Chapter 9: The Hollowed

The neon glow of the food stalls flickered like dying stars as Kai counted their meager earnings. The cred-chips were worn thin from use, their edges smooth against his fingers. Barely enough for two protein bricks—if they were lucky. His stomach growled, a hollow reminder of how long it had been since they'd eaten anything resembling real food. The synthetic pork buns from the vendor down the street smelled like chemicals, but right now, even that would have been a feast.

Lucent didn't look back as he led the way through the winding alleys of the Junkyard. His boots kicked up puffs of metallic dust that clung to the damp air, each step deliberate, each movement efficient. The man moved like a shadow given form, always aware, always watching. Kai struggled to keep up, his own steps hesitant in comparison. The salvaged Conduit at his hand hummed faintly, its components held together by spit and desperation. It was a far cry from the sleek, corporate-issued models he'd once taken for granted.

They'd spent the last three days scraping by on whatever jobs they could find—data smuggling for paranoid tech-hoarders, patching up fried Conduits for desperate low-tier casters, even playing lookout for a twitchy stim dealer whose hands shook too much to count his own product. None of it was glamorous. None of it was safe. But it kept them fed, barely.

Their temporary base loomed ahead like a rusted coffin. The door hung crooked on its hinges, swaying slightly in the toxic breeze that wound through the Junkyard's skeletal remains. It wasn't much, but it kept out the worst of the rains and the things that stalked the deeper tunnels.

Rena was waiting for them.

She stood just inside the threshold, the dim light causing her augmented eyes to glow. The usual smirk was gone, replaced by a grim set to her jaw that made Kai's skin prickle. Blood streaked the front of her lab coat—old, dried to a rusty brown, but unmistakable. The scent of antiseptic clung to her like a second skin.

Lucent didn't bother with greetings. "What do you want?"

Rena exhaled through her nose, the sound more tired than annoyed. "Scavenger turned Hollowed last night. Tore through the lower wards before we managed to drive it into the old coolant tunnels."

Her mechanical fingers flexed, the joints hissing with the motion. The left one sparked slightly, a telltale sign of overdue maintenance. "Got seven people in my clinic with half their limbs missing. I'm out of sedatives, out of synth-skin, and out of patience."

Kai's stomach twisted. He'd seen Hollowed before—their gray, papery skin stretched too tight over bones that had warped under Aether exposure, their clouded eyes that somehow still tracked movement with unsettling precision. But he'd never been close enough to hear the wet, clicking sounds they made when they breathed, like rusted gears grinding together.

Lucent crossed his arms, his expression unreadable. "So put it down yourself."

"Wouldn't be here if I could." Rena's voice was flat, the kind of tone that suggested she'd already had this argument with herself a dozen times. She tossed a mangled Aether canister at Lucent's feet. The metal was peeled back in strips, the edges curled like petals from some grotesque flower. Something had chewed through it. "This one's different. Faster. Smarter. It's not just shambling—it's hunting." She paused, her eyes focusing on Kai for a fraction too long. "It's a pain to deal with. You know how this ends."

Silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating. Kai glanced at Lucent, but the man's expression gave nothing away. His eyes were dark, unreadable in the dim light.

Finally, Lucent bent down and picked up the canister, turning it over in his hands. The metal was cold, the edges sharp enough to draw blood if he gripped too tight. "What's the pay?"

Rena's lips thinned. She reached into her coat and pulled out a small credit chip, holding it up to the light.

The dim light reflects on its metallic surface, iridescent even in the gloom of the room. "Enough credits to keep you fed for a week. And—" She hesitated, then produced a small vial from her pocket.

The contents a pale blue that pulsed faintly, like a slow heartbeat. "One dose of Q-Serin. Fresh from the Spires."

Lucent's breath caught in his throat. Q-Serin are stabilizers that was the kind of thing only corporate mages usually had access to—a compound that temporarily numbed glyph-burns, letting a caster push past their limits without frying their nervous system. It was worth more than their lives on the black market.

Lucent's fingers twitched. He didn't look at Kai. "Where's it holed up?"

