A distant dweller’s cry echoed faintly through the underground labyrinth of tunnels. I froze, angling my head and listening, holding my breath. No other cries came. Water dripped over the blanket of calm.
I started forward again, turning left when my hand met the open air of a tunnel. I focused intently, using my heightened senses and marking the distance my feet traveled, noting every turn I took so that I could find my way back to the spot through which I entered.
Another cry sounded, and this time it wasn’t a dweller. It was wholly human. I followed the direction of the shout, my steps quickening as hope pulsed inside me. Let it be Fowler.
TWO
Fowler
I’VE ALWAYS LIVED in darkness. With dark dwellers and death, death and dark dwellers. The two were interchangeable but the same, and by some miracle I still lived.
I’d lost consciousness at some point, but I wasn’t gone. Not yet. I remembered that rush of adrenaline as I flung myself from the tree into the arms of the waiting dwellers. I did it for Luna. I could accept that. I had no regret. As long as she lived, I was fine.
In this absolute absence of light, I waded through air like ink, lost.
My ears pricked, listening. Not far away someone wept. Panic bit me in the chest. Was it Luna? Had they taken her, too? She couldn’t be down here as well. Fate wasn’t that cruel. I tried to move my body, but my arms were wedged tight.
Maybe it was punishment for all my wrongs. I’d withheld who I was—what I was—from Luna long past the point when I should have told her. Fear held me back and now this was the price. Faulty logic, maybe, but it was all I could manage.
My head and shoulders were free, and I looked about wildly, tossing the hair back from my eyes and squinting into the darkness, peering in the direction of the person crying.
“Hello?” I called into the murk. The tears stopped abruptly as my greeting echoed over the chilled air. “Who’s there? Luna?”
“Who are you?” a voice demanded. Not Luna.
Relief eased over me. “Fowler,” I replied, and then almost laughed. What did my name matter? I was stuck in here with this hapless other soul and we were both about to die.
For a moment her ragged breaths were her only response. “I’m Mina. They took me . . . and my group. A few days ago, I think. I don’t know. There were seven of us. I’m all that’s left.” Her voice cracked into wet sobs. “There are others in here, too. But I don’t know them.”
A few days? They’d kept her alive this long? And there were others. Maybe that meant I had more time. Time to give survival another chance.
Determined not to give up, I tried to move my arms again, hopeful that I could break loose. My breath puffed out as I exerted pressure. If I could get free, perhaps I could find a way out of here. There was a way in, so there had to be a way out.
There had to be.
THREE
Luna
I CHASED THAT echo of a cry long after it faded. Even when the air around me softened to mere drips of water, I didn’t stop. I prowled down tunnels and passageways for so long that I worried it was only a matter of time before I came face-to-face with a dweller. I lost all sense of time in a world where every moment counted.
The space around me was empty. I moved, straining for any sound. My nostrils flared, the odor of dwellers rich around me: loam and copper. Metal in my mouth.
Even with the scent of them so strong everywhere, they weren’t nearby. This was their territory. The stink of them embedded in the bones of this underground tomb.
The silence was finally broken again by another shout. Human.
I followed the sound, my lips moving in a silent mantra. Let it be Fowler. Let it be Fowler.
I couldn’t be certain how long I was down here, but I sensed time was fading fast until midlight—that brief duration when the ink dark faded and a haze of feeble light surfaced and chased the dwellers back underground. In an odd twist, midlight was something I didn’t want to occur. The idea of dwellers returning and prowling the same space I occupied made my steps quicken despite any reassurances.
Suddenly the ceiling above me started to shake and froth, mud dropping down and raining on my head. Was it a cave-in? I ran, trying to escape the earth falling on me, keeping my hand on the wall to my left. I ducked down the tunnel, chest heaving.
Pressed into the wall, I turned my face up and held out my hand. Nothing was falling anymore. The ceiling of earth was stable. Holding myself as still as possible, I listened.
A dweller’s wet, sloughing breath filled my ears. Its dragging steps felt like a scrape of a blade across my flesh. The heavy weight of its body thudded and settled into the damp ground with each move. My heart beat so hard my chest ached. I heard the whisper of the sensors at the center of its face slither on the air, and smelled the drip of toxin.