Story 1278: Sleeper Among Us

The rain never stopped in Sector 9.

After escaping Interrogation Room 6, Juno, Shade, and H-13 fled into the lower tunnels beneath the city, where drainage canals twisted through abandoned metro lines. Every echo felt like a footstep behind them. Every flickering light might’ve masked something watching.

They stopped to regroup in a hollowed-out maintenance hub. Concrete walls. Rusted pipes. Cracked terminal screens looping the same message:

“REMAIN CALM. AID IS COMING.”

Juno wiped blood from her brow. “They won’t stop until we’re dead or sealed inside that Vault.”

Shade leaned back against a pipe. “Or both.”

H-13 tapped at a portable terminal, eyes sharp. “They’re still tracking us. Someone’s pinging our location every thirty minutes. I’ve purged my systems twice—it’s not me.”

That silence returned—the heavy one. The kind that tastes like suspicion.

Shade looked at Juno. Then at H-13.

Then at Marla, sitting quietly in the corner.