Lauren stretched as she woke. She had fallen asleep next to the couch. Now, she was tangled in blankets that had been spread out the night before, a pillow under her head. Lucy was asleep beside her on the floor. Her chest rose and fell. Lauren craned her neck and looked around the room, full of gray half-light from the shaded windows and patio. Thunder crashed outside.

  She gently extracted herself from the nest. Grace was asleep on the couch, snoring quietly. Half the girls had gone back to their room at some point. Lauren couldn’t blame them. Even padded, the floor left her feeling stiff. Before going back to her room, she bent and kissed Lucy on her brow. Her friend’s gentle face eased into a comforted expression.

  Lauren crept to her room and changed into outdoor clothes. Saturdays were now for delving with Mara. They started early and went until Lauren couldn’t stand the smells and darkness and tightness anymore. It was frustrating, the lack of progress they made. They had just barely started radiating outwards from what was under the International District. Miles and miles more of tunnels to walk through, while whatever Baxter’s monster was might be behind them in the space they already searched. But Lauren kept at it, for now at least. It was something to do.

  Boots and jacket on, she left the dorm. The weather outside was oppressively stormy, the sky bloated with rainclouds and almost as dark as evening. Puddles soaked the green lawn of campus. Adam’s cargo container sat alone, rivulets running down its sides. Whatever it was, it seemed mysterious and foreboding. It raised the hackles of her sixth sense. Lauren gave it a wide berth as she plodded across the way.

  Twenty minutes later, she met Mara at a small café not too far from where the Rosewell Express let off. She was posted up against the exterior underneath a small awning. No rat mask this time, though her outfit was equally as drab and stitched-together as usual. She nibbled on a pastry with melting frosting.

  “Did you buy something for once?” Lauren asked as she walked up. Her hair and clothes were already soaked through from the rain.

  Mara shrugged and shoved the second half of her breakfast into her mouth all at once, filling her cheeks.

  “Might as well. Government money,” Mara said while munching it down. Crumbs tumbled from her lips. She roughly wiped with the back of her hand. “You ready?” she asked, words clear now that she swallowed.

  Lauren nodded. Mara put the hood of her outfit up, and they walked together down the street to find an entrance to penetrate the Warrens.

  “What happened to your hair?” Mara asked as they walked. There was a critical undertone to her words. Lauren self-consciously touched her locks. She still had the braids that Grace had done last night. Getting ready at the mirror, she liked how they looked. It was a style more feminine than she was used to.

  “We had a sleepover last night. I got my hair braided.” She didn’t mention Grace had been the one to do it.

  Mara still snorted. They walked around a woman in a raincoat.

  “Hair braiding at a sleepover? What are you, on the school cheerleader team now?”

  “No.” Lauren tried not to get too snippy. “There’s nothing wrong with making friends.”

  “I thought you were here for a reason,” Mara said.

  “I am,” Lauren insisted. As much as she felt kinship with her, Mara had a way of using their shared background as some kind of purity test the more time they spent together. Like Lauren wasn’t remaining true to herself just because she slept in a real bed and didn’t keep scrounging for food. Like every comfort she allowed herself was letting her reason for being there be forgotten a little more. She needed some comforts. If Lauren let herself think of her imprisoned sister every second of every day, she’d drive herself insane. The pain of her absence was a constant reminder. And in the few moments it slipped her mind, it reentered with a shameful vengeance. “I’m still looking for my sister. That’s the only reason I keep spending my free time climbing into the stinking sewers with you.”

  Mara gave a sideways stare that could cut glass. Tension had been building between them quietly. Lauren trusted Mara was leading her to something useful. Each day they went under, they came back out with nothing to show for it, not even signs they were on the right track. It’s a big city, Mara kept insisting. It takes time to search. It had to be enough.

  They turned into an alleyway.

  “You think your time is better spent being a dog for BASTION, hoping they give you what you’re looking for?” Mara stooped and struggled to lift a service lid. Lauren stepped in to help. Mara scooted into the entrance. “Don’t come if you don’t want to,” Mara said up to her. “I just thought you might like to help the people BASTION overlook.”

  Lauren sighed. Mara wasn’t using her any different than BASTION did. She had no fighting powers of her own. Lauren was there for when she actually encountered something dangerous. And she was being sanctimonious about using her. But Lauren again followed her down. One master or the other. At least this one was actively searching for something.

