PROLOGUE

  The city was built to block the sky.

  Steel towers pressed together so tightly that daylight filtered down in thin, sickly strips, never quite touching the ground. Neon signs hummed nonstop—warnings, advertisements, identification codes—casting color onto alleyways that smelled of oil, rust, and old blood.

  People learned early where not to look.

  Gunshots didn’t stop conversations. Screams were treated like weather—unpleasant, unavoidable, gone by morning. Bodies disappeared between shifts. Sometimes there were stains left behind. Sometimes not.

  Order still existed.

  Just not the kind that protected anyone.

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  Unmarked vehicles moved through the lower streets at scheduled hours. They didn’t use sirens. They didn’t need to. When they stopped, people stepped aside without being told. Resistance was inefficient. Inefficiency was corrected.

  Those taken were rarely spoken of again.

  Official records called it relocation.

  Medical notices called it an intervention.

  Rumors called it something else entirely.

  They said there was a place beneath the city.

  Some swore it was real. Others said it was just a story meant to keep people in line.

  Not a prison. Not a hospital.

  This place didn’t have a name that stayed the same. Only patterns: white lights that never dimmed, schedules that replaced clocks, procedures explained in voices too calm to trust. People went in sick, unstable, dangerous—or simply inconvenient.

  When they came back… they weren’t broken.

  They were quiet.

  The city above kept moving. Neon flickered. Deals were made. Children learned how to survive without asking why the ground beneath their feet sometimes vibrated late at night.

  And far below, something waited—

  not to save humanity,

  But to fix it.