by Kyla Stone
Not Amelia. He couldn’t let them hurt Amelia.
Gabriel spun and leaned out over the railing, heedless of his own safety.
“Gabriel!” Micah hissed.
Gabriel ignored him. He shot two more guards. A third one saw him and opened fire with his pulse gun. The ball of blue flame tore a massive chunk out of the marble pillar inches to his right. The pillar cracked and groaned.
He fired back, but his rifle only clicked. He was out of ammo.
“Get down!” Silas shouted. Gabriel hit the deck, his hands over his head as a second burst smashed into the wall behind him, blasting a several-foot crater clear into the suite.
Swirling white dust choked his throat. His heart pounded so loud in his ears, he could barely hear. There was another controlled blast of gunfire.
“Silas got him,” Willow said into his comm. “We’re going while we have the chance. Get down here!”
“Don’t wait for us!” he said.
Micah dropped his gun, his hands shaking. His face was pale, his wavy hair damp against his forehead, his upper lip beaded with sweat. His glasses slid-halfway down his nose. “I’m out, too.”
For a long moment, neither of them moved. They simply stared at each other, breathing heavily, grateful to be alive. Finally, Gabriel risked a peek over the railing. The elevator doors were closed. Everyone, including Silas and Willow, had made it inside. “You did good. We all did.”
The lobby was strewn with bodies, spent bullets, broken glass, and chunks of marble, granite, and crumbled drywall. Several drones buzzed angrily outside the stuck revolving doors which were jammed with fallen guards. Their gun turrets swiveled menacingly, but the drones didn’t attempt entry.
A bit of luck, but he would take it. They’d all be dead otherwise.
“We’ve got to get out of here before they send reinforcements,” Gabriel whispered urgently.
Micah nodded and jammed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his thumb. “Right behind you.”
A sound came from below them. Gabriel froze.
“Help me!” someone cried.
Gabriel put his finger to his lips and risked another look over the railing. Horne knelt almost directly below them in the ruined lobby. He faced their direction, but he wasn’t looking at them.
He was slumped on his knees, his hands uplifted beseechingly as he stared at the man in front of him, aghast. The man stood with his back to Gabriel and Micah. He wore a ripped black trench coat. Sykes.
Horne must have remained behind the fountain, too shell-shocked to flee, the others forced to leave him behind. Now, he blubbered and hiccuped, begging for mercy, snot bubbling from his flared nostrils, tears wetting his face. He didn’t even notice the two Pyros striding up behind him. He was caught like a fish on a hook.
“Here piggy, piggy,” Sykes said with a cruel, melodious laugh. He held a long, electrified blade with a serrated curve at the end in his left, unhurt hand. “Look what you’ve done to our home. I knew we should have just lined you up and shot you. But now we can improvise, can’t we? I’ve been waiting to gut you since the day I first laid eyes on you, you filthy elitist scum.”
Sykes was going to kill Horne. And it was going to be excruciatingly painful.
Beside him, Micah stiffened. Gabriel could almost see the thoughts churning in his brother’s brain. His brother, the compassionate, merciful one.
“Micah—” Gabriel whispered. “We’ve already lost people. Nadira. Jericho. We should be smart. We need to think of the rest of the group—”
Micah turned to him, his eyes blazing. “I know. But it’s who I am. It’s who we are. It has to be. You go. Save yourself. Don’t try to talk me out of it—”
“Micah.”
“What?” he hissed.
“I’m coming with you.”
Micah narrowed his eyes. “What?”
He grimaced, resigned to his fate. “Tyler Horne is trash. He isn’t worth saving and never will be. But you’re stubborn as an ass. I know you, and I know you’re going, with or without me. Besides, I have to kill Sykes. He’ll hunt us into the sewers if I don’t.”
He took a breath, cramming everything he wanted to say into a few desperate sentences in a few desperate seconds. All the things he could never say but felt in the very marrow of his bones burned through him. You’re my brother, my foundation and my compass. I love you and I would die without you. “I can never be like you, no matter how much I might want to be. But I won’t let you sacrifice your life for him. We do this together.”
