Chapter Text
The chase starts because of a simple mistake, like most of them do.
In hindsight, Sterling can swear up and down that he would’ve made it out of the tunnel without screwing up, but he knows that’s not true. The place was falling apart when he arrived, littered with corpses of other survivors who, just like him, were stupid enough to come down here in the first place. Sterling may have upwards of six years of experience on the road, but even he’s not immune to the occasional slipup, so it’s really no surprise when he clips his raggedy boot on one of the decaying corpses and lands with a very audible thud on the subway rail below.
He manages to catch himself and prevent any real damage from being dealt, but a screech from somewhere down the tunnel behind him means it doesn’t matter whether or not he’s unscathed, because he won’t be alive for much longer unless he gets up RIGHT NOW. There’s a thundering that starts up low but gets louder a bit too quickly for his liking, and that can only mean one thing: he needs to run.
Sterling does about as much, leaping onto his feet and taking off down the tunnel without so much as a second thought. His footsteps aren’t the only ones he can hear as he barrels forward, and the thundering only grows louder the further he goes. He spares a glance behind him and nearly trips on his feet when he sees them: a horde of Nightmares, right on his tail and gaining fast .
It’s too dark for him to count just how many there are, or whether they’re Lucid or just Sleepwalkers, but Sterling doesn’t have time to do that anyways. He whips his head back around just in time to duck under a low-hanging light fixture. Apparently one of the Nightmares behind him isn’t so lucky, and there’s a clang as it presumably runs into the light he’d just barely managed to avoid. Great, one down, way too many to go.
There’s a ladder leading into an open air vent up ahead and he nearly cries out in relief at the sight. He just needs to make it through this final stretch if he wants to live, but he hasn’t had to run this hard in weeks and it’s becoming painfully obvious the longer this chase drags on. His lungs burn, aching for some sort of relief as he nears the exit to the tunnel - he’s so close, he can almost feel the taste of freedom on his tongue as he takes in ragged breaths - 15 feet, 10 feet - and then suddenly, both his legs and all hope of survival are snatched right out from under him.
He goes crashing down ungracefully and it’s so unfair because of course, the ladder is right there , of course he had to go and trip on himself at the last possible moment. His bag lands maybe five feet in front of him with a whump and half the contents spill out, including the flashlight that would really come in handy right about now. A roar sounds from behind him and in a last ditch effort to save himself from an almost certain death, Sterling makes a wild dive for the light.
He lands rather painfully on the rails, but his fingers close around the light and he scrambles to get up with a gasp of triumph, fumbling with the power switch as he turns to aim the light at the group of Nightmares gaining on him.
The ultraviolet light flickers once - twice - and then goes out.
The reality of the situation hits him like one of the many defunct subway cars he is now destined to die next to. The group of Nightmares closes in on him and he can barely make out their features in the darkness of the metro but that’s hardly his most pressing concern now that he’s about to die. Sterling lets out a broken sob and drops the flashlight, curling in on himself and shutting his eyes. If this is how he’s gonna go, then so be it.
Except the painful death he expects never hits him, and it almost gives him whiplash, just how fast things happen: one moment, he’s bracing for the worst pain he’s ever experienced, and the next, amethyst-tinged floodlights bloom from behind his eyes and he opens them to see his section of the metro fully illuminated. Just short of a few feet away, the horde of Nightmares writhe and screech in the light, clawing at the air as their skin turns to cinders.
Sterling could cry at the sight, except he already was when he thought he was going to die less than a minute ago so he just ends up sobbing harder. The Nightmares don’t let up with the screaming and it sounds so bad his ears might bleed but he doesn’t care, he’s just grateful to even be alive. He laughs between sobs at the thought; yes, he’s alive, somehow. He made it.
He takes a few seconds to catch his breath. The Nightmares’ screeches fade into wails as their skin sizzles into a burnt charcoal color. In the light, Sterling can fully take in the sight of their hunched backs, brittle silver hair, pallid skin and milky eyes. The one in the front of the group is larger than the rest and burns significantly quicker under the metro light - a Lucid Nightmare, the most fearsome of the pack. If the lights hadn’t come on, Sterling would’ve been facing a particularly gruesome death.
