My muscles shout that I have to go. Now. I have to run run run. Behind me the pounding grows louder and then I hear a different noise. I look up to see fingers reach through a grate in the wall next to the door. My lantern glistens off eyes and I stumble back.

Out of time, I turn to my left and start running.

It’s freezing down here, each breath searing my lungs with what feels like ice-cold fire. My body protests as I struggle to go faster, my feet stumbling along the rotted wood spaced along the tracks.

Usually the worst thing you can do when you’re being chased by Unconsecrated is run. It wears you out fast, and any distance you might gain is only lost while you recover and they keep coming.

But that’s the problem. I’m not being chased by Unconsecrated. At least, not just them. And the living can move much faster than the dead.

Shouts echo after me, bounding from the walls so that it’s almost impossible to tell which direction they’re coming from. I ignore the pain in my legs and lungs and try to run faster. I fall and skin my knee but I get up and go on.

Time in the darkness is meaningless, measured in gasping breaths and pumping heart. The sound of men shouting morphs into the noise of the dead: moans of every timbre combining into an almost-choir.

Sweat rolls down my face; I don’t know how long I can push. But I also don’t know what else to do.

The walls holding me in splay open, the ceiling soaring as I scramble into another station. The platform stretches along next to me and I slow my steps. If I climb up, can I hide?

But then what? I’m still faced with the same impossible scenario: I can hide from the Recruiters, but no one can hide from the dead.

So I keep running, the tunnel beginning to curve to the right. My lantern swings with each step, the light bobbing almost like a boat on water as I race past marks on the wall—some of them official-looking stamps designating locations and emergency exits, others bright puffy scrawls and pictures.

An emergency exit sounds like the perfect thing right now. Climb a ladder, find a hole, escape from this life.

The reality is that I’d just end up in the streets facing the horde. They’d find me. So many would devour me I wouldn’t even get a chance to Return.

The moaning becomes like a tidal wave behind me, a wall of water pressing me forward. I just have to let it push me, not get dragged under. The cold numbs my ears, radiating down my neck and trailing under my clothes.