The NOx boost had the two bikes flying down the dark subway track. Miles of tunnel were swallowed up as the bikes raced down the tracks with their headlights blaring.

Will kept a steady grip on the bike as he checked his helmet HUD. The driver assist was on, and green lines depicted his trajectory. The tunnel was a straight pass for a mile, and it looked like it would remain so for the foreseeable future.

He was interrupted by a beeping, and through the corner of his eye, he saw that he had an incoming call over the local network. He accepted the call, and Remy and Rebecca popped up on his feed.

"How's the fuel looking?" asked Remy.

Will glanced at the fuel gauge. "It looks good. It'll be enough to get us there and back."

"Mine's a bit of a hog, but we'll see," said Remy. "We'll figure it out before we get... there."

"Alright, enough. Both of you, stop speaking in riddles," interrupted Rebecca. "Where is 'there' exactly?"

Will looked back at Rebecca and gave her an incredulous look. Unfortunately, he still had the helmet on, and she could only see his dark visor.

"What?" Rebecca asked, annoyed.

"You come with us without knowing where we are going or what we are doing. And you think now is the best time to be asking questions?"

Rebecca blushed through her faceplate, and Remy cackled at the other end of the line. "Should have asked us that before we set off, princess."

"Don't call me princess," she snapped. "Now, tell me. Where are we going?"

"What, and spoil the surprise?" said Remy.

"Don't make me hit you."

"Alright, bet," said Remy. "You take a guess, and I'll tell you if you got it right. Hint, it's his hometown." Remy jerked his thumb towards Will.

Rebecca turned to Will. "You were born outside the tower?"

"Yes," said Will.

"Oh, is it Novgrun?" she asked.

"No," said Will.

"Is it Koldova? We've got a military presence there."

"No."

"Kaiber pass is occupied... you surely can't be Maltanese?" she asked.

"Nope," said Will.

"Then what is it?!"

"Give up?"

"NO!"

There were a few minutes of peace as Rebecca thought furiously. The bikes rumbled through the tunnel, and Will checked the driver assist again. They still had a long way to go.

Rebecca stirred behind him. "It's getting colder."

"Yeah..." Will checked the temperature in his HUD, and it was dropping down steadily. "It will get even colder. You better hang on."

"You are used to the cold?" she asked nonchalantly, clearly fishing for information.

"I don't mind the cold. Used to get pretty nippy in the old place." Will played along. He was perfectly happy to keep her distracted.

Rebecca went still and muttered under her breath. It took a minute for Will to realize that she had her driver assist engaged.

"Ah, shit..." Will cursed.

"Derbent?! You are going to Derbent?" she screamed.

"What? No!" interrupted Remy.

"Okay, if it is not Derbent, then where are you going?" Rebecca demanded. "The exclusionary zone?"

Remy and Will fell silent.

"You are kidding? Oh my god! You two are insane," Rebecca exclaimed. "Stop the bike! Let me off!"

"Hey, you are the one that insisted on coming with us," said Will.

Rebecca slapped Will on the shoulder. "I didn't think you two would be this crazy. How are you even going to survive the radiation?"

"We got suits prepared," Remy chimed in.

"Suits? You got one for me too? Because by the looks of it, there are only two of you here," said Rebecca.

"Don't look at me," said Remy. "Talk to Mr. Overpreparedness over there. He brought three."

"Four, actually," said Will. "Best to be prepared."

Rebecca looked between the boys. "You went through all this trouble. Why are you even going there?"

"No reason," said Will. "Just picking up some stuff." Rebecca slapped his shoulder again, annoyed at the non-answer. Will ignored his smarting shoulder and continued. "Relax, we have planned this out. We are not idiots."

"That remains debatable," Rebecca muttered. She examined the tunnel as it whizzed by. "This subway looks really old."

"Yes," said Will, glad to have the conversation shift. "They were built just before the war. They had planned to tie all the subspace sites together. It's a damn shame."

"It was all because of the Hive, wasn't it?" Rebecca sighed.

"The Hive, the Feds, does it really matter? In the end, we all got bombed."

"How can you say that?" asked Rebecca. "We were allied with the Federation."

"Little-known fact," said Will conspiratorially, "we were playing both sides. They needed us more than we needed them. In the end, the Hive figured that we were leaning too much towards the Feds and triggered the attack, and here we are today."

"You are so full of it," said Rebecca.

"Really?"

"How do you know all that?" she asked.

Remy laughed. "He knows all that because he was there at the time."

"Stop playing," said Rebecca. "That was over fifty years ago."

"Yup," said Remy with glee.

Rebecca went still for a moment before exclaiming, "No way! You are one of them, the displacers."

"Yeah," said Will.

"I thought you guys were a myth," whispered Rebecca. "So that's why you are so proficient in the traditional methods."

"Pretty much," said Will.

"So, you must have seen the bombs drop," the words left her mouth before she could stop herself. "Sorry."

"No, it's fine," said Will. "Yes, I saw them. I saw the gates explode too."

Will was silent for a while before he spoke again. "We never saw the attack coming. There was talk about it, sure, but no one considered it a possibility. We were too valuable to attack. We thought that would keep us safe."

"But it didn't," Rebecca prompted.

