The subway tunnel was a concrete throat, swallowing the last vestiges of the city’s neon glow and leaving only a thick, oppressive darkness. The air was cold and heavy, thick with the smell of damp earth, rust, and the faint, electric tang of ozone from the long-dead third rail. It was the perfect place to kill a monster. Or get killed by one.

  My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the echoing silence. I had my stage. Now I just needed my star performer.

  “Any minute now,” Handy’s voice was a low, conspiratorial whisper in my ear. “His bio-signature is just two blocks away and closing fast. I have to say, for a plan hatched from equal parts desperation and teen melodrama, this is effective.”

  “Let’s see if it works before we hand out the awards,” I muttered, my voice sounding small and thin in the vast, space. I crouched behind a rusted maintenance kiosk, the cracked lens of the holographic projector clutched in my hand. It was heavy, solid, and felt ridiculously inadequate for the task at hand.

  My new plan was insane. A Hail Mary pass based on the ghost of a dead man’s memory. But my old plan—punching the monster really hard—had ended with me bleeding in the dirt. Insane was all I had left.

  The first hint of his arrival wasn’t a sound. It was a change in the air pressure. A shift, a displacement of the heavy, stagnant atmosphere. Then came the sound, a faint, rhythmic scrape of metal on concrete, echoing from deep down the tunnel.

  Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

  The sound of his claws, dragging as he walked.

  My breath hitched. The ice in my gut, the icy fear for Jackie, solidified. This is for her.

  The thought was a mantra, a shield against the primal urge to turn and run.

  The scraping got louder, closer. A hulking silhouette took shape in the gloom at the far end of the tunnel, a mountain of shadow that seemed to drink the faint light. He moved with a restless, predatory gait, his head low, his massive shoulders rolling with each step. His buggy, neon-yellow eyes cut through the darkness, sweeping the tunnel.

  He was hunting. He was hunting me.

  He stopped about fifty feet from my hiding spot, his head tilting, his nostrils flaring. He could smell me. The air was thick with my scent, the bait in my very elaborate, very fragile trap.

  “Showtime,” Handy whispered. “Try not to get eaten during the opening number.”

  My hand was shaking. I took a deep, shuddering breath and pressed the activation stud on the projector. Brave face, shaky knees.

  A single beam of pale blue light shot from the cracked lens, splashing against the curved, grimy wall of the tunnel opposite me. The light wavered, flickered, then resolved into an image.

  A little girl.

  She was small, no older than seven, with a tangle of dark hair and big, curious eyes. The hologram was imperfect, the cracked lens causing her form to shimmer and distort at the edges, making her look ethereal. She was wearing a bright yellow raincoat, a splash of impossible sunshine in the suffocating darkness.

  And she was humming.

  The sound, broadcast from Handy’s tiny speaker, was thin and reedy, an off-key, meandering little tune. The lullaby from Hark Hale’s broken memory.

  Ravage froze. His entire massive frame went rigid. The low, rattling growl in his chest died in his throat. His glowing yellow eyes, which had been sweeping the tunnel with predatory intensity, locked onto the shimmering image of the girl.

  He took a hesitant step forward, his head cocked, a low, confused whine escaping his crooked jaw. It was the sound of a beast trying to solve a puzzle it couldn’t comprehend.

  It was working. My heart, which had been trying to beat its way out of my chest, gave a single, painful lurch of hope. He wasn’t attacking. He wasn’t charging. He was just… staring.

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  The hologram of the little girl turned, as if noticing him for the first time. She smiled, a sweet, innocent, heartbreakingly real smile, and held out her hand. A ghost reaching out across a chasm of pain and rage.

  Ravage took another step. And another. The phantom of his stolen past transfixed him. The raw hunger in his eyes vanished. The yellow glow seemed to soften, flicker. He looked… lost. Confused. A deep, mournful sound rumbled in his chest, a sound that was almost human.

  A part of me, the part that was still Nikki Nova, felt a pang of crushing guilt. I was using a dead little girl, a father’s most precious memory, to bait a trap. It was a monstrous act. But then I thought of Jackie, of the terror on the dockworker’s face, and a cold, hard resolve burned away the guilt.

