The underground tunnels beneath Fontaine go by many names.
I’ve always called them what they are: damp tombs.

They’re cold, uneven, and filled with passages that creak like old bones beneath your boots. But on nights like this, they also become hunting grounds.

And we were the hunters.

“Are you sure this is the place?”
I asked, lowering my voice as we circled one of the corroded columns.

“As sure as one can be in a city full of rats,”
Navia replied without breaking stride, though her tone was tighter than usual.

She was nervous. I noticed it in the way she toyed with the handle of her umbrella as we walked, like a drummer tapping sticks before a concert.

We moved through shadows and echoes. The damp walls returned every step with a dull groan, and the smell of salt mixed with rust was nearly suffocating.

And then we saw them.

Four men. Two crates. Weapons, without a doubt. And one of them wearing the same stained trench coat that appeared in the photos she’d given me.

“Don’t do anything until—”
I began, but it was already too late. Navia lunged first.

A hail of shrapnel tore through the air. My pistol answered on instinct. I fired without hesitation, aiming at lights, at metal, at anything that would distract them long enough.

Navia shielded herself with her umbrella—Bless Fontaine’s technology, I thought. She used the chaos to snap one of the crates open with a flick of her wrist.

“Confirmed! Explosives—and the powerful kind!”
she shouted over the din. The men realized it. One of them fired a flare.

“They’re going to run!”
I yelled.

I sprinted forward. I managed to drop one with a clean shot to the leg. Another let go of the cargo when my blade came close to his throat. But the other two…
They escaped. Slipped into the shadows like trained rats.

When I turned, that’s when I saw her.

Navia, struggling with the fourth man. He shoved her hard, making her stumble.

Her foot slipped.

A massive gap—between two loose floor plates. One step more and she would’ve fallen.

My body moved before I could think.

I ran. I dove. I grabbed her arm at the last second, my boots scraping the edge as I skidded to a halt.

Navia hung half over the drop, gasping, her eyes wide with shock.

“Are you always… this dramatic?”
I said, tightening my grip as I hauled her up.

“Only on Wednesdays,”
she joked between breaths, helping me pull her back onto solid ground.

We stayed there for a second. Too close. Too quiet.

Then she exhaled. Slowly.

“They got away.”

She didn’t need to say more. I knew what it meant.
Word would spread. The network would know she was no longer an infiltrator—but a threat.

Any chance of going back in… gone.

“Well,”
she murmured, stepping back and brushing dust from her clothes.
“I guess I’m officially useless now.”

“Don’t say that. We confiscated the shipment. That’s not nothing.”

She didn’t answer. She just started walking, distracted, twirling her umbrella in one hand like a bored dancer killing time on stage.

One step. Then another.

“…You were right,”
she said without looking at me.
“This isn’t a game anymore. Not a heroic mission. It’s a dirty war.”

She spun the umbrella a little faster.

“And in war, the good guys don’t always win.”

Suddenly the umbrella slipped out of control, and I had to duck just in time to avoid taking it straight to the face.

“Could you not swing that like a dueling saber?”
I protested. Navia turned, confused—and then… laughed. Her laughter was brief, barely a breath.

“Sorry,”
she said between muffled giggles.
“That was an accident.”

“That’s what everyone who’s ever tried to hit me with an umbrella says,”
I replied. She just smiled, with that mix of arrogance and sweetness that unsettles me more than it should.

And for the first time since this mission began… I laughed too. Just a little. Just enough.

Because amid bullets, explosives, and near-fatal slips into the abyss, there was something I couldn’t deny:

Navia was starting to matter to me more than was professionally acceptable.

And that was more dangerous than any gap in the ground.