Virulent

Chapter 18: Promise

"They were my men... and I killed them all for you..." Krish's words haunted Ezra as they slowly moved through the dark and long abandoned tunnels beneath the City of Sydney. The ones she'd heard her Dad mention when she was a teen, trying his darnedest that his bright young lady would not be joining any undergrounders in the hope of partying hard and recovering harder in the old, abandoned train stations as was the trend then.

"It's an old rumour, from back in the days of World War II," he had mentioned while peeking over at her from his newspaper on his tablet. Young Ezra had imagined the look he would have given her had they been in one of those vintage movies where old men gave scrutinizing gazes over its folded edges. "They say there are these secret tunnels that spread beneath the city. Beneath the old trains. Long abandoned. Some say there are even strange humans living there, adapted to the pitch black—their eyes white and glazed like those crabs deep at the bottom of the sea. Maybe humans who have never been topside..." or he'd add with a mischievous glint in his eyes, "and maybe they don't even have eyes!" An addition that always gave poor young Shaki nightmares. Nightmares that made sharing a bed with her oh-so difficult.

Ezra'd kill to have a trembling Shaki latch onto her and not let go. At least that way, she'd know she was safe.

I hope they are. Her and Dad.

With a pinch in her throat, she continued walking through that damp, pitch-black of the tunnels with nothing more than Rai's helmet light and a flimsy torch between her and Tehreem. She could imagine milky eyes winking at her from the darkness. It gave her the creeps.

The air had that uneasy scent of decay, with a stranger undertone of something putrid she couldn't quite place. It hung in her nose and cloyed at her throat like honey, making her crave fresh air. Though calling Sydney's air 'fresh' was probably insulting the truly fresh air she'd once breathed at the farm when she'd been little.

Whatever did happen to that old farm?

It made her wonder, how deep underground are we? How far was that surface, how far away from that farm, that fresh air, those ideal days when she had been content and happy?

They moved slowly because of her, but they were moving. And she was exhausted already. How much further until we stop? Sweat clung to her inner clothes, gluing them to her damp body. Her legs trembled somewhat beneath her. If she could see herself, she'd have looked like a woman who ran a marathon, sweaty and ready to pass out.

I could pass out. She placed a shaky hand on the cold damp walls, its iciness helping keep her alert. Just keep going... just keep going...

Ahead, Krish kept a steady pace, barely glancing back at them, barely breaking a sweat. He hadn't spoken, other than to give them instructions after his confession. It was as if his words had opened a chasm between them. He couldn't bridge it and neither could she. Not yet.

He killed people for me? How many? Why? Why me? Why save me?

Nausea pushed against her throat. Ezra fought to shake the image of the dead guard from the lab, one of Gracery's men, the one Krish had laid her next to in that hallway. Did he kill him? Or his men?

The guard's haunting blank eyes stared at her from her memory. 'What do you think?'

She had never thought there'd come a day when people died because of her, but here she was, not only looking at the results of a pandemic of her design, but also the back of a stone-cold killer who shot people dead at the lab...to save her.

But is he saving me? Or taking me somewhere worse? Some people worse?

She watched Krish's back, at those wide shoulders she'd grown fond of, a back she'd run her fingers down many a night together, pretending what they had or where they were, was entirely all normal. Pretending they were two souls drawn to each other, perhaps even loved.