The elevator groaned as it descended, the number panel glowing faintly as it ticked past the hundred-foot mark. Raven watched the floor count with her back to the wall, MP5 raised and ready. The elevator shaft vibrated softly, metal grinding against unseen pulleys and brakes.
She'd already gone hundreds of feet underground. That confirmed it.
This wasn't just a garage.
This elevator is a doorway to something deeper, something older. New York, like Las Vegas and LA, sat atop a web of forgotten tunnels, mines, sealed train lines, failed bunker projects, and half-collapsed underground systems that had never been cataloged fully. The city tried to pretend they didn't exist. But Raven knew better.
In her last life, survivors whispered about the mole people the underground dwellers who had never truly left the tunnels of New York. Not just squatters or the homeless, but entire communities. People born underground, raised in darkness, living off grid in concrete labyrinths generations deep. Languages emerged. Territories formed. No government dared go down. And when the zombies came, those tunnels turned into sanctuaries.
Raven had never found an entrance in her first life. Now she was sure she had one.
One of the few safe zones in the future had been these massive undercities. Hidden from the chaos, too deep for the virus to thrive. Mutated animals didn't travel this far down. Sea creatures couldn't. Even the infected plants couldn't root down here. It was just darkness, air, and the people strong enough to claim a piece of it.
The elevator slowed.
Raven tightened her grip.
The floor display blinked: SUB-1.
Ding.
The doors began to slide open.
Raven didn't wait.
She threw a smoke grenade out onto the concrete floor the moment there was enough space to slip her arm through. It hit with a metal ping and rolled into the open. A moment later, thick gray smoke exploded outward in a widening field.
Raven lunged through the door and dove behind a stack of large metal crates just outside the elevator. A moment later, automatic fire tore through the smoke where she'd been standing. Bullets shredded the elevator door and bit into the walls with sharp metallic impacts.
Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
"We're under attack!" someone shouted.
"Check the elevator!"
More shouting. The sounf of boots moving echoed. It was chaos. But no one saw her move in the smoke.
Raven rolled around the edge of the crates, her night vision goggles illuminating the fog. In the thermal image, three figures glowed like beacons. All of them stood ten yards ahead, their rifles trained blindly on the elevator.
She raised her MP5.
Pew. Pew. Pew.
Each shot hit a different skull. Entering through the side of their skulls. Only to exit out the other side. The concrete behind them absorbed the final force of the bullets with a few dull thuds.
The men dropped like sacks of meat.
Raven crept forward, sweeping past the fallen bodies. No headgear. No masks. Just itchy trigger fingers.
"No helmets," she said quietly. "Amateurs."
The smoke continued to spread, curling through the place. She heard more voices deeper in—footsteps echoing, more men moving toward the sound of their gunfire. Someone yelled about flanking the elevator.
Too late.
Raven tossed another smoke grenade into the deeper part of the sub basement. It bounced once and released another spray of gray smoke.
Before they could react, she was already moving, circling around to the opposite side of the stacked metal cargo boxes.
Bullets fired through the air, but they all missed her.
They still hadn't figured where she was located, and that was a fatal error.
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