The air in the subterranean drainage basin was thick with the reek of stagnant water, ozone, and wet limestone. Above the vaulted brickwork, the distant, muffled echoes of horse-drawn carriages and heavy iron-rimmed wheels rattled across the cobblestones of the upper city, far removed from the red-drenched horror below.
Cattleya”s chest heaved in silent, measured rhythms. She pressed her spine flat against the damp masonry of a support pillar, her bare feet caked in black silt. Every nerve ending in her newly forged skin pulsed with a strange, hypersensitive clarity. She wasn't processing variables through an artificial interface anymore”she was feeling the raw, terrifying mechanics of human survival.
The scratch on her shoulder, delivered by the hunter's bone-chillingly fast claw, burne