  They started wandering again, this time through another storm drain. Water sluiced quickly through the channel they walked beside. It was almost high enough to splash the walkway. Lauren took note of it.

  “Are you sure it’s safe to be down here today?” she asked Mara. “That storm aboveground doesn’t seem to be letting up.”

  The girl shrugged. “If my critters aren’t concerned, I’m not. No evacuations yet.”

  “If you say so…”

  As they traveled, Mara was periodically visited by rats passively scouting for her. Lauren learned to stop jumping at the sight of them. They typically scurried up the folds of Mara’s outfit and chittered in her ear, delivering some sort of message she could understand. Some had encounters with the monster, apparently. Unfortunately, they weren’t very descriptive creatures. And they were skittish around threats. But they seemed to occasionally give Mara some idea of where they should be headed.

  Time passed with only their plodding steps to mark it. They paused when a distant rumble passed through the underground. Dust and dirt streamed down from the ceiling of the tunnel. They both noted the disturbance. It wasn’t the first. They heard the sound maybe two or three times each delve. It never seemed close. Lauren couldn’t help but wonder if it was the sound of the Warrens Monster making some passage. With each rumble, her imagination ran wild. She pictured walking until their flashlight suddenly illuminated the massive, white, pulsing body of some maggoty worm filling the tunnel from wall to wall, its gaping, fleshy mouth filled with endless rows of teeth. It was a faintly plausible idea, with how much she was learning about the strangeness of the world, which made it all the more shiver-inducing.

  Mara turned at the mouth of a side tunnel that fed the channel, a massive round tube with no walkway, inches of water spilling through the bottom.

  “Really?” Lauren asked.

  “We should head this way. We haven’t scoped out this direction yet,” Mara said.

  Lauren huffed at thought of getting her feet even more soaked, but she followed. Tonight was going to be a cozy, dry pajama night with Lucy.

  They trudged down the tunnel.

  “You really don’t buy into the whole Rosewell thing, do you?” Lauren asked after a while. Echoes of their voices and splashing water distorted the words.

  “Nope,” Mara said immediately.

  “Then why stay at all? Why not come live down here full time?” It had been well noted by now that Mara only showed up to class when she felt like it, which wasn’t often. Dodds and the headmaster must have been big fans of that. And she wasn’t much for socializing with the other students. But BASTION didn’t have anything to dangle over Mara’s head, at least not to her knowledge.

  Mara shrugged. “Maybe I just think it’s interesting to watch the rest of you. For now.”

  Lauren had a feeling it was more than that. That maybe Mara was feeling closer to the rest of them than she wanted to admit. Or maybe she just wanted to use the bed.

  Mara suddenly stopped walking. Lauren looked forwards to what her beam had found.

  It was hard to tell at first. She strained her eyes and saw it. A figure stood in the center of the tunnel, at the very end of where Mara’s flashlight reached. A grey cloak covered the slim body except for the head and bottom of the legs, black buttons holding it together at the chest. A glossy tan mask stared at them with two large button eyes and a faux-stitch smile. Dark hair spilled around the mask.

  It was Maudlin. One of the very first New Lords Lauren had encountered. She stood there silently while Lauren was beaten by Usagi. In the museum, she fought with strange appendages hidden under her cloak. She was equally silent now as she was both those times.

  “Is that a villain?” Mara asked. She stayed calm, her beam fixed ahead.

  “Yes. One of the New Lord teens.” Lauren stood protectively in front of her. She kept her eyes trained on her. Maudlin’s lack of movement was eerie. It was like she had been waiting for them to find her.

  “She’s alone. That’s good, right?” Mara checked.

  Lauren shook her head slowly. “There’s never just one of these fuckers…”

  An arm in a black sleeve and glove parted Maudlin’s cloak. She held the arm in front of her. A finger pointed directly down. Maudlin moved her arm back and forth in front of her, like she was drawing a line. Her finger flipped upwards. She wagged it, scolding.

  “What does that mean?” Mara asked warily. The message was pretty clear to Lauren.