Rena smiled, but there was no humor in it. Just exhaustion and something darker, something that might have been pity. "Follow the screams."

***

The coolant tunnels stank of rust and rotting meat.

Kai's Conduit cast a shaky circle of light ahead of them, the spell flickering every few steps as the conduit struggled to maintain output. The walls were streaked with old chemical spills, the colors long since faded to a uniform grime that clung to every surface. The metal groaned underfoot, the sound echoing through the narrow passage. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped in steady rhythm, each drop hitting the ground with a sound like a ticking clock.

Lucent moved silently ahead, his own Conduit dark but ready. He'd traded words for the knife at his belt—a brutal, straight-edged thing that looked more like a butcher's tool than a weapon. The blade was dull in the dim light, the edge notched from use. It had seen more mercy killings than Kai wanted to think about.

Guns would've been cleaner. Faster. But in the Junkyard, bullets were currency, and they'd been eating into their last credits just to keep themselves from starving. So the knife it is, as it is intimate in its violence, forcing you to look your mercy in its clouded eyes as you stab into it.

Then they heard it.

A wet, ragged gasp echoed down the tunnel, followed by the sound of something heavy dragging itself across metal. Kai's pulse spiked, his breath coming too fast. His palms were slick with sweat, the Conduit in his hand suddenly slippery.

The Hollowed crouched in a nest of shredded insulation and broken conduit casings. It was—had been—a woman, her limbs elongated from Aether exposure, her fingers fused into twisted claws that scraped against the metal floor with every movement. The remains of a scavenger's harness hung from her shoulders, the straps embedded in her flesh where the body had swollen around them. Her skin was the color of old newspaper, stretched too tight over bones that had warped into something unrecognizable.

Her head snapped up as they approached. Milky eyes fixed on them, the pupils dilated too wide, the whites veined with luminous cracks.

And then she spoke.

The Hollowed's voice hung in the air, the words distorted by a throat that had forgotten how to form them properly.

"Ple....ase—"

Its body betrayed it anyway.

One moment it was crouched in its nest of torn insulation and broken conduit casings, a tangle of too-long limbs and shuddering breath. The next—

It moved.

Not with the slow, shambling gait of the other Hollowed they'd encountered, but with the terrible precision of a marionette whose strings had been pulled taut. Its spine arched, joints popping as it launched forward, fingers splayed into claws that caught the dim light like rusted nails.

Lucent reacted before his thought could catch up—muscle memory forged from back-alley brawls. The knife in his hand, its weight familiar against his palm. He brought it up just as the Hollowed's first swipe came down, steel meeting warped bone with a shriek of sparks. The impact shuddered through his arm, vibrating up to his teeth.

Kai scrambled back, his boots slipping on the damp metal floor. His fingers fumbled at his Conduit, the cracked screen flickering as he tried to pull up a defensive glyph. Too slow. Always too slow.

The Hollowed twisted—its ribs audibly cracking as its torso rotated further than any human body should allow—and lashed out at Kai.

Claws grazed his shoulder.

A line of red bloomed across his skin, the pain sharp and sudden. Blood welled up in three perfect parallel lines, staining the torn fabric of his jacket. Kai gasped, the sound swallowed by the Hollowed's wet, rattling breath as it loomed over him—

Then jerked back.

Its head snapped to the side, milky eyes wide. "I...…. don't—" A full-body shudder wracked it, muscles twitching beneath papery skin. "—want..... to—"

For a heartbeat, it fought itself, its own limbs locking up as if pulled in opposite directions by invisible wires. Then, with a wet crunch of cartilage, its body lunged again.

Lucent didn't give it the chance.

His Conduit flared to life, the spell unfolding before the glyph had even fully formed on screen—Accelerate, rank 3, ripped from some dead Reclamation officer's device years ago.

Lucent flipped the knife in his grip, feeling the familiar weight of the worn handle. He exhaled sharply and let the Accelerate glyph bleed into the blade itself, watching as the metal took on a faint blue shimmer. The Hollowed was already turning toward Kai, its too-long arms outstretched -

He threw.

