They ran until they couldn't run anymore.

  The chanting had followed them through Floor 7, always just behind, always just out of sight, driving them deeper into the Deep Tunnels with the relentless pressure of predators herding prey. Elias had used every trick he knew—doubling back, taking unexpected turns, moving through passages too narrow for large groups—and somehow they'd lost them. Or the Siphoners had let them go, confident they'd catch up eventually.

  Either way, Floor 8 offered no comfort.

  The transition membrane spat them out into a passage that was wider than the Deep Tunnels but just as dark, the walls slick with something that glistened in Elias's Blood-Sight like oil on water. The air tasted different here—metallic, with an undertone of something organic and wrong. Whatever creatures called this floor home, they weren't the ambush predators of the levels below.

  They were something worse.

  "How much further to the next rest station?" Mira's voice was hoarse from exhaustion, her wounds reopening from the strain of their flight.

  "Old Tom said Floor 10." Elias consulted his mental map, such as it was. "Two more floors. Maybe a day's travel if we don't run into trouble."

  "And if we do?"

  He didn't answer. They both knew the odds.

  They moved forward in silence, Elias leading with Blood-Sight active, scanning for threats. The passage branched ahead—three options, each as uninviting as the others. He chose the middle path based on nothing more than instinct, hoping that whatever waited on Floor 8 would be something they could handle.

  The blockade appeared without warning.

  One moment the tunnel was empty; the next, three figures stepped from the shadows ahead, their movements synchronized with military precision. They wore red cloaks—actual fabric, not Tower-grown material—over armor cobbled together from bone and hide. Each carried weapons: two with curved blades, one with a spear longer than Elias's.

  Capillaries. The Siphoners' foot soldiers.

  Through Blood-Sight, they blazed like torches—healthy, well-fed, their circulatory systems pumping with the steady rhythm of people who ate regularly and slept safely. Whatever hardships the Tower imposed on other Climbers, these three had found ways to avoid them.

  At the expense of others.

  "Hold." The lead Capillary raised his hand, and his companions stopped moving. He was older than the other two—maybe forty, with a shaved head and scars that spoke of violence survived. "You're in Vineyard territory now, Climbers. Passage has a cost."

  Elias stopped, keeping his spear low but ready. Beside him, Mira's hand drifted toward her knife.

  "We don't want trouble," Elias said. "We're just passing through."

  "Everyone's just passing through." The Capillary's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Doesn't change the toll. Two liters each. Pay it, and you walk out of here alive. Refuse, and..." He shrugged, the gesture eloquent in its indifference. "Well. We'll take what we need anyway."

  Two liters each. Six liters total—more than Elias had in his reserves. And even if he could pay, there was no guarantee these men would honor the deal. Siphoners weren't merchants; they were predators who'd learned that extortion was more sustainable than outright murder.

  Sometimes.

  "That's everything we have." It was true, more or less. "If we give you that much, we won't survive the next floor."

  "Not my problem." The Capillary's smile widened. "Should've thought about that before you entered our territory."

  "Your territory?" Mira's voice cut in, sharp with contempt. "The Tower belongs to Climbers. All Climbers. You can't just claim floors and demand tribute."

  "Watch us." The Capillary's companions shifted, their grips tightening on their weapons. "The Vineyard controls Floors 8 through 14. Has for two years now. Anyone who doesn't like it is welcome to challenge our right—but I wouldn't recommend it. The last group that tried is still hanging in our collection hall. Alive, mostly."

  Elias felt the calculation running in his head—the cold, tactical assessment that had kept him alive through two wars and a medical career built on impossible choices. Three opponents, all armed, all experienced. Narrow tunnel, limited maneuvering room. Mira was injured; Lira was useless in combat. The odds weren't good.

  But the alternative was worse.

  "Let me make a counter-offer," he said, keeping his voice calm. "We give you one liter. Total. You let us pass. We don't come back this way, and you never see us again."

  The Capillary laughed. It wasn't a kind sound.

  "One liter? That's not even worth the effort of collecting." He shook his head in mock disappointment. "I was hoping you'd be reasonable. The Vineyard prefers willing donors—less struggle, cleaner harvest. But if you want to do this the hard way..."

  He raised his blade.

  "Then we do it the hard way."

  "Wait." Elias held up his free hand, the gesture of a man seeking peace. "Just—wait. There has to be another option. Something else we can trade. Information, maybe, or—"

  "Information?" The Capillary's eyebrows rose with false interest. "What could you possibly know that's worth six liters?"

  "The Siphoner group on Floor 7. We heard them chanting. They're moving toward—"

  "Toward us. Yes, we know. That's our collection team, bringing in fresh stock." The Capillary's smile turned cruel. "You thought you were running away from danger? You were running straight toward it. The only question now is whether we process you here or take you back to the hall for long-term harvest."

  The words hit Elias like a physical blow. They hadn't escaped anything. They'd been herded, funneled, driven exactly where the Siphoners wanted them. The chanting, the pursuit, the convenient escape routes—all of it had been calculated to deliver them here, to this blockade, to this moment.

