Of Caverns and Casters ✓ [TLRQ #1]

Chapter 3 - Leavi

There's a thud as the patrolman's bolt drives home—right where I used to be.

Hanging on the lip of the wall, I drag myself into the rudimentary tower. My heart races as I glance over my shoulder. The patrolman's hurrying forward now, readying another shot.

I vault out of the tower, dropping all twelve feet. My boots jolt against the ground, but I roll to let my momentum carry the impact. I scramble back to my feet and run.

The patrolman makes it to the tower much quicker than I did. His shots chase the ground behind me. One whistles over my head, and I dive to the pavement. I scramble up before he can reload, ducking into an alley. My breaths come quick and short, but I don't stop running. Surely he's not crazy enough to come after me. Surely.

Minutes later, I slow, back on a main street. I glance around, trying to catch my bearings and breath. Faint mosslight illumes the derelict houses. From one window, jagged glass juts like a cavern eel's fangs. Inside, the shadows silhouette a vague form. Brows drawn, I take a step closer, peering into the gloom.

I recoil. It's not the first time I've seen a dead body. But it is the first time I've seen one bloated and blistered, pockets of popped pus swelling every inch of their skin.

The breeze shifts, and the stench knocks me to my knees. I tear the muffler from my mouth and vomit into a filth-filled gutter, hands pressed against the cold, gritty stone. In the lab in Erreliah, our cooling-machine jammed once, and the fifty cave toads we collected the Friday before were left decomposing the entire weekend. Walking into that room Monday morning, I swore decaying toad guts were the most putrid stench on Earth.

That was before I smelled hundreds of corpses rotting around me.

Wiping my mouth, I tie my muffler back and wobble onto shaky legs. My whole body feels like it's the epicenter of its own earthquake, but the world is eerily still. Even the air is dead.

A sound splits the silence. A scratch against cobblestone, a thud as metal falls against pavement, a startled yowl like a fork against glass magnified a million times, and I run. I run faster than my legs have ever carried me, flying, not even sure if my feet are touching the ground. I shoot past the district edge, crossing into the empty expanse before the tunnel. My brain yells at me to keep going, to put as much distance between me and the city as possible, but my lungs are heaving for air, cells demanding oxygen, and my body can't keep up.

As I come to a stop, my hands lean against the cool, rough cavern wall, heart thrumming in my chest. I stand there, panting, trying to calm myself back down. It's okay, I assure myself. I made it out. I'm right near the Lesser West Tunnel. It's okay. Heart slowly stilling, I turn to find the tunnel entrance.

Movement catches my eye in the darkness, and my muscles flinch so hard it hurts. No one's supposed to be patrolling out here!

The figure hasn't seen me yet. I press myself against the wall, dark hair and clothes blending in with the inky world broken only by sporadic clusters of moss.

He moves closer, maybe twenty feet to the left of where I exited the district. At a diagonal, he crosses the bare ground between the tunnel and the city, taking careful steps as he looks back, then forth. Once he's five feet away, my impatient nerves prod me to move, but I will myself to stay still. One step. Another. Each of his movements is purposeful, measured. One step closer, and—

I jerk forward, catching his arm to slam him into the wall I was just against, both hands pressed against his neck in a desperate frenzy. I can knock him out. I can. If I can just find those arteries...

Suddenly, I'm spun around, and it's me against the wall, and it's his hands on my neck. I try to push him off, but I'm shaking, and my energy is draining away with my vision.

His hands drop, feet stuttering back. "Riveirre?" he asks, incredulous.

"Sean," I gasp, shocked, bent in half to catch my breath. My eyes start picking out his features through the dim light—sharp nose, narrowed eyes, carefully combed brown hair. A dozen chains peek out of the pockets of his trench coat, and a backpack rests on his shoulders.

"What are you doing here?" he demands.

"I could ask the same of you!"

He opens his mouth to speak, then takes a half-step back. "You attacked me!"

"I didn't know who you were! And can you please lower your voice? I don't want to get caught by an actual patrolman." Neither of us is conversing above a harsh whisper, but in the still, it feels like we're shouting.

"I'm not being loud." He spreads his arm out toward the Dead District. "And it's unlikely anyone else is out this far."

The reminder sends a chill up my spine, but I don't let him see my unease. "I am."

He drops his arm, glaring. "You don't count."

"Oh? I don't?"

He looks at me like I'm an imbecile. "Obviously not. I said 'anyone else.' You were part of the conversation."

I glance back and forth, getting antsier the longer we wait here. "What are you doing out here, Sean?"

"Same thing as you, I suppose. Avoiding being a corpse."

"So what's your plan?" I straighten. "Are you just going to hop to the next town? Carry the plague there?"

"No." He sounds indignant. "Why? Was that your plan?"

"Of course not!"

"Then why in the world would you assume it's mine?"

"If you're a carrier—"

"I'm not a carrier, Riveirre."

I throw my hands up. "How can you know that?"

He steps forward, lank frame towering over mine. "I'd imagine the same way you're going to. I'll test for it." He leans back, popping the collar of his trenchcoat. "Look, we can discuss how we're not going to kill everyone in the known world when we're standing somewhere other than an open-air cemetery."

He starts off, but I catch his shoulder, twisting him back around. "We?" I echo.

He shrugs me off. "There's only one way out. So, yes. We." Once more, he gestures at the ruined district behind us. "Unless you plan on staying here?" Not waiting for an answer, he follows the perimeter of the cavern, searching for the tunnel entry.

I pause, watching him warily. Sean Rahkifellar has been my research partner for the last three months, and there hasn't been one conversation where I didn't feel like we were somehow keeping score, trying to carve one more tick-mark for ourselves on the slate between us.

But he's right. There is only one way out, and traveling with even him will be better than wandering alone in the darkness.

Behind me, air wheezes through the tight streets of the District like the moan of the dead. I shiver and catch up with Sean.