He half expects the lights to just blink off suddenly, but they don’t, and the last of the Nightmares finally go quiet as they crumple into lifeless piles of ash. Sterling crawls over to where his supplies fell out his bag earlier and stuffs them back in with shaking hands. The situation leaves him with more questions than anything else - mainly, why this metro station can even afford working lights. Barely any settlements have access to Zesite for electricity these days, much less Solite for ultraviolet light, so to say Sterling is shocked by the lavender glow filling the tunnel would be an understatement.
He’s reaching for his flashlight when a clang echoes from somewhere down the tunnel. He freezes. A pair of footsteps starts up, faintly at first, but they grow louder the longer Sterling listens. They sound humanoid enough not to be another Nightmare, but Sterling isn’t about to take any chances; he ditches the flashlight and scrambles to his feet, scurrying up the ladder and into the ventilation shaft before he can be spotted.
The vent is musty and cramped and it takes a good deal of effort for Sterling to twist himself around to face the opening of the vent. Cautiously, he peers towards the tracks below, watching for the source of the footsteps.
He doesn’t have to wait long before two figures emerge from behind a derailed metro car. The first is a man, hunch-backed and fidgety and dressed in a black and yellow outfit reminiscent of old world police uniforms, complete with a worn bulletproof vest. Towering over him is a tall, sickly pale woman with a mane of salt and pepper curls that accent her wine red coat and charcoal boots. She kicks one of the Nightmare’s charred corpses over with a frown. “Poor things.”
The man shoots her a strange look, giving the lifeless Nightmares a wide berth as he walks past them. “I don’t understand how you can feel bad for these things…”
“We’re not so different from them,” the woman says simply, and with a sudden flourish of her arm, she flings a volley of jagged knives up towards the crystalline lights overhead. Sterling flinches at the sound of mineral shattering as the blades hit their marks with terrifying accuracy, plunging the metro back into shadow with only a few lights remaining down the track to help him observe the scene below.
The man yelps and leaps backwards, just barely avoiding taking a shard to the eye. “Was that really necessary?”
“Was your question really necessary?” the woman fires back, lips curled in an annoyed frown. The man wisely chooses not to respond.
Torn between terrified and intrigued, Sterling watches as the man comes to a stop around the back of a metro car, awkwardly lowers himself to the ground, ear to the tracks, before reaching under the car with a shaking hand. “It’s here, somewhere, I swear,” he says, voice wobbly. “I swear it is.”
The woman threads another knife between her fingers as she watches the man fumble around. Where is she keeping these things? “Let’s hope so, for your sake,” she says, voice taking on a dangerous lilt, and Sterling is suddenly struck with the strangest sense of deja vu - almost as if he’s met this woman before, heard her voice, faced the brunt of her wrath.
An uncomfortable chill floods his veins, and the back of his neck sears ice-hot. Untamed dread settles in his bones and sets his heart to an unmanageable pace.
Whoever this woman is, he doesn’t want to spend another second in her presence. As quickly but quietly as he can, Sterling shuffles further back into the vent - only to find it slightly caved in at the roof, just barely too slim to fit through.
He weighs his options. Play it safe and wait for the terrifying woman and her accomplice to clear out, or try to fit through the vent and risk alerting them to his presence.
Stupidly, Sterling decides to risk it - a decision he quickly comes to regret when he crawls backwards and hits his head on the collapsed ceiling. A metallic clang echoes through the space and Sterling freezes, breath caught in his throat, heartbeat thrumming noisily in his ears.
“You swore we weren’t followed,” the woman says accusingly, and Sterling carefully flattens himself against the bottom of the vent, praying it’ll be enough to keep him hidden.
“I’m sure it was nothing, maybe a rat or some other nocturnal animal,” the man says nervously, then - “It’s here.”
Carefully, Sterling inches back towards the opening of the vent. Now that he’s well and truly stuck here, too scared to make another attempt at escaping, he might as well eavesdrop.
Down on the tracks, the fumbling man has found whatever he was looking for under the metro car. When he clumsily gets to his feet, a slim, hexagonal key is grasped in his hand. Trembling, he holds it out to the woman, who snatches it up and holds it up against the dim metro lighting to get a better look at the cyan crystal forged into the handle - why would anyone put Algite in a key of all things?
