Chapter 7
~ Reluctant Alliance ~
“You’re going to have to trust me,” he said with words less of a promise than a gamble. What a joke. After keeping her in the dark, both literally and figuratively, he now expected blind trust from her. Something Victoria couldn’t give.
“I’m sorry, Alek, but before we do anything, you need to explain.” Her gaze sharpened, and her voice was firm. “You say you don’t know me. Well, I don’t know you either. I’m not risking my life without knowing what we’re up against.”
He looked past her, already gathering gear as if her words had bounced off him. Then, he stopped and turned back, his hazel eyes settling on her with a touch more gravity. “Fine. Lacking the time, I’ll give it to you straight.” He tapped his finger against his palm. “There is a lot you’ll have to take at face value, but I’ll make sure you get the gist. Presuming we get out of here alive, I’ll answer your questions then.”
She nodded, waiting dreadfully. “Go on.”
“When I found this place,” he began, “I think I woke something up. Something that’s been here, dormant, for a long time. It’s been getting more aggressive. Spreading.” He ran a hand over the back of his head and gestured to the walls. “I told you I was exploring—a half-truth—I was studying. Watching from the dark. Learning their behaviour and how they operate.”
She narrowed her eyes. “They?”
She saw a twitch across his tired face. “Their form… changes. They adapt to their environment. I’ve never faced this particular kind before.” He hesitated, a shadow of uncertainty flickering in his eyes. “It’d take too long, and answers I don’t possess, to explain exactly what they are. But trust me, you only need to look at them to understand.”
She watched him warily, but Alek stood his ground and left little room for protest.
“Now, about the exit,” he continued, his voice grim with the weight of reveal. “I believe it’s in the heart of their lair…”
“Oh, sure,” she mused. “Let’s wander into their hunting grounds on nothing but a hunch.”
“It’s more than a hunch. I’ve searched near every other spot in this damn place. If it’s not there, then…” He looked down at the map, then back at her with reluctant honesty. “There is no exit.”
“But you told me you stumbled upon these tunnels,” her eyebrow rose with curiosity. “Then why don’t we go back through there?”
“We can’t.” He had raised his voice and surprise washed over him as he realised he’d let his emotion speak. “There’s no… there’s no going back.” He looked down now, escaping the pressure of her gaze. “It would mean death. More so than trying to face them head-on.”
This again. There was something he wasn’t telling her; his fleeting eyes betrayed it. Information he wasn’t willing to share. But she was out of options.
“Alright then,” she muttered reluctantly. “So, what’s the plan?”
“We get ready. It’s a race against fate where every second we waste, their domain grows, and our chances shrink. I know the way; you’ll have to follow me.” He exchanged a look with her, testing their newly formed alliance. “We’ll watch each other’s back and if it comes to that,” he added, “they die like everything else. You just have to stab deep enough.”
Like everything else.
Alek was already rustling through his belongings with an efficiency Victoria couldn’t match. Each of her movements felt clumsy, and with them, her body’s limit became painfully clear. The wound pulsed under her makeshift bandage, and the mental effort it took to ignore it weighed on her almost as heavily as the storm of questions swirling in her mind.
The stories spread in her camp had featured monsters, but they had always seemed distant. Mere threats easy to dismiss from the safety of firelight and walls. But out here, their presence felt suffocating. She could almost hear their breath in the crawling mist, fuelling her imagination to invoke the worst possibilities.
Her mind raced with images of them, conjuring visions of horror, yet in her gut, she knew it would be worse than she could ever envision. Still, beneath the fear, a defiant resolve burned inside. After everything she had survived, part of her still held a stubborn conviction. Once out there, I’ll prove it was all worth it.
At the same time, the white mist writhed in the room, dancing along with them. It seemed to recoil with their movements as if it could sense. Almost alive.
Alek slung his pack over the shoulder and, calmly, he swept his hand over scattered papers before lifting a metal rod from the infirmary bed. Using torn strips of fabric, he wrapped the rod into a makeshift torch. She admired the disconcerting ease with which he operated. A precision unlike anything she’d seen before. No amount of practice could provide the efficiency of someone fighting for survival, definitely not that of someone who’d been doing it for years.
The fog shifted. It shrunk back into the room’s corners as Alek stood, his face flickering in the torchlight. He glanced at Victoria, handed her a spare knife much sharper than her rusty tool, and broke the silence.
“There is one thing I must add.”
She managed a nod, gripping the blade as tightly as her weakened hands allowed. She searched his face, hoping for the confidence he had shown earlier. Some sign of reassurance. But instead, his gaze met hers with a sheepish smile. Is he as afraid as I am?
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“I said I was watching them…” he murmured. “But in trying to learn their ways, I exposed myself. Moving through their mist as long as I have, so close to them, they must have started watching me in return.” He looked down, his fingers brushing the scarred handle of his axe. “They’re just mindless beasts. Like everything else I’ve encountered. But sometimes, their instincts… bordered patience.” He shook his head. “All I’m trying to say is… Let’s be careful out there.”
The implication settled between them, pressing on her chest like an iron weight. Just mindless beasts, huh? There was only one way to find out.
She pushed a strand of scarlet hair away from her brow and nodded, locking her eyes in his to form a silent pact. Once they finished gearing up, she tightened the gauze, wrapping it around her abdomen as firmly as she dared. This better hold.
Seeing she was done, Alek moved to the door and his hand rested on the handle for a moment too long. She noticed his left one fidgeting over something in the pocket of his bomber jacket. His gaze shifted, touched by reluctance… perhaps even shame. But before she could form a thought, his voice cracked like the fire he held.