Micah stared at him, a dozen emotions passing across his face—shock, relief, gratefulness, respect. He grabbed Gabriel’s hand. “Say the words.”
Gabriel smiled grimly. “Just us.”
Micah said, “Always.”
29
Willow
The sewers were as dark and dank and awful as Willow had imagined. The concrete tunnel walls were rough and looked a thousand years old.
Finn clutched his shoulder and took in his surroundings. What little blood remained drained from his face. “This must be where fun goes to die.”
She flicked on the small flashlight attached to the top of the flamethrower. Silas flipped on the light on his rifle scope. Cleo had finagled night vision goggles for both herself and Li Jun but no one else. Willow gritted her teeth. It figured.
“We should wait for Gabriel and Micah,” Amelia said, her voice trembling in the dark. Their comms didn’t work down here. They’d lost contact ten minutes ago.
“No way, sweetheart.” Cleo said sweetheart like it was something foul. “They’re covering us so we can get away. That’s what we intend to do. Now move your skinny ass.”
They made their way carefully along the tunnel, sloshing through six inches of oily, stagnant water. Amelia helped Celeste now, so that Willow’s hands were free to use the flamethrower if—when—they came across more killer rats.
Willow shuddered. She kept seeing shadowy shapes in the water, imagining furred, bulging bodies slithering toward her. She half-expected to step on something squishy and disgusting.
The air was stale and stank of rotten eggs. Every sound was amplified, every splashing footstep, every panicked breath. Water drip, drip, dripped from the walls and ceiling.
“How long are we trapped in this hellhole?” Silas asked, grimacing.
“Approximately two miles,” Li Jun said from the rear. “We’ll come out behind Atlantic Station mall. From there, it’s less than six hundred meters to the AirRail station. We’ll take that to our rendezvous point, where our people will be waiting for us.”
“Easy peasy,” Benjie said, his words belying his terrified expression. He was pale and shivery, his eyes enormous in the dim light.
Willow squeezed his hand. “You got it.”
“We’re knights on a quest to rescue a princess, Sir Benjie,” Finn whispered. “If we’re clever and brave, we’ll defeat the nasty dragon lord and win the hand of the lady.”
“Who’s the princess?” Benjie whispered back.
Finn wrinkled his brow and flashed Willow a crooked grin, only half-wincing. “Can you imagine your sister as a helpless princess all trussed up in pink ribbons and tassels?”
Benjie giggled.
Willow appreciated Finn’s efforts. He was distracting Benjie, making them heroes in a fantastical story to inspire Benjie’s bravery. She hefted her flamethrower, forcing lightness into her voice for her brother’s sake. “Some princesses prefer guns. And kicking ass and taking names.”
“Ribbons and tassels are cool, too,” Celeste said from behind them.
Benjie grinned, some of the tension draining from his small face. “Whatever floats your boat, right, Mister Finn?”
“Exactly, Sir Benjie,” Finn said.
They kept walking. Every ping, splash, and thud sent adrenaline jolting through her body. The hairs on her neck and arms stood on end like they were electrified.
A sound came from behind them. A faint, soft scraping.
She twisted, peering into the darkness, expecting hostile enemies or rats or some monstrous form rearing up out of hell to devour them. But there was nothing.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She wiped her damp palms on her pants. With every passing minute, her trepidation mounted. The Pyros were hunting them, filthy mutant rodents were stalking them. And here they were blundering uselessly in this dark warren of tunnels, forced to trust a sociopath with their lives.
The tunnel walls closed in on her. She felt every pound of the tons of concrete and rock and earth bearing down on her head.
“Are you okay?” Finn asked quietly.
Her chest tightened. It was hard to breathe. “I don’t like closed-in spaces,” she muttered. “Especially not underground.”
“So, you despise heights, but the depths aren’t working for you either?”