"No, it didn't," said Will. "Belgrave was the only place in the world where there were nascent subspace-laylines close enough to the surface. Since they were just forming, they could be molded. And that's where the towers come from. That said, one thing we were poor with was the perma-gates."

"Both the Hive and the Federation had plenty of permanent gates. The amount of resources coming from them was staggering. So, while we had the towers to make powerhouses, the two superpowers had endless resources. It was a healthy balance. They needed us, and we needed them."

"And then our gates started changing," said Rebecca.

"Yes," Will nodded. "One of our gates was being converted to a permanent one. There were early signs too. I guess the Hive considered us an unnecessary risk. One nation couldn't have both the tower and the gates. They decided to knock us off the board before we were even a player."

"And the Feds just stood by and watched," said Remy.

"Didn't do them any good either. In the end, everyone got hit," said Will. "Now bits of the legacy of the tower survived, and the two great powers retreated beyond the gates."

"I still think you are giving the Hive too much leeway," said Rebecca.

"Oh, the Hive is insane alright," Remy chimed in. "Bunch of shard embedders... who thought sticking mutant etherite crystals into yourself was a good idea."

"Just because they are insane, it doesn't mean that they are not smart," said Will. "They managed to work together in their madness. That is why they were so successful."

"I would have expected you to hate the Hive more," said Rebecca. "They attacked. They started it. It's because of them that embedding is still illegal in the Tower. Worst case, you get the death penalty."

"Hive, the Feds, I blame everyone," said Will quietly. "When the gates were breached, there was no one. No army, no reinforcements, nothing. It was the citizens that took up arms to fight. The fighting was from street to street. We were getting swarmed."

"Hours later, we caught up to the military, and that's when the gates broke."

"Gate Tarter."

"Yeah..." said Will. "It was chaos. Seeing a layline break, it's indescribable... Everything just stopped; we got pulled in."

"You were pulled into the subspace?" asked Rebecca breathlessly.

"Yes," said Will. "The military protected us. I don't think we would have survived otherwise. I don't know how long we were in there, but when we came out, fifty years had already passed."

"The displacers," whispered Becca in awe. She chuckled after a while. "The tower hates you lot."

"I try not to advertise that fact," Will gave a small smile.

"No one does," said Remy. "Hence the myth."

They fell into silence after that. Will breathed out and found his breath fog over. It was steadily getting colder. Frost coated the rails, and on the sides, there were patches of ice.

Becca shivered behind him. Remy spoke into the coms, his teeth chattering. "I think we are close."

"Yeah, we better slow down," said Will.

There was a bend in the tunnel, and Will drove past stray debris. The damage got worse the further they went. The cold that seeped into their bones was expected, but there was something more in there. Like the difference between the bite of ice and the stab of a blade.

It came in waves, cutting into them along with the cold. A pulse that wanted to penetrate into them. Will gritted his teeth, and psion flared in his body.

In the bike headlights, Will caught sight of an armored form lying prone in the tunnel. The empty exo-suit had his right arm and leg torn off, and the tunnel walls were peppered with bullet holes.

"Oh my god," Rebecca gasped. Will's hands shook. Up ahead was a train completely buried under rubble. The tunnel had collapsed over the back half of it, and the train was left dangling in midair, lifted off the tracks.

Will's eyes grew hazy, and the train warped into a delirious shape from a funhouse mirror. A strange screeching sound came from the back of his head, getting louder with each second—the sound of metal grinding against steel. A horn rang aloud, and the screeching reached a fever pitch, soon becoming all that he could hear.

"Wil...LL... William!"

Will's eyes snapped open. Rebecca was shaking him.

"What happened? You zoned out," she said.

"No—Nothing, I'm good," said Will and applied the brakes.

Remy came to a halt a bit further ahead. With the bikes switched off, they were suddenly engulfed in darkness. Will fumbled with his flashlight, and the tremors in his hand were still present. He gritted his teeth and worked his fingers over the switch, and there was light again.

"Looks like the place," said Remy. "I'll go a bit further ahead and check things out."

"W...wait!" Will exclaimed. "Stay clear of the cave-in. We don't know if it's stable."

"There's got to be an exit around here somewhere," muttered Remy.

Will fished out a Geiger counter. A burst of static came from the counter, followed by a steady beeping sound. He headed towards the side of the tunnel, and the chirps from the counter increased.

Becca walked ahead of him, following his flashlight. She came across some markings on the tunnel wall and came to a halt.

"Bel...grave, Station Belgrave," she muttered. "You've got to be kidding me! Station Belgrave?!"

"What?" asked Remy.

"When you said you were going to the exclusionary zone, I thought you were going to the outskirts of the zone, not go smack dab in the middle of where the nukes fell!"

"I don't know about smack dab. That would be thirty miles that way," Remy pointed.

"Quiet, both of you," said Will. The Geiger counter was going wild. Will stood under a lone beam of light coming from the top of the tunnel. With their flashlights pointed away, the beam was finally visible.

Will lifted the counter close to the beam, and the chirps fused into one continuous high-pitched whine.

Remy and Rebecca stepped forward, and all of them stared up at the ceiling, the single beam of light falling in between them.

"You found it," said Remy.

"There it is," Becca shook her head in disbelief.

"Belgrave," finished Will.