Page 104 of Infamous

The first hallway is empty. Nothing but stale air and a single chair tipped on its side. We clear each room as we go - a kitchen, stripped bare; a dining space with plates still on the table, dust thick enough it will need to be scraped off. The house looks like it hasn’t be lived in for years.

We move deeper. The second hallway stretches out before us, narrow and endless. The floor groans under our boots, each step echoing too loud in the empty space.

The smell hits harder here - antiseptic and copper, sharp enough to sting the back of my throat. It clings to the walls, to the ceiling, to my skin. Two gurneys sit abandoned along the far side, sheets stiff with old stains - dark, rusted patches that can only be blood.

This isn’t a home. It’s a place built for cutting. For taking things apart. A cold certainty sinks into me. We’re in the right place. My pulse hammers in my throat, heavy and uneven. Fear curls tight in my gut, choking out every rational thought. What have they done to her?

“Son of a bitch…” Scar mutters.

Mason lifts a hand - a signal to stop. We listen.

There it is. A hum. Faint. Electrical. Coming from below.

Scar motions toward the far end of the hall, where acupboard sits at an odd angle - too deliberate to be careless. Someone moved it, recently, to hide what’s behind.

Jayson shoves it aside, the scrape of wood slicing through the silence. A door waits there, narrow and unmarked. When we pull it open, a set of stairs yawns beneath us, disappearing into a pit of black.

There are no windows and no light. Just the sound of our breathing and the low, steady hum of machinery drifting up from below - the heartbeat of something living underground.

I go first.

The steps groan under my weight, dust rising in lazy clouds around my boots. The air gets colder the deeper we go. It smells like bleach and blood. My hand tightens around my gun. Each heartbeat feels like it’s dragging me closer to something I’m not ready to see.

The last step gives way to concrete. A corridor stretches out ahead - narrow, low-ceilinged, walls streaked with old water stains. A single light flickers at the far end, a weak pulse in the dark.

Then we hear it.

A sound - soft, unsteady. Some sort of a machine.

I follow the sound to a half-open door, push it wider with the barrel of my gun. The hinges moan, loud in the silence.

And then - there she is.

Nadia.

Strapped to a gurney, pale as marble, her arm punctured and bruised, tubes running from her veins to machines that hum like they’re keeping her tethered to this world by force. Her chest rises in shallow bursts. Her lips move, forming something that might be my name.

The sight knocks the air out of me. The world narrows. My throat closes.

She’s here.

And she’s still breathing.

Kellerman’s there too, back turned, needle in hand.

He doesn’t hear me at first. He’s humming to himself, a low, disgusting tune, until I press the barrel of my gun to the base of his skull.

He freezes.

“Step away,” I growl. “Now.”

He tries to talk. I don’t let him. The first blow takes him in the ribs. The second cracks his jaw. When he hits the ground, I want to keep going - to drag him up and make him feel every second of what she felt. But Nadia’s sound stops me.

A soft, delirious laugh.

I turn.

She’s staring up at the ceiling, dazed, her fingers twitching against the restraints. “Lucian…” she whispers, voice slurred. “You came…”