No. I'm a bridge."
***
It took us two days to reach the Hive Core.
The city wasn't a city anymore. It was a wound. A corpse that twitched beneath the skin of normalcy, pretending it hadn't already died days ago. The sky no longer bled in violent strokes, but pulsed in shades of necrotic gray. Ash clung to everything. It blanketed the husks of cars, painted the skeletal trees lining cracked sidewalks, crept into the folds of our clothes like smoke that forgot how to dissipate.
The closer we got, the more the buildings bent inward, as if the heart of the infection had gravity now. Architecture twisted like it had been caught mid-scream. Tower blocks folded in on themselves, windows caved inward, iron rebars exposed like ribs. Roads lost their function, curving into impossibilities. Looping in arcs, crashing into themselves like sine waves gone mad. Signals blinked in midair, leftover neural threads trying to send packets to systems that no longer existed.
And in the center of it all: the tower.
Once the pride of HelixMed. The gleaming jewel of progress, ethics, and medical marvels.
Now? A spire of black metal wrapped in tendrils of living data. It didn't just rise into the sky. It pulsed. It breathed. It reached. The skin of the tower crawled with code, etched not in numbers, but in symbols that shimmered and moved when you weren't looking directly at them. It hummed in your bones. A song made from pain.
The Antlers stood in concentric rings at its base. Perfect. Silent. Motionless. As if waiting for a prophecy to be fulfilled.
"The signal root," Vex murmured, eyes wide, voice small. "We plant the override here... we end this."
Sarin adjusted the straps on his rifle, face unreadable. "We won't make it. Not unless she goes first."
Nia didn't flinch.
She nodded. "Alone."
The word hit me like a slap.
"No," I said, sharp and instinctive.
She turned and smiled. Not out of mockery or courage. It was something else. Something human. Something resigned.
"You saw what they did. They obey. For now. If I can scramble their link, you can reach the core."
"You'll be overwhelmed," I whispered.
She stepped closer. Her fingers brushed mine. They were warm. Not hot like they used to be, burning with ZERA. Just warm.
"I'm still human," she said. "That's what makes me dangerous."
***
Night fell like a guillotine.
The wind carried the scent of scorched rubber and blood. In the distance, something growled, A low mechanical whir interwoven with the wet rasp of something alive. The sky rippled overhead like a dying artery.
And Nia walked.
She moved down the ruined boulevard, framed in amber fog and ruin. Her glow wasn't bright anymore. It had changed. Muted, refracted like embers through smoke. But it was steady. It was real.
And the Antlers moved.
Not to attack.
To part.
Like supplicants.
Like she was a relic of their forgotten religion.
Their twisted masks bowed, their weapons lowered. They didn't speak. They didn't need to.
They saw her.
And they listened.
We followed in silence, under cover, hearts thudding against our ribs like fists on coffin lids. Each step brought us deeper into the spiral, closer to the tower that bled data into the air.
Inside, the architecture made no sense.
Walls pulsed with muscle memory. Floors weren't flat. They flexed. Screens lined the interior, flickering erratically, displaying fragments of things I wanted to forget.
Rina laughing. Nia screaming. My voice, warped into commands I never gave.
Everything cataloged. Everything corrupted.
The air buzzed with whispered syllables. None of them human. None of them forgiving.
Then we saw it.
The core.
It hovered in the dead center of the chamber, suspended by nothing. A sphere of raw code, alive with impossible geometry. It throbbed like a black sun, casting no light but pulling all attention.
Nia stepped forward.
Each step she took made the floor shimmer, as if the tower was hesitating.
She lifted her hands.
"I am not yours."
The core pulsed.
"I carry your blood. Your code. But I am not your daughter."
Something changed.
The sound wasn't sound. It was pressure in the skull. The rush of memories not your own. Screams in reverse. Heat without fire. Cold without air.
The Antlers turned.
On each other.
They fell in droves, not like soldiers, but like puppets whose strings had been severed by an unseen blade.
"Now!" Sarin barked, his voice too loud in the sacred silence.
Vex's voice cracked over comms. "Tower is open! It's now or never."
I ran.
Everything blurred. My feet thudding against pulsing floors, the air vibrating with dying frequencies. I passed Nia. She was on her knees, her arms trembling. Her mouth moved, but her voice wasn't hers anymore.
"It's listening," she whispered. "Just... run."
I reached the core. I slammed the override in.
And the world broke.
The Shepherd screamed.
But it wasn't alone.
Rina screamed.
Nia.
Me.
Voices layered in static, in grief, in memory. The noise wasn't noise anymore. It was a cry for identity.
The hive wasn't dying.
It was splitting.
The tower began to collapse inward.
It didn't explode. It folded, like a dying organism trying to protect its core. Tendrils spasmed, flailing toward the sky as if begging for help from a god that never existed.
We carried Nia out.
She was barely conscious. Her skin flickered with failed signals. Her breath was shallow.
But she was alive.
We found an old transport vehicle and loaded her in the back. Vex took the wheel, face set. Sarin kept watch, rifle across his lap, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror every five seconds.
I sat beside Nia.
Her eyes fluttered open. She looked at me like I was both a stranger and a memory.
"They're quiet now," she said. Her voice was thin. Fragile. "But I still hear them."
Sarin leaned forward. "Is it over?"
I looked out the window.
The sky was no longer bleeding. Just a pale, unnatural gray. Silent. Watching.
"No," I said. "But she bought us time."
***
That night, Nia dreamed.
She stood between two cities. One built from bone and shadow. The other forged from code and flame.
Both waited.
Antlers walked beside her, not as jailers, not as monsters. As witnesses.
And a child approached.
A girl with eyes like my sister's. Eyes that saw through illusions. Eyes that shimmered with impossible blue.
"You're the fire," the child said.
"And the firewall."
Nia knelt.
"I'm just trying to hold the line."
The child reached out, placed her small hand on Nia's chest.
The fire steadied.
And the hive... watched.