  There was no negotiating out of this.

  "Mira," he said quietly, not looking at her. "When I move, go for the one on the right. Lira—stay behind us. No matter what happens."

  "Daddy?" Lira's voice was small, frightened.

  "It'll be okay, sweetheart. Just stay back."

  The lead Capillary was still talking, saying something about surrender and cooperation, but Elias had stopped listening. He was watching through Blood-Sight, tracking the pulse of blood through the man's carotid artery, waiting for the moment between heartbeats when his blood pressure would be lowest.

  The moment came.

  Elias moved.

  He didn't telegraph the attack—didn't shift his weight, didn't tense his muscles, didn't do any of the things that would warn a trained opponent. He simply exploded into motion, his spear driving forward with all the force his body could generate.

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  The lead Capillary was fast. He got his blade up in time to deflect the thrust, the weapons meeting with a clash that rang through the tunnel. But Elias wasn't aiming for center mass—he was aiming for the arm.

  The scalpel blade caught the Capillary's wrist, opening a gash that severed the radial artery with surgical precision. Blood sprayed in an arc, painting the tunnel wall, and the man's blade clattered to the floor as his hand lost its grip.

  "Fuck!" The Capillary stumbled back, clamping his good hand over the wound. "Kill them! Kill them both!"

  The other two Capillaries surged forward.

  Elias had studied violence his entire adult life—first as a soldier, then as a surgeon who saw its aftermath. He knew the anatomy of the human body better than most people knew their own homes. He knew where the blood vessels ran, where the nerves clustered, where a blade could slip between bones to reach the vital organs beneath.

  Blood-Sight made that knowledge into something terrible.

  The first Capillary came at him with an overhead slash, the curved blade designed to split his skull. Elias sidestepped, letting the weapon pass inches from his face, and drove his elbow into the man's throat. Cartilage cracked. The Capillary choked, his swing going wide, and Elias's knife found the femoral artery before he could recover.

  Blood gushed—arterial blood, bright red and pulsing with the rhythm of a heart that didn't know it was already dead. The Capillary dropped, his leg collapsing beneath him, his hands clawing uselessly at the wound.

  The third Capillary hesitated.

  It was only a fraction of a second—a moment of doubt, of fear, of the dawning realization that he was facing something other than a desperate Climber—but it was enough. Elias closed the distance before the man could reset his stance, driving him backward with a series of strikes that weren't meant to kill.

  They were meant to hurt.

  The spear opened a gash across the Capillary's chest. The knife found his shoulder, severing the deltoid muscle. A kick to the knee buckled his leg, sending him crashing to the floor.

  "Please—" The Capillary raised his hands, his weapons abandoned, blood streaming from a dozen wounds. "Please, I was just following orders. I didn't want to—"

  Elias's blade opened his throat.

  The words died in a gurgle of blood and air, and the man slumped backward, his eyes glazing over, his circulatory system shutting down one vessel at a time in Elias's enhanced vision.

  Silence.

  Elias stood in the center of the tunnel, breathing hard, his hands slick with blood up to the elbows. Around him, three bodies cooled on the floor—three men who had been alive thirty seconds ago, who had threatened him, who had given him no choice.

  Who he had killed.

  The lead Capillary was still alive, barely, his hand pressed to his wrist in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding. He stared at Elias with eyes that were already growing dim, his lips moving in words that had no voice behind them.

  Elias watched him die.

  It took longer than the others—maybe thirty seconds, maybe a minute. The human body could hold a lot of blood, and the radial artery, while serious, wasn't immediately fatal if pressure was maintained. But the Capillary was in shock, his muscles unresponsive, his training overridden by the animal panic of a predator who had become prey.

  When it was over, Elias was alone with three corpses.

  No. Not alone.

  Mira stood against the wall where she'd retreated during the fight, her knife clean and unused. She hadn't needed to intervene. The Capillary on the right had died before she could reach him, brought down by a spray of arterial blood from his companion's wounds.

  She was staring at Elias with an expression he couldn't read.

  "That was..." She stopped, searching for words. "I've never seen anyone fight like that. You weren't even trying to survive. You were dissecting them."

  "I was doing what had to be done."

  "No. You were efficient. Surgical." Her voice dropped. "You've killed before. Humans, I mean. Not just monsters."

  He didn't answer. The truth was more complicated than a simple yes or no, and he didn't have the words to explain it—not to her, not to himself.

  "Daddy?"

  Lira's voice came from behind him, small and trembling. He turned to find her hovering near the entrance they'd come through, her translucent form flickering with distress, her too-blue eyes fixed on the bodies at his feet.

  "Daddy, you're bleeding."

  He looked down at himself. She was right—there was blood everywhere, soaking his clothes, dripping from his hands, painting his skin in patterns that looked almost ritualistic. Some of it was his; he could feel the sting of wounds he hadn't noticed during the fight. Most of it wasn't.

  "I'm okay, sweetheart."