  “She’s telling us not to go this way,” Lauren guessed. A part of the Warrens the New Lords didn’t want searched. That seemed promising, in an ominous sort of way. But Maudlin still remained in front of them to be dealt with, if they were going to keep making progress. No others appeared that they could see. Was it too much to hope she was alone?

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Not knowing the odds, Lauren decided to try being diplomatic. “Look, we’re down here on our day off. Not here to bust up your hideout for BASTION or whatever. We’re looking for some particular things. Can we just talk?” Lauren called out. Her voice echoed far. “Things don’t have to get messy.”

  Maudlin shook her masked face.

  Lauren swallowed. She looked at Mara. Her fists were clenched. She hoped Mara would be ready for this.

  “Things might not go your way,” Lauren warned. “I’m not the same as I was when we first met.”

  Maudlin met her words with a stare.

  “You gonna attack if I walk forward?” Lauren asked.

  A nod.

  Lauren slipped into her combat mode, senses naturally heightening. “Stay behind me,” she whispered to Mara.

  “We’re doing this?” she checked.

  Lauren nodded steadily. “This is our only lead in weeks. I’m not letting her go.”

  Lauren raised a boot out of the running stream. The instant she did so, footfalls splashed down the tunnel. They weren’t from Maudlin. They came from behind her. The masked girl calmly stepped out of the way as something charged from the darkness beyond.

  In the unsteady beam of light, the new threat was hard to make out. Only that it was human sized and shaped. It crashed forwards on four limbs. Filthy. Hair on its head. Wearing clothes. A snarling face. Loose chains cuffed to its arms and legs. Milky eyes. Then Lauren had to brace.

  She planned on striking first with a spiked fist. The thing came too low. She tried to swing a fist downward, but it leapt forward and crashed into her legs. She tumbled onto her back. Cold stormwater filled her clothes and tugged at her hair. There was no time to register it. Sharp nails dug into Lauren’s sides, stabbing pain arcing through her. She tried to raise her head to see. A hand clutched her face and forced her downwards into the water. The dirty flow filled her nose and mouth, rushing into her sinuses and clogging them. Nails dug into her cheek, seeking to tear the skin. No restraint or hesitation.

  It was immediately clear this was no regular fight with a rational opponent. Whatever was on top of her was feral. It was going for a quick kill. She couldn’t afford to hold back.

  She pressed her knuckles against the creature’s side. A bone spike emerged from her knuckles, piercing its ribs. The thing thrashed above her. Her face was temporarily let go of. With her left hand, she reached up and pulled on a handful of hair. Fingers scrabbled at her. She re-sheathed the spike and punched where the thing’s head should have been. Everything above water was a dark blur. Something seemed to connect. Temporary reprieve from all its weight on top of her.

  Lauren came up gasping for air. Water poured out of her nostrils. She coughed and blinked to clear her eyes.

  Mara’s flashlight still illuminated the tunnel from somewhere behind. The creature leered inches away, clutching a dark spot in its torso where Lauren had pierced it. It had been human once; now, it was harder to tell. It looked like some kind of ghoul, with a dead pallor and dark eyes. Stringy, discolored hair around its head. When it snarled, metal glinted in its mouth. Its teeth had been replaced with jagged fangs.

  Lauren took this in in the seconds she had to breathe. The ghoul lunged forwards again, hardly minding its wound. Lauren put a hand out to keep its face away from her throat. Its jaw gnashed as it struggled against her palm.

  Lauren’s grip on the slimy tunnel floor underneath her slipped, her weight shifting. The two fingers on the end of her left hand ended up sliding into the ghoul’s mouth.

  Crunch.

  Metal teeth pincered her flesh and bone. Pain shuddered through her. It was a ringing in her ears. A tightening in her jaw. A scream she didn’t voice.

  Lauren yanked her arm back. The ghoul kept two of her fingers in its mouth. The ragged stumps where her fingers had been spurted hot blood into the cold water. Her vision sharpened, becoming a narrow tunnel with death at the end of it. The sense in the back of her mind came forward to co-pilot.

  Lauren surged upwards and grabbed the ghoul’s head with both her hands. It thrashed madly in her grip. Nails raked her stomach, seeking her entrails underneath. But it only had the strength of a skinny human unconcerned with hurting itself. Filled with righteous anger, Lauren dragged it to the wall of the tunnel. She slammed its head against the brick there. The movement was automatic. She waited for the creature to become stunned, to show any survival sense. Once. Twice. Three times. Four. Each hit only increased its manic desperation, in turn making Lauren more desperate to put it down.

