I reached the gate just as it was shuddering into place. Sarah reached out, her hand small and desperate, and hauled me through the gap into the alleyway.

  I collapsed against a brick wall, my lungs feeling like they were filled with hot glass.

  "Jax! You're bleeding," Sarah cried, kneeling beside me.

  "It's... fine," I wheezed. I looked at my arm. The duct tape was shredded, but the skin was intact. "Just... give me a second."

  Miller was standing by the mouth of the alley, staring out at the street. His face was a mask of pure, unadulterated horror.

  "Jax," he whispered. "You need to see this."

  I forced myself up. I leaned on Sarah, my legs feeling like jelly. We walked to the edge of the alley.

  The city was gone.

  The skyscrapers were still there, but they were being overgrown in real-time by thick, pulsating black vines that looked like veins. The streets were filled with a thick, purple fog. And everywhere, the sound of the Culling was reaching a crescendo.

  But it wasn't the city that caught my eye.

  Across the street, in the mouth of a darkened parking garage entrance, a Stray was standing.

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  It was larger than the ones in the garage. It stood almost seven feet tall, its limbs unnaturally long, its skin a dark, bruised plum color. It wasn't crouching. It was standing upright, watching us.

  "Don't move," I whispered to Sarah and Miller.

  The Stray sniffed the air. Its head tilted at an angle that should have snapped its neck. It began to walk toward us, its movements smooth, calculated—not the twitchy, animalistic gait of a fresh convert.

  This was an Alpha. A Territorial Lord. It shouldn't have existed this early in the Integration.

  It reached the middle of the street and stopped. It looked at Miller. Then it looked at Sarah.

  Finally, its milky, dead eyes landed on me.

  I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind. The "Veteran's Calm" shattered. My soul recognized the way that thing held its shoulders. I recognized the way it tilted its head to the right, just a fraction of an inch, when it was curious.

  The Stray stepped into a patch of neon-green light.

  Around its neck, dangling from a cord of twisted grey skin, was a silver locket. A locket I had seen a thousand times.

  "No," I breathed.

  The Stray let out a low, vibrating hum. It wasn't a hiss. It was a sound I remembered from a dozen Sunday dinners. It was a tuneless, repetitive hum that my brother used to make when he was thinking about a problem.

  The Stray raised a hand—a clawed, blackened hand—and touched the locket.

  Then, it did something no monster should do.

  It blinked. Its pupils flickered, for a micro-second, from milky white to a deep, familiar hazel.

  It looked at me, and I saw a flash of agony so profound it made my own death in the cellar feel like a papercut. The thing that was my brother turned away. It didn't lunge. It didn't hunt.

  It melted back into the shadows of the opposite garage, moving with a grace that was entirely too human.

  "Jax?" Sarah asked, her voice trembling. "What was that? Why didn't it attack?"

  I couldn't answer her. My hands were shaking so hard I had to shove them into my pockets.

  I had burned my soul to come back. I had sacrificed everything to change the ending. But as I watched the shadows where my brother had disappeared, I realized the System hadn't just brought me back.

  It had been waiting for me.

  "We have to move," I said, my voice sounding like it was coming from a dead man. "The city isn't safe."

  [NEW QUEST ASSIGNED: 'BLOOD OF MY BLOOD']

  [OBJECTIVE: FIND THE ALPHA.]

  [REWARD: THE TRUTH.]

  I looked at the locket in my mind's eye. My brother had died three years before the Integration started. He was buried in a cemetery six miles away.

  The System hadn't just integrated the living. It had dug up the dead.

  "Let's go," I said, grabbing the crowbar. "Before it comes back."