The captain's words were followed by a heavy silence.
Everyone there had the same expression stamped on their face: exhaustion, relief, and guilt. The guilt felt the most real, like it was leaking out through their eyes.
The captain gave something like a tired smile—or at least the closest thing she had to one.
"Go down."
The order came out flat.
The darkness of the staircase looked ready to swallow us whole. From a distance, it reminded me of the mouth of some animal about to devour someone… in this case, me.
But the others just obeyed. Without hesitation, they went down like it was a bright, safe street.
Me? …well, I got shoved.
I stumbled on the first steps, their boots pounding on the damp concrete echoing like hammers inside my skull.
The place smelled like mold, rust, and stagnant water.
Who calls a place like this home?
It was suffocating.
And the farther down we went, the colder it got. The air grew so cold it raised goosebumps even on hairs I didn't remember having.
I was shaking. My gray t-shirt was thin and now even nastier because it was wet… clinging to my body like a second skin.
I sighed.
Maybe because of how absurd it all was, or maybe because my body needed some kind of human reaction before losing it completely.
Water dripped from the ceiling in an irritating rhythm, and their heavy breathing echoed through the tunnel like we were walking inside an old, sick lung.
After a few minutes, a weak light started to appear ahead.
"Lights… we're almost there,"
the captain murmured.
Almost where?
I thought, but didn't say it. My mouth was too busy trying not to tremble.
When I finally set foot on the last step, a yellowish glow lit up the tunnel…
And then it appeared.
The purple screen.
Floating and unstable. Shining like a glitch burned into my retina as the letters slowly formed.
SAVEPOINT
I froze.
Fear hit me again like a punch to the gut.
I had forgotten that thing.
Shit.
"Hurry up!"
The man beside me shoved me again, irritated, like I was a sack of sand in the way.
I looked at him… at the rest… and nothing.
None of them reacted to the bright screen floating in my face.
They don't see it?
They didn't look like the kind of people who knew how to fake it.
Before I could think anything useful, the screen just vanished.
Evaporated like it had never existed.
The two holding me exchanged looks of pure disdain, like they thought I was planning to run.
I couldn't run even if I wanted to. My legs still felt like they were made of cooked pasta.
We kept walking.
The yellow glow grew stronger, showing more of the floor littered with dust, broken glass, and debris. With every step, the feeling that we were walking deeper into the guts of some giant creature only got worse.
Until the corridor opened into a wide platform.
A rusted sign still read:
PLATFORM B-2
Old boards hung from the walls, stained with soot, handprints everywhere… small, large, some with too many fingers.
A makeshift barricade of metal and wood blocked the entrance, but they just pushed it aside and went through.
As soon as we stepped in, the air changed.
The smell of smoke mixed with burnt oil, old sweat, and despair.
It was an old station… turned into a shelter.
There were canvas tents, twisted metal, and torn blankets. I could see people sleeping, others cleaning weapons, others lighting candles in front of symbols that looked cursed.
All of them with the same look: absolute alertness mixed with exhaustion and some fear buried underneath.
When we entered, it was like kicking an anthill. Chaos erupted instantly. People backed away, children were yanked by the arms… no one wanted to be in our way.
What kind of people am I with?
The captain didn't seem to care about the chaos. She just stopped in the center, turned to me, scanned me from head to toe… and then simply kept walking. Like I was just another dead weight.
Well… maybe that's exactly what I was.
The sound of her boots stood out from everything else. Every step was a warning. I couldn't see her face, but by how fast people moved out of the way, it had to look terrifying.
Then something happened.
First, a soft clatter, like something small hitting the ground.
Then, a muffled cry.
And then everyone froze.
They all turned in the same direction, and I looked too.
A child… maybe eight, nine years old, had tripped on a chunk of rubble and fallen right in front of us.
The small body slid across the dusty floor, raising a thin cloud that caught the light of the barrel fires.
She stayed still for a second.
Dirty, torn t-shirt. Bare feet, covered in dark wounds, and hair stuck to her face.
When she looked up…
My chest tightened.
Her eyes were huge and trembling. They reflected the fire like they were about to melt.
I could see the fear there.
Thick tears rolled down in silence, dotting the floor with small dark spots of rust and dust.
She wasn't sobbing out loud, she was clearly swallowing it by force, but the terror poured out of her eyes like liquid.
No one went closer—in fact, it was the opposite.
People pulled even farther away from her.
I was stunned.
It's not that serious… right?
The captain stood still.
The man beside me clicked his tongue in annoyance, and the others looked away, way too tense to approach.
The girl tried to get up, but fell again, and this time a sob slipped out.
That choked sob echoed in a way that tore through my chest.
Why do I feel like this?
Almost on instinct, I tried to take a step toward her, but they held me back before I even got my foot all the way off the ground.
The captain sighed and stepped forward.
Just one step, and the silence around us seemed to sink deeper, thick as mud.
She knelt down in front of the girl.
The hardness in her posture… eased… just a little.
Enough to make her look human for about three seconds, but around us, the other members of the group went rigid.
It was like the captain was about to defuse a bomb.
She's just a kid…
And then I saw it.
Under the girl's torn shirt… there was something.
A swollen lump, pulsing, like a living apple pushing the skin from the inside out. The skin around it shone in sick shades of yellowish purple and looked inflamed.
My stomach turned to ice.
I glanced around and in my head I almost heard a click.
That's when I realized…
Everyone there had something similar.
Swellings. Nodules that looked alive. Bulges that rose and fell slowly, like they were breathing. Wounds covered by dirty cloth, others exposed and oozing pus.
Some had deformities so big they barely looked human.
But… they still were human… and that was enough to smother the fear and leave only pity.
I looked back at the girl.
She too… she was still human. Too human…
And that hurt.
Her eyes met mine for one second before she looked back at the captain.
The captain, still kneeling, reached out her hand.
"It's alright, little one,"
she said, in a tone I'd never heard from her until that moment.
"No one's going to do anything."
Her voice…
Her voice sounded tired and more human than at any other time since we met. Somehow it felt like it didn't belong in that horrible world.
The girl was shaking so hard she looked like she was vibrating.
When the captain leaned in to help, I heard a collective gasp from the refugees.
Her companions tensed up, and the man who had mocked me in the corridor was the only one to speak:
"Don't touch her!"
"Are you insane?!"
"You wanna doom us?!"
But he didn't move to stop her—he looked more afraid of something else.
The girl looked at him, then at the captain, hesitating.
"C-can I go?"
She asked, barely above a whisper.
The captain didn't answer right away. Her eyes shone… not with tears, but with something someone holds back for years.
Finally, she nodded.
And placed her hand on the girl's head.
A small, gentle gesture.
But it hurt enough to set the entire shelter on fire.
A scream burst from one of the tents, then another… and another.
Within seconds, the panic was back.
Women grabbed their children, men backed away. Everyone was afraid and shouting at the same time.
The captain sighed like she was used to making the world worse just by standing in it.
She stood up, looked at the girl one last time, and said:
"Go… back to your tent."
The child ran off, limping and stumbling. She looked back at us with every step until she vanished between the tarps.
Silence.
The captain kept staring at the spot where the girl had disappeared before murmuring, without looking at anyone:
"It's alright… carry on."
And we moved on.
But the screams… the screams came with us.
They walked alongside us like shadows.