They stumbled out of the thorn tunnel into a darkness so thick it pressed against their teeth when they breathed. The braid girl's small flashlight, its beam weak and coughing, flicked over rusted metal ribs: old utility tunnels, half-forgotten maintenance corridors that once hummed with people's footsteps before the hush made them its veins.
Rafi's arms ached under the boy's weight. The feverish child lolled against his chest, lips dry and cracked, mumbling scraps of nursery rhymes that hadn't been sung since the world above still cared about boys like him.
The braid girl moved ahead, her thin shadow stretching across the curving walls. Old graffiti bloomed where the beam touched — names of runaways long eaten by the hush, childish threats, symbols that pretended to ward off monsters but had failed every time.
One word repeated under the scribbles: HOLLOW CITY.
Painted over and over. In red. In black. In the same trembling hand.
Rafi paused beside a wide drain opening that yawned like a throat. Water dripped from unseen pipes. It smelled like rotting leaves and old secrets. The hush hummed in the drip's echo: Down, down. All cities sink, little thief. This one is yours.
He pressed his lips to the boy's filthy hair. He could feel the fever flicker under the skin, fierce and stubborn, as if the hush burned him alive from the inside.
The braid girl tapped his shoulder. She pointed to a gap in the concrete wall, half-blocked by a collapsed support beam. Beyond it flickered a faint, stuttering light — not his flashlight's sick beam, but something warmer, dancing orange. Firelight. People, maybe. Or ghosts. Or both.
Rafi's heartbeat stuttered. Living things down here meant food, or a place to rest, or betrayal wearing a friendly face. He shifted the boy higher, braced his shoulders, and followed.
They squeezed through the crack. The hush scraped his ribs as he passed, whispering through his bones: What you find will hurt you. Go anyway.
Inside the hidden cavity, the walls widened into a chamber. Someone had built a makeshift shelter here: tarps strung between cracked columns, crates stacked into a barricade. A rusted shopping cart held a hoard of scavenged cans and blankets. Near the back, a small fire crackled in an old metal drum. The smell of burning wood clung to the stale air like hope refusing to die.
Figures huddled around the fire — three, maybe four shapes, more shadows than people. One rose sharply when Rafi stumbled in. A girl, older than the braid girl, a jagged scar splitting her lip. In her hand: a broken broom handle honed to a point.
She stepped forward, voice hard and flat: Who the hell crawls in here with a corpse?
Rafi's voice cracked, his throat sandpaper: He's not dead.
The boy made a sound then, a wet cough that proved him right. The older girl's eyes flicked to the braid girl, then back to Rafi. Her weapon lowered a fraction — not trust, just a breath of curiosity.
Behind her, a hunched boy tugged at her sleeve. His eyes darted over Rafi's shoulders, scanning the tunnel's mouth for the hush's tendrils. He asked softly, Did it follow you?
Rafi shook his head, lying because he needed the lie to buy them space: We lost it in the brambles.
The girl with the scar studied him, then jerked her chin at the drum fire. Sit. Warm him up. If he burns through, maybe he'll wake. If not...
She didn't finish. She didn't need to.
Rafi dropped to his knees by the fire, the braid girl pressing in close beside him. The boy wheezed, eyes fluttering at the sudden heat. Rafi cradled him tighter, letting the warmth bleed into his bones too.
Behind them, the other runaways murmured, casting glances at the new arrivals. Outside the broken wall, the hush waited — patient as fungus, hungry as always. It pulsed through the Hollow City's veins, tasting fresh fear drifting on stale air.
Rafi knew they hadn't escaped it. They'd only crawled deeper into its oldest nest — where secrets slept under concrete and the hush dreamed of turning every whisper into a grave.
He met the braid girl's eyes. She didn't look afraid. She looked ready.
For whatever waited in the Hollow City's throat.