They didn't sleep that night. Sleep was a door the hush would slip through too easily.
Instead, Rafi led them through the city's underbelly: through the back lots where junkies curled like old dogs under tarps, through the abandoned bus depot whose roof rattled all night in the wind, through the underpass that stank of piss and loss and carried a broken whisper if you pressed your ear to the graffiti-smeared walls.
The girl stayed just behind his shoulder, drifting closer whenever a car hissed past overhead. The boy never loosened his grip. The only time he let go was when he found a bent spoon on the underpass ground — he stared at it, turning it in his chapped fingers, as if trying to remember what people did with such a thing. Rafi pried it from his hand and tossed it into the gutter.
When dawn threatened — a bruise-colored strip above the rooftops — they slipped into an old train yard, crawling through a bent chain-link gap so narrow Rafi's backpack scraped off. Inside, iron giants rusted in rows, engines gutted, their bellies stuffed with rotting mattresses, cans, moldy clothes left by ghosts of runaways who never outran their hunger.
They made a nest in one gutted boxcar. Torn upholstery and loose seat springs made a sagging bed. Rafi sat against the metal wall, legs drawn up, and the children curled against him like feral pups.
He meant to stay awake. He meant to watch the door, to listen for the hush pressing its damp breath through the gaps. But exhaustion cracked him open. He drifted — not to sleep, but to memory.
A memory not quite his own:
A forest, black trees tight around him. The hush, humming low. A heartbeat under wet leaves.
A girl's laugh — the braid girl's laugh? — echoing behind him. Not mocking, just calling.
Come back, come back, you belong here.
When his eyes snapped open, he saw her: the older girl, the real one, awake beside him, her eyes pinned to the far corner of the boxcar.
"Hey," he croaked. His voice was gravel. The boy beside him whimpered, clawing deeper into Rafi's hoodie.
The girl didn't blink. She lifted one finger and pointed.
Rafi followed her gaze. At first, nothing. Just rust-flaked metal and the shadows shifting with the sway of the boxcar on its warped track.
Then he saw it — or thought he did: a ripple in the dark, like heat above asphalt. But there was no warmth here. Only cold.
A voice uncoiled inside his skull. No words, not really. Just a feeling shaped like sound: Mine. Mine again.
Rafi's breath caught. He clapped his hand over the boy's ear, though it wouldn't help. The hush didn't respect flesh. It slithered into the hollows inside you — fear, guilt, hunger — and nested there.
The girl spoke. For the first time since he'd found her, she spoke. Not to him, but to the dark corner where the ripple thickened. Her voice cracked but held:
"You can't have him. Not yet."
Rafi's throat clenched. His hand trembled on the boy's hair. Not yet. The hush always waited, patient as rot.
He forced himself up, knees popping from hours spent on cold iron. He shouldered the backpack he'd nearly forgotten. The girl stood too, barefoot on the boxcar's dented floor. She pressed her palm to his chest, right over the place where his ribs still ached from the first time the hush crawled inside him.
"He's calling you. He knows you're awake now," she said.
Rafi swallowed a sour taste. "Who?"
The girl tilted her head, her braid slipping over one eye. The boy shivered at their feet.
"Under the city," she whispered. "Below the dirt. The hush is just his coat. You have to go deeper, or he'll keep coming for us. For them."
A rattle overhead — pigeons or rats. The ripple in the corner flickered out like a dying bulb. Gone.
Rafi pressed a hand to his eyes, forcing himself to stand straight. Below the dirt. He didn't want it. Didn't want the truth buried under all this rot. But if he didn't go, it would come anyway.
He squeezed the boy's shoulder. "We're moving again. Now."
No sleep. No safety. Not until he found whatever waited below the hush, the thing with a real heartbeat.
As he nudged the door open, the first light of day spilled in — an ugly, orange dawn that barely touched the frost still clinging to the boxcar walls.
Rafi stepped out first, the children flanking him like thin shadows.
They didn't look back. The hush didn't need them to.