She took several ragged breaths. The darkness was oppressive and smothering. “Finn Ellington-Fletcher, are you making fun of me right now?”
“If I said yes, would you hate me?”
“A little.”
“A little I can live with.”
She craned her neck to search behind them, scanning her light along the scarred walls. No furred bodies. No gleaming eyes. “Are you trying to drive me insane?”
He shrugged, then winced, drawing in a sharp breath. “Everyone needs a hobby.”
She turned the light on him. He was walking normally, his pallor still an unhealthy shade, though the bleeding seemed to have slowed. “I should be the one asking if you’re okay.”
“I feel about as useless as tits on a boar,” he said wryly.
“That’s an apt description if I ever heard one.”
“You know I always try my best.”
She tried to smile, but it came out like a grimace. She pushed down the anxiety roiling in her gut. Finn would be okay. His arm would be fine. They were all going to get out of this hellhole. She would make sure of it.
Benjie stumbled. Willow gripped his hand. “Be strong, kiddo. Just a little further.”
He shivered. “I’m scared. I want Mom.”
“I’m going to get you out of here,” Willow said, ignoring the pang in her belly. She shot Finn a sidelong look. “This princess can save herself and you, too. I promise.”
Cleo pointed to a solid wall. “The subway tunnel is this way.”
“I don’t see any doors,” Celeste said.
“Did you get us lost?” Silas sneered. “Why am I not surprised?”
Cleo only laughed. She pulled something small, round, and metallic from her pocket and pushed it against the wall. “I’d step back if I were you.”
There was a low rumbling sound. The ground shivered beneath Willow’s feet. The wall itself vibrated, quaking with tiny tremors. A three-foot radius of concrete broke apart, crumbling into a thousand small, jagged chunks. A hole in the wall appeared, surrounded by rubble and swirling white dust.
“How’d you do that?” Silas asked, trying to hide his surprise. “It barely made a sound.”
“Techy stuff from the Sanctuary. They’ve given all kinds of wicked gear to the Pyros.” She ushered them through the hole in the sewer wall into a larger tunnel.
Amelia and Celeste hobbled through the narrow, jagged opening, then Finn and Benjie, followed by Silas and Li Jun. Willow entered last, sweeping her light behind her, checking for movement.
Their lights bobbed over the walls, revealing old rusting tracks and pipes of all sizes running along the low concrete ceiling.
“This section of MARTA was abandoned, what, ten years ago?” Li Jun said. “Too expensive to maintain and everyone used the AirRail anyway.”
The concrete floor was damp but not wet. Their soaking boots squelched with every step. The darkness rippled all around them, thick and heavy.
They came to a fork in the tunnel. Cleo chose a path and slapped a blinking tagger on the wall for Gabriel and Micah to follow. Hopefully it would be just Micah and Gabriel chasing after them, not a horde of vengeful Pyros.
Deep shadows flickered outside their diminishing circles of light, the cold, impenetrable blackness beyond hiding any number of monsters, real and imaginary. A looming sense of doom filled the dank air around Willow, like sharp-fanged, leather-winged creatures hovering just out of sight.
It felt like a tomb.
Another sound came from behind her. A whispery skittering. A scuffling, shuffling noise.
She spun, flamethrower up, searching wildly. There was nothing. Only rounded concrete walls, more pipes, grates, tunnels, and darkness. Always the darkness, crouched like a living thing just outside the light.
She kept walking, her feet thudding against concrete, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. They were being watched. She could feel it.
After several minutes, they came to a series of three circular openings, three tunnels branching in opposite directions. Cleo hesitated.
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Finn asked. “Because it feels like we’re wandering around like lost farts in a perfume factory.”
Cleo shot him a murderous look. She took the center tunnel, first slapping another tagger against the wall. They walked on in silence, the tension mounting like the turning of a screw.
The longer they spent in here, the heavier the tons of concrete pressed against her chest. And the more time the miniature monsters had to find them. She tasted acid in the back of her throat. Her breaths came shallow and ragged.
