William held up both of his hands, his fingers splayed. He counted down from ten, starting with the little finger on his right hand.
With three fingers remaining, the tap of Olga’s footsteps called down to them, marking her descent. Her scowl might have been aimed at Gracie, but if she saw it, she did a good job pretending she hadn’t. Gracie set off at a jog into the darkness.
The moonlight shone down the stairs behind them. Not as dark as it had looked from the street. They ran past small booths on either side of the tunnel. Each one had a metal shutter pulled down in front of it. Each one bolted into the ground. Although, every one of them had been mangled from where they’d been prized away to create openings large enough for someone to climb through. The small shops had been looted a long time ago.
William ran at the back, Olga and Max ahead of him. For the acid in her words when she spoke to Gracie, a different Olga spurred Max on with kind encouragement.
Gracie halted when they reached the end of the line of shops. The group fell in behind her.
“I let her go,” Max said.
The group turned his way, all of them taking this chance to catch their breath.
“Monica,” he said. “I let Monica go.”
“You what?” Gracie shook her head. “You saw what she did to everyone, right?”
Olga stepped towards the girl leading them. “He was on the receiving end of some of it. And you did fuck all about it.”
“That’s not fair, Olga.” Max shook his head. “There was nothing Gracie could have done. She helped me when she could. I nearly got her killed.” After a moment’s silence, he said, “I felt sorry for Monica. She was so broken. She’d spent years in that dark and horrible place. She never knew when she’d get her next meal. If she’d get her next meal. She’d completely lost track of time. She’s lived with that for longer than I’ve been alive. Imagine that.”
Gooseflesh pinched the back of William’s neck. The tunnels they were in were too similar to those in the asylum. Imagine twenty years in a place like this. Locked up. Abused …
Gracie’s tone softened. “But what if she goes back to the asylum or the palace?”
Max had stepped back a pace, deeper into the shadows. He shook his head. “I watched her die,” he finally said. “She said she’d rather have a minute of freedom. She knew she had no place in the new community, so she ran. She ran across the meadow and got taken down by diseased. I felt like she deserved that choice.”
Max flinched when William reached out and touched him. “This isn’t the asylum, Max. We’re safe here. We don’t have to listen to people’s suffering.” The shake running through Max’s frame to William’s grip suggested he nodded.
A dull light came on, temporarily blinding William.
Gracie stood up from the switch.
Max quickly wiped his eyes, but the glistening tracks remained on his cheeks. Other than William, no one else seemed to have noticed. Instead, they stared at what lay ahead.
“What the …?” Matilda said.
Chunky metal stairs stretched away from them down into another tunnel.
“We’re going deeper?” Olga said.
Matilda pointed down the stairs. “At least we can see where we’re going.”
The large stairs had sharp, right-angled edges lined with small spikes. They looked like cogs in a giant machine.
“What the hell is this place?” Artan said.
“The armies that fight one another in the city,” Gracie said, “rarely come down here, especially at night.” She pointed down the stairs.
William and the others stepped closer to see the pile of bodies at the bottom.
“And very few of the diseased have the coordination to deal with these stairs without falling and killing themselves.”
“I can see why,” Olga said.
“This is the safest way through the city. At least for part of the journey. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take us to our destination.”
Gracie stepped down, the tock of her first step striking the top stair like a hammer blow.
Where the others froze, William shoved his way through and went next. Handrails on either side, they were rough with perished rubber. He used them to stabilise himself.
The tock of the others’ footsteps, William focused on his path rather than behind. Hopefully, all of them were following him.
Close to the bottom, the sour reek of dead diseased curdled the air. The entire group were quietened by their concentration.
Olga finally said, “If this is the safest and least used route, why are there lights down here?”
“We don’t know who originally fitted them,” Gracie said. “Or who else knows about them. But we’ve used them for years and have never had a problem.”
Olga might have had more questions, but Gracie had already set off again, jumping the diseased corpses and ducking into a tunnel on her right.
“This is a platform for a train station,” Gracie said when the others joined her. “This is one mode of transport they used to get around.” The large cylindrical vehicle in front of them had smashed windows. Small amounts of foam clung to some old seats inside, but they were mostly benches of bare metal. “The people of the city used to come all the way down here, queue on this platform, and then let this thing shuttle them to where they wanted to go.”
Dianna’s voice echoed when she leaned into the train. “Not one for the claustrophobic.”
“Quite,” Gracie said and stepped into the abandoned vehicle when Dianna pulled back out again.
William once again led the others, Matilda reaching ahead to thread her fingers through his. The string of lights continued into the train, giving them a path to follow. It shone on the brown stains of old blood on the floor. The deeper they ventured, the more stains they passed over.
“I thought you said it was safe down here?”