“As you can see, this is - this is clearly authentic,” the fidgety man stutters, eyeing the device in the woman’s hand warily. “Once you have the other five, you’d have access to whatever research you want, whatever you please-”
The woman places her free hand on the man’s shoulder and he shuts up with a terrified squeak. Still turning the device over in the dim light, she poses a question. “And where can I find the other five?”
“Well, I can’t - I can’t say for sure,” the man stutters, eyes flickering between the device and the woman’s face anxiously as he readjusts his vest with trembling hands. “The Hive gave me mine ten years ago, and Doctor Queen trusted me enough to let me keep it past The Dusk, but the others - they could belong to anyone at this point, I couldn’t say for sure, but you could always talk to Doctor Queen herself-”
At that, the grip on the man’s shoulder visibly tightens, claw-like nails tearing through fabric and kevlar like paper. The man lets out a pained wheeze, trembling like a leaf as the woman fixes him with a glare. “Not the answer I was looking for. Try again.”
“I swear, I don’t know,” the man blubbers, and tries desperately to pry the woman’s hand off his shoulder, “I don’t know!”
With an animalistic roar, the woman lets go of the man’s shoulder and grasps him by the throat, lifting him into the air and then slamming him down against the side of the metro car like he weighs nothing. The impact is visceral, and Sterling swears he hears a crunch as the man lets out a wretched, unfiltered sob. “Don’t think you can sit here and lie to me, we worked together for ten years,” the woman hisses, looming over the man’s crumpled form. “I know your tells - you stutter, you fix your clothing, you refuse to look me in the eye. None of it goes over my head.”
“Jacob - Jacob Herschel,” the man sobs hysterically, shrinking back against the car in a futile attempt to escape the woman’s wrath, “He has one. Works for the Hive, but I don’t see him often, we’re in different divisions - last I heard he was stationed in Gardenia… But that’s all I know, I swear!”
“That wasn’t so hard, now was it,” the woman sighs, and slips the hexagonal device into a pocket inside her coat. “Your contribution to my vision is appreciated.”
With a stuttering, bloody cough, the man slumps against the car, chest heaving. “What vision?”
“The vision your company shared before they decided to crucify me,” the woman says, venom dripping from every word. “ Heretics. Think of all the lives I would’ve saved if they hadn’t lost faith.”
“We all swore an oath, and you - you broke it.” The man lifts himself on trembling legs, clutching his bloodied shoulder. “ ‘Do no harm’. Does that still mean nothing to you?”
The woman laughs, deep and unsettling. To Sterling’s surprise, the woman doesn’t push the man back to the ground, just watches him struggle to get to his feet. “Quite the contrary. My goal has always been to save humanity - to eradicate disease, to eliminate needless suffering, to push the boundaries of human mortality. With access to that database, I could finally find a way to cheat death.”
“We aren’t made to live forever, that’s just - that’s just wrong. You’re sick in the head,” the man rasps, and lets out another visceral cough, spraying blood at the woman’s feet. She barely reacts when the crimson spatters across her boots, simply regarding her prey with a frown.
“So I’ve been told,” the woman replies coldly, and before Sterling can process it, she’s got the man in a chokehold once more, bestial nails puncturing skin and crushing his windpipe. With how those nails tore through the man’s bulletproof vest earlier, Sterling is sure they could snap a neck with ease.
“It’s a pity. I had hoped you might be willing to change your mind… Come to your senses… Invest in a better future...” The woman simply sighs as the man lets out a pained plea, clutching pathetically at the claws around his neck. “You are right, to some extent. We can’t all live forever.”
With a sickening crunch, the man goes limp in her grasp, crimson rivulets streaming from his thoroughly punctured throat. The woman lets him dangle there for just a moment later, ripping a hexagonal patch off his shredded vest before she lets him fall to the metro tracks with a whump. She wipes her bloodied hands against her coat, kicks the man’s lifeless body over with a disdainful frown, and then turns and stares right at Sterling.
His blood runs cold.
“Hope you enjoyed the show,” the woman regards him with a twisted smile, curtsying lightly in his direction. The movement is uncomfortably close to that of an old jointed doll, like the ones he and the girls at the orphanage often played with before The Dusk. Eerie and graceful, but not necessarily dainty; calculated and detailed, but not necessarily rigid.
To Sterling’s surprise, the woman leaves him be, and with one final sweeping look around the metro station, she turns tail and stalks off, leaving a mess of gore and glass in her wake.