The rain had stopped, but drops still fell from the roofs, like echoes of a storm that refused to leave. Lina barely felt them. She ran, stumbled, breathing too shallow, too fast. The ground was muddy, smelled of old oil and rust, of the city when it stays awake too long. Alaric ran beside her – pale, his movements hard, mechanical, as if only willpower kept him upright.
Behind them, metal clanged. Voices. Footsteps, too close.
"Over there!" A shout, muffled, but clear enough to freeze her blood.
Alaric pulled her by the hand, turned right, through a gap in a wall whose bricks had long given up. Inside it was dark, cramped, the floor uneven. Old machines lay like animals someone had left here to die.
"Here," Alaric gasped. "Down."
Lina only saw the hatch in the floor when he pulled it open. The lid squeaked, the smell beneath was damp, metallic, old.
"What is it?"
"Cellar. Or workshop tunnel."
"And if it doesn't hold?"
"Then at least we'll die quietly."
