Lachlan leaned against the edge of the long table like it was a bar and not the spine of a barricaded foyer.

He plucked an apple from the bowl, polished it against his shirt, and sank his teeth in with theatrical crunch.

Juice dripped down his thumb. He licked it clean, grinning at no one in particular.

"I’m too old to be scared of the dark," he said around the mouthful.

The bravado hung in the warm lantern-lit air. A couple of Rafael’s men glanced over but didn’t bite. They kept working, bolting shutters and setting lanterns into place.

Rafael didn’t answer either. He tipped his head slightly, listening to something only he seemed to hear, and sighed through his nose. The sound was soft, final.

"Tornado Tuesday," he said. His voice was flat, no theatrics. "Everyone, get into the tunnels."

That broke the stillness.

Men moved instantly, their habits shifting them into motion without hesitation. Boots on wood. Keys clinking. Hands gathering bundles already prepared.

They knew this drill the way lungs knew how to breathe.

Rafael’s hand came up as Sera started forward. Not to stop her—just to gesture. "You first."

She arched one brow, but her lips tilted faintly at the corner. It wasn’t deference; it was practicality. If the tunnels were the way through this, she would map them first.

She went.

The door he directed her toward opened onto stone steps, steep and narrow. The air was cooler immediately, damp with the kind of feeling that let you know you were underground.

She went down the steps, her bare feet numb to the moisture on the floor or the beads of moisture on the walls.

By the time she reached the bottom, her eyes had adjusted to another kind of world.

The tunnels stretched wide, carved like veins beneath the house. Reinforced concrete arched overhead, ribbed with steel.

Lanterns burned along the walls at regular intervals, their flames steady in the close air. The smell was earth, wax, faint oil, and something metallic that lingered like old blood.

It wasn’t empty down here.

Storage racks lined one corridor, stacked with crates, folded canvas, and sealed tins. Wooden benches ran along the walls, ready for bodies to wait out however long the dark decided to last.

Hooks held bundles of rope and canvas bags. Someone had dragged down rugs, mismatched but enough to soften cold floors.

It looked like a bomb shelter someone had decided wasn’t temporary. It wasn’t just for for survival... but for living.

The KAS team followed behind her, their boots scuffing on the steps. Lachlan was still chewing his apple, Elias carried himself with contained purpose, Alexei’s whistle drifted off stone, and Zubair’s silence weighed heavier than the rest of them combined.

Rafael came last, his men peeling off to check doors and set lanterns while he swept the space with his eyes. He didn’t repeat himself. He didn’t have to.

The ground trembled.

Not yet a strike—more like the warning pulse of a drumbeat under their feet. The kind of pressure that made eardrums strain before sound followed.

The lantern flames guttered.

Then it hit.

The sound was immediate, enormous—like a freight train bearing down through the walls themselves.

The air surged, the pressure squeezing every chest in the tunnel. Concrete groaned. The steel ribs of the ceiling thrummed as if struck with invisible hammers.

Dust sifted down in slow curtains, turning lantern light hazy.

The storm screamed overhead. A dozen voices of wind folded into one.

Elias braced a hand against the wall. His head tilted, listening not like a man in awe but like one cataloging data, trying to measure the sound against anything he’d known before.

His voice cut into the roar, pitched low. "What is that?"

One of Rafael’s men, older, face half-lit by lantern glow, shrugged like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. "Tornado." His voice was blunt, stripped of drama. "Better the tornadoes than the rest."

Lachlan stopped mid-chew. "The rest?"

The man didn’t pause in his work, tightening the straps on a crate. "Sometimes it’s beasts. Mutated things that rip through whatever they find. Sometimes acid rain. Peels skin like paint. Sometimes floods that roll in black and deep, take whole houses under. We’ve had hail the size of fists. Earthquakes that split roads. Nights of nothing but swarms—bees, locusts, frogs. And the spiders." His mouth tightened. "I hate the spiders."

The words fell like stones into the roaring. Each one left its own weight.

Alexei gave a low chuckle, too sharp to be humor. "And here I thought Northerners had it bad with snow."

The man didn’t smile. He just set the last strap and moved on.

The tunnel shook again. This time heavier. The lantern flames guttered and one went out entirely, leaving a slice of darkness sharp enough to make men shift their shoulders closer to each other.

Sera stood steady in it all. She didn’t flinch. Her eyes shone with that sharp, bright interest that unnerved even her own team sometimes.

She tilted her head slightly, like the roar was a song she was learning the rhythm to.

None of them—not Lachlan, not Elias, not Zubair or Alexei—had ever been in a tornado before. It was easy to tell by the set of their jaws, the way their hands hovered close to weapons even when weapons meant nothing against air turned into claws.

They were soldiers, killers, survivors—but this was new ground.

For Sera, new ground meant more things to learn, more things to experience.

The storm didn’t end.

It shifted.

The roar tilted, higher, sharper, as if the wind itself had split. The concrete vibrated harder under their feet, rattling the lantern hooks against the walls.

Somewhere above, the house gave a single long groan like a tree trunk ready to split.

The cartel man’s voice came again, calm against the chaos. "Don’t worry. They roll through in chains. One, then another, then another. You’ll think it’s done, and the next one will come. Some nights we get three. Some nights twelve. Once, thirty-six. Didn’t see the sun for two days."

The apple crunched again. Lachlan took another bite like daring the storm to answer him. His grin was wide, his eyes not.

Sera just kept watching the ceiling, bright-eyed, listening.

The second tornado hit.

The world shook, but the tunnels held.