Chapter 108 The Dark Track

Chapter 108 The Dark Track
Marcus

The cold water on the subway tracks soaked through my torn shirt. I struggled against the concrete, but Mason’s weight was crushing my back. His hand was an iron cuff around my ankle. Above me, the jagged shard of glass caught the dim red glow of the terminal emergency lights.

He really wants to kill me, I realized. The thought didn't bring fear anymore. It just brought a cold, heavy wave of hate. This man shared my father's face, but he was nothing but an empty shell filled with greed. He had hunted us, broken Julian, and now he wanted to slide glass into my throat.

"You're nothing but a ghost of your father, Marcus!" Mason screamed, his voice splitting in the narrow tunnel. He brought the glass shard down toward my face.

I didn't try to pull away. I twisted my torso hard, using the wet concrete to slide my body sideways.

The glass shard missed my eye, slamming into the hard stone floor with a sharp clink. The force of the strike shattered the tip, but Mason didn't let go. He lunged forward, his heavy fingers grabbing the front of my collar to pin me down again.

"Sarah! Jax! Go! "I roared, my hands clawing at his wrists.

My left finger was still warm, the static from Maya’s head port lingering under my skin like a dozen stinging needles. I couldn't channel a full blast, but I didn't need to. I slammed my glowing hand straight into the wet fabric covering Mason's chest.

The residual electricity travelled instantly through the damp cloth. Mason let out a strangled gasp as the shock locked his muscles, his body jerking backward off my legs.

I scrambled to my feet, my chest heaving as I scooped Maya back into my arms. She was breathing, but her skin felt like a cold stone.

Sarah

"Jax, come on!" I yelled, my shoulder wedged under his good arm.

Jax was dragging his right leg, his face completely gray from the bullet wound. The heavy thudding of the black war machines was getting louder behind us. They were stepping over the ruined elevator doors, entering the dark tunnel with their red eyes glowing like hot coals.

"Leave me, Sarah," Jax wheezed, his teeth clenched in pure agony. "I'm just a sandbag right now. Take Lily and Marcus. Get the kid out."

"Shut up," I snapped, my eyes stinging with angry tears. "We don't leave anyone behind. Not anymore."

Lily was running ahead of us, her small shoes splashing loudly in the dirty water filling the centre track. "Sarah! Look! The line splits!"

Up ahead, the old brick tunnel divided into two dark paths. The left side was blocked by a rusty iron grate, but the right side was open, sloping sharply downward into the deep drainage levels of the lower sector.

Marcus caught up to us, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. The white light on his skin was completely gone, leaving nothing but dull gray tracks that looked like old scars. He looked behind us, his jaw tightening.

The two black machines were moving faster now. Their mechanical joints groaned in the dark as they locked onto our movement. The triple-barrel gun on the leading robot began to spin again, the high-pitched whistle filling the narrow tunnel.

"Down the right side!" Marcus shouted, shoving me toward the slope. "Jax, get down!"

Marcus

Before we could leap into the drainage tunnel, a loud, heavy explosion rocked the tracks behind us.

I turned my head. Mason wasn't mashing the remote anymore. He had crawled back to the elevator entrance, and he was holding a heavy military flare gun he must have pulled from his jacket pocket. He hadn't fired at us. He had fired straight into the open gas valve we had passed earlier.

A wall of orange fire erupted from the wall, tearing through the dark hallway. The blast wave hit us from behind, throwing all of us off our feet.

I flew through the air, my grip on Maya breaking as we tumbled down the slick stone slope of the drainage tunnel. I slammed hard against the brick wall at the bottom, the breath leaving my lungs in a painful rush.

The fire didn't follow us down into the deep levels, but the roof of the upper tunnel didn't hold. With a terrifying roar, tonnes of heavy brick and old concrete beams came crashing down, completely sealing the entrance behind us in a mountain of smoking rubble.

"Sarah? Jax?" I called out into the pitch-black space, my voice trembling.

A match scratched in the dark. A small, yellow flame flickered to life in Sarah’s hand.

She was sitting against the wall, her face covered in fresh soot, but she was alive. Lily was curled up in her lap, crying quietly. A few feet away, Jax was groaning, his hand still clutched tightly over his bleeding shoulder.

"We're here," Sarah whispered, her voice shaking with emotion. "We're alive."

I looked around the small stone chamber. We were deep below the slums now, in a place where the air tasted like old iron and damp mud. Maya was lying beside me, her eyes closed, but the purple lights behind her ears had finally turned off. The biochip was completely dark.

"Is she..." Sarah started, her eyes wide.

"She's alive," I said, touching Maya's neck. "The signal is dead. My uncle is buried under that roof."

"Don't be so sure, Nephew," a raspy, metallic voice echoed from the dark corner of the chamber.

Sarah dropped the match in shock, plunging us back into the dark. But before the light died, I saw it.

A heavy, matte-black shape was standing near the deep drainage pipe. It wasn't Mason. It was one of the red-eyed war machines. It had survived the collapse by dropping into the drainage level before the roof fell.

And strapped to its front chest plate, his legs gone and his body held together by his own mechanical armor wires, was the top half of Mason Thorne. His single open eye glared at me through the dark with a terrifying, absolute madness.

"You didn't break the backdoor link, Marcus," Mason whispered through the robot's speaker. "I am the core now."

The machine’s heavy steel arm lifted, its red eye snapping open with a blinding, bloody light right in front of my face.

Mason has fused his own body with the last war machine! Trapped in the deep dark with no weapons left, how will Marcus defend his bleeding friends from the ultimate monster?