“We’re heading to a place called the Administrator’s Ward. Stick close. I know the way.” The door creaked open, and the mist surged, almost eager to claim the space. Alek pushed through first, firmly holding his axe as though it could shield them both, and Victoria followed. The torch’s flames cast restless shadows ahead of them. No turning back now. She swallowed hard, her fears knotting in her chest.
She had no choice but to place her trust in a stranger.
Deeper within, something stirred in anticipation.
She had kept pace as best she could, but the constant ache on her side made it difficult for her to stay composed. Out there, in the dark, memories surfaced of machinery rooms she’d sometimes been sent to help, with the smell of metal and oil that she’d find pleasant in a strange way. The smell here felt similar, rusty and metallic, but it carried a different scent… more organic. Almost the same as her bloodied bandages.
It suddenly came to her that she wasn’t aware of what senses the creatures possessed, and she found herself hoping they couldn’t smell. She ought to reek of fresh blood.
She glanced at Alek, hoping to find comfort in his expression. They hadn’t exchanged a word since leaving the room. His gaze remained fixed ahead, a mask of silent vigilance, but she knew he was right to keep quiet; in the maze’s stillness, they walked exposed and vulnerable. It was best their presence remained unnoticed.
But despite their caution, a chilling sound echoed from somewhere in the depths. Faint but distinct. A low, grating noise, like something hard scraped across stone, coming in rhythmic drags. Deliberate. The sound engulfed them, filling the silence with something far more unsettling than the mist. Whatever it was, it moved without urgency. With a predator’s confidence.
Her fingers tightened around the knife’s hilt, the soft leather keeping her hand somewhat warm. Alek had stopped instantly, eyes narrowing as he strained to listen. “Something’s down there,” he whispered, stating the obvious to break the tension.
Victoria nodded, whether in agreement or to reassure herself, and her breath hitched in a misty puff. Pulling from distant habits, she inhaled softly. Counting each breath like she had been taught.
We have to keep going.
An impenetrable fog wall lifted, swallowing them with each step as Alek’s figure drifted in and out of sight. She hurried to catch up, but for a split second, he vanished entirely. Only the torch’s light remained, diffusing in the mist like a raging furnace.
Her heart thudded.
“Alek?” she whispered instinctively.
Standing near the right wall, he reappeared, his hand trailing over its surface with an eerie curiosity. His axe hung at his side, forgotten for now.
She moved closer. “What’s wrong? I thought I had lost you for a second.”
“We should turn right,” he answered, without bothering to look at her, his gaze fixed on the wall.
“Fine. Go ahead, I’ll follow.”
“No.” A look of disbelief had washed over him. “There should be a passage here. But… there’s only a wall.”
She squinted, inspecting the subject of his contemplation. Great, now he’s lost his mind. But as she was about to brush it off, he held the torch closer, and she noticed it, too: the texture… just slightly wrong. The smooth stone of the corridor gave way to a material similar in every fashion. Almost. Yet it had a subtle grain, a pattern repeated chaotically, imperfectly mimicking stone.
“Alek is this—“
“We should hurry,” he cut her off, his jaw tense. “There’s another way farther down.”
As they moved on, something gnawed at her, twisting in her gut. Alek, too, seemed disturbed, glancing over his shoulder every few steps. His expression was caught between anticipation and anger and it dawned on her then. The thing that terrified him wasn’t only what they were up against. It’s the thought that it might have been waiting for them.
The tunnel walls closed in around them as they rounded a corner. The cables and cracked pipes that snaked overhead under the torchlight were a poor indication in the stubbornly empty corridors. Each step stretched the silence tight around them. Beads of sweat trickled on her forehead, betrayers of her growing exhaustion. But what unnerved her most was the constant, creeping sense of being watched. Something just out of sight waited in the dark. Taunting them.
Alek’s voice cut through her thoughts. “We’ve been here already,” he muttered, revealing a hint of frustration. Without so much of a glance, he quickened his pace.
“How do you know?” she managed, breathless and determined to keep up in spite of it.
“Let’s just keep going,” he replied tightly. His voice trembled slightly from a fear he tried to hide. But he never turned to meet her gaze, and maybe it was better that way; she doubted what lurked in his eyes would be pleasant. Victoria had no choice but to follow him, but somehow she’d started questioning his judgement. Maybe his memory faltered… after all every corner looked the same, and every turn was a mirror of the last. So, how could he be sure of their path when the fog ate up every landmark?
The tunnel widened suddenly, almost to prove her wrong. It opened into a cavernous room with a collapsed ceiling. Alek held up the torch as its light spread over heaps of rubble and fractured machinery. Concrete dust hung in the hair, mixing with the fog.
It must have collapsed recently.
Two dark passageways yawned open on the far side and Alek scanned the wreckage like he’d never been there. She caught his jaw clenching again, his gaze darting between the exits with a look she was starting to decipher: that of hesitation, maybe even fear.
“What happened here?” she asked softly.
“I… I don’t—” he stammered, his voice oddly fragile.
And then, from somewhere deep in the left passage, came a faint whisper. Air escaping from a throat that hated its purpose. Her blood went ice-cold.
“Alek,” she whispered shakily. “We’re not alone.”
They had never been alone.
The whispering continued, just out of reach. It almost sounded like her name stretched and distorted, echoing back from the darkness. But it couldn’t be. Her mind spun weaves of imaginary conclusions, decorating the web of nightmares in her head. The torchlight trembled, mocking them as Alek slowly stepped forward, a hand reaching for his axe. The whisper grew into a groan, wet and painful, slipping beneath their skin.
And then it stopped. Sudden and absolute. It gave way to a more terrible silence.
***
What do you think of Alek's behaviour?
