Reason to Believe

Among the quiet thrumming of generators and the low murmur of tunnel life, one man moved like a shadow—lean, silent, and focused. His name was Jace Marlowe, though most only knew him as Stray. The name had stuck after he’d stumbled into the tunnels years ago, half-dead from a gunshot wound, dragging two unconscious children on a makeshift sled behind him. He never spoke of what happened above, only that he had survived it.

Jace had the look of someone molded by fire—scarred hands, quick eyes, and a presence that made others instinctively move aside. He wore salvaged body armor over tattered clothing, a sidearm on his thigh, and a long, curved knife always within reach. But beneath the hardened exterior was a man carrying the full weight of what had been lost, and what still might be.

He wasn’t a leader—not yet. He didn’t want the title, but people watched him. They listened. When a patrol went out, they wanted him on it. When something broke beyond repair, he was the one who found a way to fix it or repurpose the wreckage. When someone panicked or turned violent in the dark claustrophobia of the tunnels, it was Jace who calmed them—or restrained them.

Jace had seen too much of the surface. He knew what still lurked above: not just the remnants of war, but something worse—roaming scavenger lords who’d carved up the ruins like feudal warlords, and the husks of old-world machines, left behind by private militaries, still wandering in their corrupted patrol loops. Jace had tangled with all of them, and lived. That made him dangerous. That made him valuable.

In private, he kept maps—worn, torn, and marked with coded symbols only he understood. Routes, enemy zones, untouched caches, access points to the old world. He’d been preparing, quietly, methodically, for the moment when the order would come. The moment to rise.

He had his eye on a key objective: Gridpoint Theta, a derelict military communications hub buried beneath the city’s financial district. If reactivated, it could give the underground survivors access to a functional satellite relay, perhaps even connect them to other enclaves—if any still existed. It was suicide to go there alone, but Jace wasn’t planning to die. Not yet.

He had already begun assembling a small team. Not soldiers, but people like him—useful ghosts. A former surveillance tech who could still hack into pre-war systems. A silent woman named Renna, who never missed a shot and had once worked security for a private defense firm. And a wiry teenage mechanic called Brin who could get anything running, given enough wire and tape.

Jace didn’t talk about leadership. He didn’t talk about glory. He talked about purpose. He spoke just enough to give people a reason to believe that maybe—just maybe—the world could be taken back. Not as it was, but as it should’ve been.

He spent his nights staring up at the stone ceilings, imagining stars.

He wasn’t born to lead, but the tunnels were watching him. Waiting. And in time, when the call came to rise, it would be Jace Marlowe who stepped forward first—not because he wanted to, but because he had to.

Because someone had to lead the way through the fire.