  She kept at it until a dark stain grew on the wall. Its fighting weakened. When its arms fell limp to its sides, she slammed it three more times for good measure. She let the body slump into the rushing stream.

  “Fuck!” Lauren yelled. It was a release of pain, anger, and fear all at once.

  She clutched the stumps of her fingers and panted from the stress. Her hand hurt like fucking hell, even as she felt the buzz in them that she now recognized as her regeneration.

  Mara came splashing back up. They both looked down the tunnel. Maudlin was no longer there. At least not at the distance she had been standing.

  “That doesn’t look good,” Mara said, her eyes on the blood seeping out of Lauren’s hand.

  “Yeah, it don’t feel fucking great either,” Lauren hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Sorry I couldn’t help more. Like I said, I’m not a fighter. I tried to give you light.”

  They next looked down at the limp body, dark fluid being carried downstream from its head.

  “Shit. That’s the first time I ever killed someone,” Lauren blurted. “I didn’t mean to. It was just… me or it.”

  Mara toed it. She shook her head. “Whatever it is, it wasn’t alive. This is an already-dead body. You didn’t kill it. You just stopped it moving again.”

  Lauren nodded. She had come to the same conclusion. There wasn’t a coherent person left in that thing. Still, it shook her to have to simulate breaking someone’s head open. Her combat sense made it easier to do so. But the feeling of the skull crunching in her grip was all on her to bear. Nausea welled up inside. She trembled from the cold water soaked through her and the adrenaline leaving her system.

  “Think that was Baxter’s monster?” Mara asked.

  Lauren regarded the dead thing. It was sick to think that Maudlin or someone else had taken a corpse, or maybe even a living person, and twisted it into an attack animal. “Maybe. Seems a little small. But it could definitely pick off a homeless person wandering down here alone. Not sure why Maudlin would use it on them. Unless they were getting close to something she didn’t want them to find.”

  “Do we go after her?” Mara asked. Maudlin had yet to reappear. Only one direction she could have gone. For now.

  “She’s the only lead we have,” Lauren chattered.

  “Yeah, but are you good to go?” Mara checked. “We can always come back later. I know where we are.”

  Lauren took a steadying breath. She looked at her missing fingers. Already, the stumps were congealing over. The pain ebbed to a dull throb. She could keep going on if it meant making progress today.

  “I’m fine. Let’s go,” Lauren said. Mara didn’t fight it.

  They trudged forwards upstream. The tunnel seemed endless. Lauren lost track of time. Finally, they found its origin at a cistern. They clambered up out of the water onto a concrete ledge. Multiple tunnels emptied here and flowed onward. Faint light streamed down from some distant opening on street level.

  “Please tell me we don’t have to keep walking through water,” Lauren said. She tucked her hands under her armpits and leaned against the damp wall. Her feet felt like waterlogged moldy sponges in her boots. They probably stunk like death. Right then, she wanted nothing more to be on a hot roof in Callis on a ninety degree day.

  Mara held up her hand. “Give me a moment.”

  She closed her eyes. Then she whistled.

  After a moment, a rat appeared at the dark mouth of a tunnel. It squeaked and slinked up to Mara. She scooped it into her hands. It spent a moment conversing with her in its rat language. She let it back down.

  “There’s an opening to the old city just a little ways down that tunnel,” Mara said, pointing the way the rat had come.

  “Does it know if Maudlin went that way?” Lauren asked.

  “No. But if she has some sort of camp or place to recuperate, it’s probably in an old building or street than in the middle of a flooded pipe,” Mara said.

  The logic made sense. It seemed the New Lords were maybe leveraging the old architecture to move around unnoticed, at least when Lilith wasn’t moving them. Maybe Maudlin was guarding their base, or school, or whatever they had. Lauren tried not to think about what would happen if she suddenly turned a corner and crashed a gathering of twenty of them. One thing at a time. It wouldn’t be right to chicken out of a lead now.

  The girls hauled themselves into the elevated tunnel across the cistern. After sloshing upstream thirty or forty feet, they found a crack in the pipe that water sluiced out of. It was just wide enough for Lauren to scrape her way though sideways. Mara followed without much difficulty.

