novelraw Chapter 521: There You Are
Chapter 521: There You Are
Hattie tilted her head, listening to the silence below like it was having a whole conversation with her.
"Mm," she said. "This is the part where humans usually decide they don’t want to know, stick their heads in the sand and pretend that the world is just fine and everything will be better in the morning."
Lachlan’s lightning flickered once along his fingers, a small crackle of impatience.
"We’re not human," he said.
Hattie beamed as if she’d been waiting for that line.
"Exactly," she replied. "So let’s go."
They started down.
The stairs were slick.
Not from water. Not from some leaking pipe. From a thin film of bodily fluid that clung to the metal steps and made every footfall sound damp. The walls were marked with smears where people had slid down instead of walking.
Halfway down, they passed a body wedged between the railing and the wall, face turned sideways, eyes open and empty. The man’s fingers were still hooked around the metal as if he’d refused to let go until his muscles failed.
Psycho leaned in slightly, studying him.
"Did he think holding on mattered?" Psycho asked, amused.
Zubair didn’t look. "Nothing matters except finding her."
Hattie glanced back, smile still present but sharper now. "Careful. That kind of sentence tends to become a wish, and a wish tends to become a cures."
Zubair’s eyes flashed. "I don’t do wishes or curses."
Hattie shrugged. "No. You do inevitability. Same thing, different packaging."
Luci reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped again.
The lower level opened into a corridor that felt older than the Sanctuary above. The walls weren’t polished. The lighting wasn’t clean. The surfaces were designed for function, not comfort. Heavy doors lined the hallway, each with small observation windows and control panels that looked more like laboratory locks than hospital security.
The bodies here weren’t scattered.
They were arranged by workflow.
Technicians in lab coats lay near consoles, hands still hovering over buttons. Guards lay near doorways, weapons dropped mid-lift. A clipboard rested on the floor beside a body, pages stuck together with blood.
This was where the disease had hit first.
It hadn’t needed time.
It had needed access.
Lachlan’s gaze swept the corridor, taking in distances, angles, places to be ambushed. He didn’t see movement. That didn’t relax him. It tightened his focus. Empty corridors were never truly empty. They were waiting.
Psycho’s eyes gleamed at the density of death.
He crouched briefly beside a body and nudged it with his boot, as if checking how it had died.
"Fast," Psycho said with approval. "He didn’t let them beg."
Zubair’s voice cut through, low. "Luci."
The dire wolf had moved again, pace steady, head low. He stopped at one of the lab doors and pressed his nose to the seam.
Then he exhaled hard, a sound like warning.
Zubair stepped up instantly.
The panel beside the door blinked red, then flickered, then died.
"It’s locked," Lachlan said, his eyes narrowing. "How is that possible? I thought everything had been unlocked for some reason."
Psycho cracked his knuckles, frost gathering. "That’s not a problem."
Hattie held up a hand. Not commanding. Just... indicating.
"Let me," she said, as if she was indulging herself.
She leaned in toward the door, head cocked, and tapped the metal once with her knuckle.
"Open," she told it.
The door didn’t swing wide like magic. It resisted first. The lock clicked and failed, then clicked again, then failed harder. The metal shuddered, as if the mechanism inside had been forced to admit defeat.
Then the door slid open with a slow hiss.
Psycho laughed quietly. "That’s cheating."
Hattie glanced back over her shoulder. "It’s only cheating if you believe in rules."
The room beyond was lit dimly, power half-failing. Equipment sat idle. Screens blinked erratically. A row of containment pods lined one wall, most of them dark. One had been shattered from the inside out, glass sprayed outward in a wide arc. The floor was littered with shards and dried streaks.
Bodies were everywhere.
Not in piles. In positions that suggested something had moved through fast and decisive. A technician lay near a console with his throat torn open. Two guards lay near the far wall, limbs bent wrong, eyes frozen wide.
Luci stepped into the room first, nose down, tracking.
Zubair followed so close he could have been the wolf’s shadow.
Lachlan and Psycho moved in behind, spreading slightly, giving themselves angles. Hattie lingered in the doorway, watching like a spectator who had wandered into a scene she wanted to remember.
One of Hattie’s men hovered behind her, his eyes flicking from the dead to Hattie to the darkness ahead.
"Is she down here?" asked the biggest one, his voice a little too eager.
Zubair didn’t answer him.
Luci lifted his head suddenly, ears pricked, body going still.
Then the wolf turned sharply and trotted toward a side hallway leading out of the lab.
Zubair followed immediately.
"Found something," Zubair said.
Not excited. Not relieved. Simply functional.
Hattie clapped once. "See? Efficient."
Lachlan moved after Zubair without looking back. Psycho followed, frost whispering across the floor with every step.
The side hallway was narrower, lined with doors marked with codes instead of names. The lighting here was worse. Shadows pooled in corners. The air felt dense with the residue of what had happened, like the corridor had absorbed panic and never released it.
They passed more bodies.
Some were half-dragged into rooms. Some lay facedown with their hands still reaching for door seams. One had bitten through his own tongue, jaw locked open in a silent scream.
Psycho clicked his tongue. "Humans love drama."
Zubair’s voice was sharp. "Quiet."
Psycho’s smile widened, delighted that Zubair was finally showing teeth.
Luci stopped at the end of the corridor in front of a heavy door reinforced with steel plating.
He didn’t sniff this one.
He simply sat.
A deliberate, controlled motion, like a trained signal.
Zubair stepped up beside him, staring at the door.
Lachlan’s lightning flickered again, ready.
Hattie’s footsteps approached behind them, unhurried.
She tilted her head, studying the reinforced plating, and her expression turned almost pleased.
"Well," she said softly, "someone was very serious about keeping something in."
Zubair didn’t look at her. His focus narrowed to a single point.
"Open it," he said.
It wasn’t a request.
Hattie smiled like she enjoyed being spoken to that way.
She lifted her hand toward the door and from somewhere on the other side, something hit the metal hard enough to make it ring.
Luci’s ears flattened. His lip curled.
Zubair’s heat surged, visible in the shimmer around his hands.
Lachlan shifted his stance, lightning crawling higher.
Psycho’s frost gathered, thickening, eager.
Hattie’s eyes brightened.
"Oh," she murmured, delighted. "There you are."