  Whatever it takes.

  Ravage was almost to the wall now, his massive, clawed hand slowly reaching out, as if to touch the shimmering, impossible image. His movements were slow, gentle, utterly at odds with the killing machine I knew him to be.

  The man was still in there. Hark Hale was still alive, buried under layers of fury and programming. This was it. The moment of hesitation I’d been counting on.

  And then the plan backfired. Horribly.

  His claws passed through the ghostly image. Nothing. Just cold air. The softness in his eyes curdled, the yellow light flaring into a blazing inferno. The mournful whine became a roar—not of aggression, but of pure, soul-shattering agony. It was the sound of a man being forced to lose his daughter all over again.

  He wasn’t hesitating.

  The memory hadn’t pacified him. It had broken him. The last, fragile thread connecting the beast to the man had just snapped, and the result was a creature of pure ferocity. His programming, his tactical conditioning, it all shattered, leaving only the raw, screaming heart of the monster.

  He threw his head back and roared, a sound so full of pain and fury that the very air seemed to vibrate. Then he turned his incandescent rage on the source of his pain.

  The projector.

  He launched himself across the tunnel, not at me, but at the shimmering hologram. His claws tore through the image of the little girl, shredding her into ribbons of light. He slammed into the wall, his fists, two meaty hammers of fur and steel, crashing down on the holographic projector I had placed on a small ledge. The device exploded in a shower of sparks and shattered plastic.

  The ghost was gone. But the rage remained.

  He spun around, his yellow eyes blazing with a feral madness I hadn't seen before, not even in the freight yards. This wasn’t a soldier anymore. This was a force of nature. A hurricane of teeth and claws.

  He roared again and slammed his shoulder into one of the massive concrete support pillars that lined the tunnel. The sound was like a thunderclap. A web of cracks spread across the surface of the pillar, and dust rained down from the ceiling.

  Great, I thought, my mind reeling with the catastrophic failure of my brilliant plan. Guess he wasn't a fan of old home movies.

  He hit the pillar again. This time, there was a deep, groaning sound from above, the sound of stressed, ancient metal. The entire tunnel shuddered. The ceiling, a patchwork of crumbling concrete and rusted rebar, buckled.

  “Nikki, get out of there!” Handy screamed in my ear, his usual sarcastic cool gone, replaced by pure, digital panic. “The structural integrity is… well, it’s gone! Move!”

  But Ravage stood between me and the exit. He turned his burning gaze on me, the source of the ghost, the source of his renewed agony. He let out one last, guttural roar and charged.

  There was no time for a plan. No time for strategy. There was only time to react.

  I scrambled backward, but it was too late. He was a brown, furry blur of destruction. His massive form slammed into me, lifting me off my feet and hurling me through the air like a rag doll. I crashed into the far wall of the tunnel, the impact of a brutal, full-body explosion of pain that knocked the wind from my lungs and sent a shower of stars across my vision.

  I slumped to the ground, my head ringing, the taste of blood in my mouth.

  Above me, the groaning of the ceiling became a deafening, high-pitched shriek. With a final, earsplitting crack, the tunnel roof gave way.

  The ceiling shrieked, and then the world was gone. Just noise and darkness. A storm of concrete and rebar crashed down around me. Dust filled my lungs, choking me. A massive slab of the ceiling, the size of a hover-car, slammed into the ground right where Ravage had been standing, kicking up a choking cloud of dust that blotted out everything.

  I tried to crawl. My body wouldn't respond.

  Just a chaotic, tumbling roar.

  Something massive slammed into my legs.

  A sudden, crushing pressure.

  Then a wet, sickening snap from inside my body. My bone.

  A scream of pure, white-hot agony tore from my throat, but the roar of the collapsing tunnel swallowed it. The world went white, then black.

  The roaring faded, replaced by a high-pitched ringing in my ears. The air was thick with dust. I tried to move, but a crushing weight pinned my legs. A white-hot, sickening agony flared from my left shin. Through the haze, I saw him, a monstrous silhouette climbing the rubble, vanishing into the darkness. He left me buried in the tomb I'd built for him.