  They carefully picked their way down a mound of bricks worn into a melded hill. Mara’s beam slashed through the darkness. Even where it didn’t reach, Lauren could make out the shapes of buildings looming in the darkness. Another sunken street. The air here was chokingly musty.

  Lauren scooted her way forwards, testing each step. Whatever street this was held together much worse than Bleak Street. It looked like the sundering earthquake might have even struck it directly. The brick throughway jutted in half, one side a foot higher than the other. Buildings slumped and rotted inwards. Entire walls had collapsed, faces sheared off inner supports. Old-fashioned cars left behind were little more than rusted skeletons.

  Another tremor passed through the area. This one much closer. Lauren felt it in her stomach. It came from below.

  Lauren looked around to see where Mara had gone. Something was wrong. Her body hair stood on end. Maybe not a New Lord ambush, but… something was off about this place.

  Mara’s flashlight bounced off surfaces down the street. She was walking away, like she had found something.

  “Mara!” Lauren called. She headed her way, careful not to trip on the uneven ground. Her danger sense was in full gear. Things scrabbled in the deep shadows inside and between buildings. Mara’s rats? They sounded big.

  “Mara…” Lauren caught up to the other girl and put her hand on her shoulder. Mara swayed, locked in a still position. Like she was afraid of moving. Or that she couldn’t at all.

  “Mara!” Lauren shook her.

  Mara’s words came out small. “The voices…”

  “What voices? Your rats…?”

  No. She heard them. Scratchy, craggy voices in the shadows. Unnaturally pitched, muttering words not in English or any other human language Lauren could imagine. As she looked around, she caught glimpses. Red eyes low to the ground. They ducked away as Lauren faced them. Small, hunched figures. Too small to be humans any older than children.

  Another tremor rocked the cavern.

  Lauren gripped Mara’s hand. She still wasn’t moving.

  “Mara,” Lauren said carefully. “We need to turn around and leave…”

  This was probably what they had come looking for. But this wasn’t one creature. This was some kind of nest. They were surrounded on all sides. Lauren couldn’t protect Mara here, fighting with only one flashlight. They needed backup.

  A more localized tremor came from below their feet. The bricks they stood on started shaking. Lauren tugged forcefully on Mara, but her legs were locked in place. She only succeeded in nearly toppling her over.

  The bricks began to sink, threatening to collapse. Lauren made the only move she could think of in time. She grabbed Mara around the waist and threw her away.

  Mara landed with a thump and a wheeze on her knees and arms. The flashlight skidded around in a disorienting spiral of light. Lauren moved to follow. She only made it a step before the ground pitched and the brick street fell away into nothingness. A frightened gasp escaped her lips as Lauren fell with it.

  She landed hard on top of the bricks. The rough surfaces hit her back and spine and knocked the wind out of her. She ended up tumbling on her side down a small incline. She landed in a thin puddle of stagnant water.

  In the dark hole, she rocked back and forth, willing the pain to leave and her breath to return. She gasped and coughed. Wherever she had landed was even mustier. She looked up, and could faintly see the hole that had collapsed was ten or so feet above. Mara’s light was shining somewhere up there, off to the side. She had to get back up there before whatever those things were made their move.

  Fighting against the aches, Lauren rose to a knee and hauled herself to her feet. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She was in some kind of basement, the features of it having long rotted away. A doorway to her left, and…

  The far wall exploded in a shower of debris. Lauren covered her face with her arms as splinters and other fragments blasted forwards.

  Two heavy metal hands crashed onto the floor. They were attached to long forearms, mottled white and sinewy, which were in turn attached to a hairy, bloated, oddly muscular body like a mix between a gorilla and a hound. Dark, coarse hairs covered the clearly inhuman body in patches. The creature’s… head, if it could even be called that, was a rusty robotic shell vaguely shaped like the head of an insect. A lens at the center of the head audibly clicked as it adjusted, fixing Lauren with murderous red light. Drill-like mandibles whirred at its mouth.

  The creature stalked forwards on its oversized arms, robotic hands with four digits each crushing bricks underneath into dust as it approached Lauren.

  Now that looked like it could be the monster of the Warrens.