Zia wouldn’t have been shaking and terrified like Willow. She’d loved heights and thrills and faced whatever life threw at her with joyful exuberance. She pushed the thoughts out of her mind. Zia couldn’t help her now.
A quarter of an hour later, they passed another tunnel on the left, the opening a gaping black maw. Deep inside it, dark shadows seemed to shift and solidify.
She strained to hear over their echoing steps, the slow drip of water, and the blood pounding in her ears. Her heart leapt into her throat. “Do you hear that?”
“What?” Benjie asked, his voice quavering.
Willow raised her finger for silence.
The sound came again. This time it was unmistakable. The scratching of tiny claws.
She aimed her light into the tunnel, her hands shaking.
Eye-shine. Hundreds of pairs of beady, flashing eyes. A thousand furry, squirming bodies. A horde of rats flooded the tunnel like a raging river.
They were coming.
Benjie screamed. Willow screamed with him.
One rat scrabbled ahead of the others. Before she could react, it launched itself at her and clawed up her leg. She lifted her hand to block it and shove it away.
But the thing latched on, clinging to her fingers, tiny claws digging into the thick material of her gloves. She shook her arm frantically. It wouldn’t let go.
Her muscles threatened to lock in terror. One bite. One nibble. One set of jaws sinking into flesh anywhere on her body, and it would all be over.
Yuan knocked the rat away with the butt of his flamethrower.
“Die, you little bastards!” Silas spun and faced the sea of rats, spraying them with bullets. Dozens of rodents burst on impact, blood spattering everywhere. The light from his flailing weapon spun crazily over the concrete walls.
“I’ll cover you!” Li Jun yelled to Cleo. He lifted his flamethrower. “Take them and go!”
“Hurry up!” Cleo cried over her shoulder.
Celeste stumbled. Amelia wrapped her arm around her waist and propped her up. “Come on!”
“Get out of here!” Silas shouted as he shot a dozen more rounds into the writhing sea of rats. The others fled, rapidly disappearing into the darkness of the tunnel ahead.
Finn seized Benjie with one hand and swung him over his unhurt shoulder. Blood oozed through his bandage, but he didn’t even flinch. “I’ve got him.”
Panic thrummed through Willow, vibrating in her bones. She fought it back. “Are you sure? What about your—”
She hesitated, torn between fleeing with the people she loved and staying to help Li Jun fight off the swarms of infected rodents.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave someone else behind, not when they’d left Gabriel and Micah, not when they’d already lost Nadira and Jericho.
One person couldn’t fend off the demon hordes of hell. Li Jun needed backup. If they couldn’t stop the rats here, the beasts would hunt her friends down—Benjie and Finn and everyone else. She had to protect Benjie, no matter what. “Keep him safe.”
“With my life.” Finn met her eyes for an agonizing moment. She couldn’t read his face in the flickering shadows. “Don’t you dare die on me.”
“Just go!” She watched Finn flee with Benjie safely tucked in his arms, then spun back to Li Jun. She kicked two screeching rats against the wall and lifted the flamethrower. “Show me how this bad boy works.”
30
Micah
“What’s the plan?” Micah asked, so low his voice was a breath against his brother’s ear. They huddled side by side, their backs pressed to the marble pillar. Their rifles lay beside them, empty and useless amid the spent shell casings littering the carpet.
“We need to get lower,” Gabriel said.
Micah nodded, though he wasn’t sure how that would help. But in matters of combat, he trusted his brother implicitly.
They crawled silently down the curving ramp as it gradually lowered from three stories to two, to one-and-a-half as they circled back around to approximately the same position, though lower and much closer to the action now.
He could hear every word of Sykes and Horne’s conversation.
“I’m sure we can come to an understanding,” Horne whined weakly. “I can still offer value.”
Sykes laughed, an eerily pleasant sound that raised every hair on Micah’s neck. “I seriously doubt that.”
“You have a rat problem,” Horne said.