  "But they're not." She drifted closer, her gaze moving from corpse to corpse with the horrible fascination of a child encountering death for the first time. "They're dead, aren't they?"

  "Yes."

  "You killed them."

  "Yes."

  She was quiet for a long moment. Then, in a voice that was almost too soft to hear:

  "Was he a bad man, Daddy? The one who talked?"

  Elias looked at the lead Capillary—at the scarred face, the red cloak, the hand still pressed against a wound that had stopped mattering. He thought about everything the man had said, everything he'd threatened, everything he would have done if Elias hadn't struck first.

  "Yes, sweetheart." The lie came easier than he expected. "He was a bad man."

  He doesn't know if that's true.

  The thought surfaced unbidden, unwelcome, impossible to dismiss. The Capillary had been following orders. Had been doing a job, terrible as it was. Had maybe been a father himself, or a brother, or someone's son. The Tower turned people into monsters, but not everyone who wore a monster's face had started that way.

  Maybe the Capillary had been desperate once. Maybe he'd joined the Vineyard to survive, the way other Climbers joined together for mutual protection. Maybe he'd told himself that taking blood from strangers was different from taking it from friends, that the people he hurt didn't matter because they weren't really people.

  Maybe he'd been just like Elias.

  A father. Doing whatever it took to protect someone he loved.

  "Daddy?" Lira's voice pulled him back. "Are you okay?"

  "I'm fine." Another lie. He was getting good at those. "We need to keep moving. There might be more of them coming."

  "What about..." She gestured at the bodies, the question she was asking clear without being spoken.

  "We take what we need." He said it before he could talk himself out of it, before the part of him that still remembered being human could object. "They have blood. We need blood. That's how the Tower works."

  "But they're—"

  "They're dead, Lira. They don't need it anymore."

  The words echoed in the tunnel, harsh and final. He'd said something similar once before, standing over Marcus's body on Floor 2. Then, he'd been harvesting the victim of someone else's violence. Now, he was harvesting his own kills.

  The line was thinner than he'd thought.

  He knelt beside the lead Capillary, pulling out his knife, trying not to look at the man's face. The harvest was mechanical—the same motions he'd performed on Dermlings and Bile Lurkers and every other creature the Tower had thrown at him. Find the arteries. Make the incisions. Let gravity do the work.

  Human blood flowed just like any other blood. Warmer, maybe. Redder. But the same in the ways that mattered.

  HARVESTING INITIATED

  SOURCES: HUMAN (DECEASED) x3

  QUALITY: HIGH

  YIELD: 3.8 L (COMBINED)

  The number appeared in his vision, cold and absolute. Combined with his existing reserves, he now had more blood than he'd ever possessed—enough for transfusions, enough for circuits, enough for whatever the Tower demanded next.

  All it had cost was everything he'd thought he was.

  Harvested Blood: 6.2 L

  Vitality: 71/100

  Soul Integrity: 97.1%

  He stood, wiping his blade on one of the red cloaks. The blood on his hands was already drying, turning tacky and dark. He should clean it off. He should find water, or something like water, and wash away the evidence of what he'd done.

  He didn't.

  "We need to move," he said. His voice sounded strange—flat, distant, like it belonged to someone else. "The collection team will find these bodies eventually. We need to be far away when that happens."

  Mira pushed off the wall, her expression still unreadable. She hadn't said anything since her initial observation—hadn't helped, hadn't hindered, hadn't commented on his transformation from surgeon to executioner. Maybe she was processing. Maybe she was scared.

  Maybe she'd already made peace with what survival in the Tower required.

  "Lead the way," she said.

  Elias looked at Lira, at his ghost-daughter hovering in the bloody tunnel, at the fear and confusion and something else—something like understanding—in her too-blue eyes. She'd asked if they were bad men, and he'd told her yes. She'd accepted that answer because she trusted him, because she believed in him, because she didn't know any better.

  He wondered how long that would last.

  "Stay close," he said. "Both of you."

  They stepped over the bodies and continued into the tunnel, leaving the dead behind. Elias's hands were shaking—a fine tremor he couldn't control, his body's delayed response to the violence he'd just committed. He shoved them into his pockets, hiding the evidence, refusing to acknowledge what it meant.

  He was a killer now. Not just in self-defense, not just against monsters, but in the cold, calculated way that separated predators from prey. He'd seen the threat, assessed the options, and chosen to strike first with overwhelming force.

  And he would do it again, if that's what it took to keep Lira stable.

  The Tower had rules. Elias was learning them.

  Behind them, the blood pooled and cooled, seeping into the organic floor, feeding the living structure that surrounded them. The Tower didn't waste anything. The Tower accepted all offerings.

  Even the ones that cost you your soul.

  They walked in silence, the surgeon and the survivor and the ghost, moving deeper into enemy territory. The Siphoners would find the bodies. The Siphoners would come for revenge. And when they did, Elias would face them the same way he'd faced the Capillaries.

  Without mercy.

  Without hesitation.

  Without the luxury of being human.

  His hands were still shaking.

  He kept moving.