Project: Hero

Chapter Five

"She's jumpy isn't she?" a voice asks from behind me, it's Kotetsu and that means Sergio can't be far behind.

"Do you blame her?" Sergio's voice sounds muffled. "Go left Blair."

I nod and turn left, the tunnel seems to pitch upward slightly. The faintest trace of a breeze floats down, rustling the fur on my head and somehow it tastes of what I imagine sunlight to taste like.

We go up towards the sun, I can feel it on my face. Kotetsu pulls at my tail, trying to get me to go faster. I growl at him, but it's half-hearted. He only wants to get out of the tunnel so I speed up.

A metal grate covers the exit and I have to stop. Kotetsu pushes past me, squishing me against the wall, and he tries to kick the grate off. It doesn't budge and I get pushed further to the side as Sergio comes up.

He's stronger than Kotetsu and actually manages to take the grate off. Now that it's gone, there's nothing holding us in place and the three of us tumble out on the grass.

In the light of day Kotetsu looks even more like a ghost and I see that the bones he was previously carrying have disappeared - probably into some guard - and there's a thick ring of dried blood around his wrists.

Sergio laughs draw our attention to him, he's rolling around on the grass like a child. I can't blame him, I'd only been in there for a day or so and I felt the death in that place as if it was a real thing.

I yip in shock as Sergio hugs me tightly, Kotetsu just looks vaguely annoyed at his actions. Sergio lets go of me looking sheepish, I put his actions down to his excitement about our escape rather than any genuine feelings about me. Despite that assurance I still feel bad when he lets go.

"Come on, we can't stay out in the open," Kotetsu says, his voice stern as he becomes the voice of reason.

I roll on to my feet and Sergio stands up. He leads us to an open sewer, the smell makes me wrinkle my nose. The boys jump in to the stinky depths below and the liquid splashes over their legs. Not wanting to be left on my own I take a deep breath and jump in. The sludge splashes all over me, thick and smelly.

At its deepest the liquid would go over my head so I swim to the edge, where it just goes up to my knees. Shaking out my fur as I clamber behind Sergio and Kotetsu all I can smell is wet dog. When Kotetsu turns back to me I can tell it's all he can smell too. Sergio doesn't seem to be bothered by the smell, but I still glare at the back of his head.

"Sorry you had to do that. I didn't want them tracking us," Sergio explains, navigating the tunnels like a pro.

I don't mention that if they were going to track us, they wouldn't do it on foot. It wouldn't help and I can't talk in this form.

Kotetsu, it seems, doesn't really care what he says, "You know, I wish I could've gotten into the Armoury. Use their own weapons against them, it would put them out of action for a while."

I agree, if we had more time we could've done some serious damage. Sergio shakes his head and it's not amusement.

"You know that room is always locked up. It's a suicide mission," he mutters. "Same with trying to crash the system."

No one says anything after that. As much as we want to stop this, it's not going to happen any time soon. No matter what we do, they'll just come back twice as strong. For a while the only sound is the steady click, click, click as my claws hit off the ground.

"Can you change baack?" Sergio asks suddenly.

I change back, my clothes stick to my body and I cross my arms. At least the smell of wet dog has gone.