The knife left his fingers with unnatural speed, the Accelerate glyph propelling it forward like a bullet. It struck true, burying itself to the hilt in the Hollowed's chest with a wet thunk. The creature staggered, its mouth working soundlessly as blackish fluid bubbled past its lips.

It should have gone down. It should have.

Instead, it reached up with trembling fingers and wrapped them around the knife's handle.

Kai didn't wait to see what it would do next. His Conduit finally sparked to life, the newly configured Rust-Bite glyph he'd been struggling to compile slamming into the Hollowed's outstretched arm. The effect was immediate—the gray flesh darkened, withering at the edges as the spell ate through corrupted tissue and warped bone alike.

The Hollowed screamed.

Not the mindless howl of a beast, but something worse—something that still remembered pain. It staggered, the knife still protruding from its chest, its movements becoming jerky, uncoordinated.

Lucent was already moving. He closed the distance in three strides, his boot coming down on the Hollowed's knee with a sickening crunch. As it collapsed forward, he caught the knife's handle and twisted, driving it deeper until he felt the final, shuddering resistance give way.

The Hollowed went still.

Silence settled over the tunnel, broken only by the distant drip of water and Kai's ragged breathing. Then—

A whisper. Not through the air, but through the Aether itself, vibrating along the frayed edges of their Conduits:

"Tha…..nk... you..."

Lucent yanked the knife free. The blade came away dark with something thicker than blood.

"Let's go," he said, voice rough.

Kai didn't argue.

***

The tunnels seemed darker on the return journey.

Kai's shoulder throbbed with every step, the heat of the wound pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Blood had soaked through his jacket, the fabric sticking to his skin in a way that made him grit his teeth.

Lucent moved ahead of him, his silhouette cutting through the gloom like a blade through smoke. The beam from his Conduit was weak, flickering at irregular intervals, casting shadows that danced across the tunnel walls. The pipes overhead groaned, dripping condensation that hit the ground with soft, metallic plinks. The sound was rhythmic, almost soothing, if not for the way it echoed—a hollow mimicry of a heartbeat.

Kai couldn't stop seeing it—the Hollowed's face in those final seconds. The way its eyes had cleared, just for a moment, as if whatever was left of the person inside had surfaced one last time.

"Why do they exist?"

The question slipped out before he could stop it, his voice too loud in the suffocating quiet.

Lucent didn't turn around. His footsteps didn't falter. For a long moment, Kai thought he wouldn't answer at all.

Then—

"Same reason the rest of this shit does." Lucent's voice was rough, worn thin at the edges. "Because someone up there decided it was cheaper to dump the broken things down here than fix them."

He kicked a discarded Aether canister out of their path. It clattered against the tunnel wall, the sound sharp and final.

Kai swallowed. The air tasted like rust and damp concrete. "But there has to be a way to reverse it. If we could just—"

"No."

The word was a guillotine.

Lucent stopped walking. When he turned, the dim light from his Conduit carved deep hollows beneath his eyes, his expression unreadable. "You think the corps haven't tried? You think they give a damn about finding a cure when it's easier to just burn the bodies and call it containment?" He exhaled sharply, his breath fogging in the chilled air. "That thing back there wasn't a person anymore. It was a wound. And we closed it."

Kai wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him about the way the Hollowed had looked at them, the way its fingers had curled around the knife not to pull it out, but to seek help.

But the words died in his throat.

Because Lucent was right.

The Spires didn't care about the Hollowed. They didn't care about the workers who'd been exposed to unstable Aether, or the scavengers who'd crawled through broken nodes to line corporate pockets. The only thing that mattered was profit. And the dead didn't cost anything.

A drop of water landed on Kai's cheek. He wiped it away, his fingers coming away streaked with grime.

Above them, the distant wail of a train cut through the silence, a reminder of the world that continued on, untouched, above their heads.

Lucent was already moving again, his boots scuffing against the damp concrete. Kai followed, his shoulder burning, his thoughts louder than the echoes of their footsteps.

The Stabilizer weighed heavy in his pocket.

For now, at least, he was still human.

But the tunnels stretched on forever. And the city above had long since stopped listening.