Reactors heart
**Chapter 14: The Reactor's Heart**
The Geiger counter's frantic clicks synced with Anya's footsteps as she sleepwalked through the abandoned corridors of Reactor No. 4, her tiny hands leaving faint violet imprints on the crumbling walls. Ashley followed, radiation suit frayed and flashlight flickering, each step heavier than the last. Viktor's voice crackled through her earpiece: *"Turn back. This place is a tomb."*
"She won't wake up," Ashley hissed, swatting at the shadows that seemed to coil around Anya like serpents. "It's him. The warlord. He's *calling* her."
---
**The Crypt of Shadows**
The reactor's core loomed ahead, a maw of twisted steel and decaying concrete. Anya knelt, her nightgown glowing as she pressed her palms to the floor. The ground trembled, fissures splitting open to reveal a burial chamber below—a stone sarcophagus etched with the warlord's insignia.
Sasha's voice cut through the static. *"Got company. Cult's setting up camp outside. They're…* chanting."
Viktor cursed. "Buy us time."
"With what? My *charm*?" A gunshot punctuated her sarcasm.
---
**The Pact Reborn**
Ashley descended into the crypt, Anya limp in her arms. The air reeked of ozone and rot. Symbols on the sarcophagus pulsed in time with Anya's heartbeat.
*"Ashley."*
She froze. Dmitri's ghost flickered beside the coffin, translucent and grim. *"You must shatter the tomb. Only her blood can—"*
"No," Ashley snarled. "I won't let you use her."
*"Then he'll rise anyway,"* Dmitri said, fading. *"And she'll be his vessel."*
---
**Sasha's Fracture**
Outside, Sasha crouched behind a burnt-out truck, her mutated arm—now veined with Anya's violet light—trembling as she reloaded. The cultists advanced, their chants swelling.
*"Svyatoy vosstanet!"*
*The saint will rise!*
A bullet grazed her cheek. She fired back, but her vision blurred, the mutation crawling toward her heart. *"Not like this,"* she spat, lobbing a grenade into the fray.
The explosion lit the night.
---
**Viktor's Ultimatum**
Viktor found them as the crypt collapsed, hauling Ashley and Anya from the rubble. A figure awaited them in the smoke—*Lev*, his former Bratva lieutenant, flanked by mercenaries.
"You look like hell, brother," Lev drawled. "Dmitri's pact demands the girl's life. You swore an oath."
Viktor stepped forward, knife glinting. "Oaths can bleed."
Lev smirked, nodding to Ashley. "Kill her, and the child lives. Refuse… and we take both."
Anya stirred, her eyes flying open—*pitch black.*
---
**The Warlord's Whisper**
*"Mother."*
The voice was Anya's, but the cadence was ancient, cruel. Ashley recoiled as her daughter smiled, a gash of darkness splitting her lips.
*"He's here,"* the warlord hissed through Anya. *"And you'll kneel."*
Viktor lunged, pinning Anya as she thrashed, her small hands clawing at his face. "*Fight him,* malyshka!"
Lev's laughter echoed. "Pathetic. She's already gone."
---
**The Choice**
Ashley aimed her pistol—not at Lev, but at Viktor. "Let her go."
He froze. "Ashley—"
"I said *let go!*"
Viktor released Anya. The child went still, then collapsed.
Lev's grin faded as Ashley turned the gun on him. "You don't have the guts."
She fired.
The bullet struck the reactor's core.
---
**Chain Reaction**
The explosion threw them into the dirt. Steel rained down as the sarcophagus shattered, a spectral roar shaking the earth. Anya's scream pierced the chaos—a beam of violet light erupting skyward, tearing the clouds apart.
When the dust settled, the warlord's tomb was dust.
But so was Lev.
So was the cult.
And so, nearly, was Anya.
---
**The Cost**
Sasha found them at dawn, her mutated arm now grotesquely fused with her rifle. "Kid alive?"
Ashley nodded, cradling Anya's limp form. "Barely."
Viktor stared at the reactor's ruins, Dmitri's journal burning in his hands. "He'll come back. Stronger."
"Let him," Ashley said, her voice steel. "We'll be waiting."