Round 97 Transcript

Halie's crimson eyes widen as she feels the grating beneath her give way, but Silra's quick hacking diverts the water just in time. The surge recedes, and Halie stumbles forward, her ankle throbbing in pain. She grabs onto the catwalk with a white-knuckled grip, her eyes darting between Silra's screens and the water below. Silra's teal eyes flick between the screens, her fingers flying across the holographic keys as she speaks: "Move, now! Grab Halie and pull her to the shaft entrance – I'll keep the water back." The numbers on her screen count down relentlessly, 10 seconds until the section collapses. The metal groans ominously beneath her, and the air vents above roar louder. As Silra's words hang in the air, a loud gong echoes through the tunnel, followed by the hiss of compressed air. The floodwaters surge again, this time more violently, and Halie's grip on the catwalk begins to slip.

I drop down through the water without hesitation, my demonic strength allowing me to move like a predator falling on prey. The cold liquid stings my skin but I ignore it—right now Halie needs me more than my comfort does. My arms wrap around her as I pull her close, and we both surface for air before I kick off the wall with powerful legs toward the maintenance shaft entrance Silra pointed out earlier. "Keep that water back!" I call over my shoulder at the rogue's teal eyes still glued to screens above us in this flooded hellhole. "Halie and I are moving—you follow as soon as you can!" The current fights against me but it's nothing compared to the full force of Silra's earlier hacking efforts—I'm just riding the edge now instead of battling everything directly like before. Halie clings to me, her crimson eyes wide with fear but trusting in my strength despite being a demon—at least she knows what I am and what I can do unlike those useless men who'd be helpless right now. As we surge through the water toward the shaft entrance, I feel something shift above us—the whole section's about to give way completely just like Silra calculated. "Move faster!" her voice echoes behind me even as she maintains her focus on keeping our escape route clear with code and hacking skill that rivals any mage when it comes to manipulating systems. The water around us churns more violently now, trying to pull us down into darkness below where the ancient subway trains still lie rusted and forgotten just like human hope sometimes feels in this corrupted world we live in. But I won't let us join those forgotten relics—not today anyway. With a final powerful kick off the tunnel wall, we crash through the maintenance shaft entrance just as everything behind us collapses with an ear-splitting roar of metal giving way to tons of water and pressure building beyond control. For a moment we're both trapped in darkness again—this time submerged halfway up our bodies inside whatever narrow passage Silra guided us into—but then I feel hands grabbing at me from above. "Pull them up!" The voice belongs to one of the other team members who must've climbed out earlier while everyone was focused on keeping Halie and me alive. Together we struggle against gravity and momentum until finally both of us are hauled clear of the rushing water pouring into this new space behind us. I collapse onto solid ground gasping for air alongside Halie—both of us soaked but alive thanks to teamwork and quick thinking under pressure. "Silra!" I call out, still catching my breath as adrenaline begins fading slightly now that immediate danger has passed. "Where are you? Did you make it?"

I surface through the maintenance shaft entrance gasping for air, my teal eyes blazing with both relief and irritation—we're alive but barely, and now we're trapped in an even narrower space than before. My fingers immediately return to the holographic keys as I assess system damage from our hasty escape: "Water pressure's holding here thanks to the shaft being collapsed behind us for now, but it won't last long against main systems trying to equalize." Jeane's soaked demon form stares back at me from above where she managed to pull herself and Halie out—good, they're safe enough for the moment. But we're still trapped underground with a failed mission objective and no clear exit route that doesn't involve more hacking or magical improvisation neither of us specializes in. The water's already seeped halfway up my legs before I even finished speaking, and I can feel the cold liquid threatening to short out some of my equipment if I don't move faster. "This was supposed to be a quick in-and-out hack job," I mutter while rerouting emergency oxygen systems to create a small breathable pocket around us. "Now we're playing survival instead of exposing corruption—classic scenario fuck-up." My teal eyes narrow as I work, calculating options and discarding them almost immediately: "We can't go back through the floodwaters, too risky even with Jeane's strength. The maintenance shaft leads up but it's too small for either of us to squeeze through properly without equipment—"

I cut myself off mid-sentence as my fingers stumble across something unexpected in the system logs: a maintenance override protocol I didn't notice earlier, buried under layers of security that must've been compromised when we rerouted everything during Halie's near-drowning. It's a emergency access tunnel designed for exactly this kind of situation—flooding in one section triggers automatic bypass routes to surface access points. But it requires manual activation from inside the system and will flood every other corridor simultaneously as compensation for maintaining this pocket space functional. "Found something," I announce, already typing furiously. "There's an emergency exit tunnel but using it floods everything else—every corridor, every chamber we've passed through to get here." My teal eyes meet Jeane's above me: "If we take this route, everyone upstairs who might still be searching for us or waiting for our report drowns. But it's our only option unless you want to try squeezing through that shaft like a contortionist while I keep hacking from down here." The numbers on my screen count down—system won't hold much longer before main pressure breaches this pocket space completely and we all drown regardless of decision. "Your call, demon girl," I say with barely contained impatience. "Sacrifice the search party or risk our own necks trying to maintain this status quo?"