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The building ahead had once been substantial, some sort of shop or commercial enterprise. The rubble hinted at a two-story building, originally, but the upper level had completely collapsed, leaving just the foundation and the first-floor walls. The shop windows had been blown out, and the shattered glass still littered the ground. Inside was some sort of long counter that looked like it belonged to a pharmacy or general store. The shop had been looted, with every fixture removed or destroyed.

Beneath the foundation, visible as darker shadow half-concealed in the accumulated debris, Alistair noticed what might have been a cellar entrance. He tugged on Tomasz’s tunic to get his attention. “Look... Regard là!”

Wooden doors, warped with age and fire, set at an angle into the ground. The possibility of concealment. Tomasz's focus shifted entirely as he darted toward it. Alistair's legs, cradled in the sling, jolted with each step. The pain was immediate and specific, but he did not cry out. He clenched his teeth against the scream that built up inside him.

The voices of the German soldiers were growing louder. They were two streets over, moving perpendicular to the path that Tomasz and Alistair were taking. The distance was narrowing. The probability of visual contact was increasing with each moment that passed.

Tomasz reached the cellar. He did not pause. He did not assess. Without fanfare, he drove his boot heel into the bulkhead doors, breaking the hasp that secured them. The sound was loud. Alarmingly loud.

Behind them, the German voices stopped. The pause lasted for two seconds. Then they resumed, but with a different quality. They were faster now. No longer conversational. They heard something.

The cellar doors swallowed them as they slipped underground. The last thing Alistair noticed before they shut was the gray sky.

***

ALISTAIR’S EYES WERE open, but it made no difference. The darkness was complete and unbroken. All he could take in of the space that surrounded him was the texture of the air, a kind of thick, cold soup. It tasted of mold, age, and the harsh scent of decay sped up by fire and violence from above. The sound of broken glass breaking under his protector’s boots. But somehow, Tomasz navigated by instinct.

Finding a spot in the darkness, his large hands adjusted Alistair with care, pulling the officer close—closer than they had been even during the nights of sharing warmth. Chest to chest, Alistair's small frame compressed against the larger man's torso in an embrace that felt both protective and suffocating.

Above them, the boots continued to crunch. They moved across the ruins of the village street with what sounded like casual certainty. The voices continued, speaking German. Alistair failed to make out the words, but from the tone and cadence it sounded like they were planning something. Someone could have heard the crack of the cellar doors break and they would come to investigate. It was only a matter of time before they figured out the location of the sound.

Tomasz's hand rose and covered the lower half of Alistair's face. The palm pressed gently against his mouth. The fingers curved along his jaw. The other arm stayed around him, cradling him tightly.

Alistair's instinct was to resist. His mind wanted to recoil from the sensation of being covered, of being silenced, of being held so tightly that movement was impossible. But his body understood what his mind was slower to accept. The hand over his mouth was necessary. The absolute compression of himself into the larger man's embrace was the only strategy available to them.

The boots above stopped. They were directly above the cellar now. Alistair was certain of it. He heard them and tracked their position by the sound on the wooden planks just inches over Tomasz’s head. The conversation in German grew more animated. An argument, perhaps. A debate.

Alistair's heart was destroying itself in his chest. He was certain that the pounding of it was audible, that the sound of his panic would betray them. The soldiers above did not hear it. They could not have heard it. They spoke casually, in German. But the pulse kept coming, loud as artillery.

Tomasz's hand stayed over his mouth, so Alistair forced himself to breathe through his nose. The air moved across the callused palm of the larger man's hand, cold and then warm, cold, and then warm.

The boots moved. Away from the immediate position above them. Alistair felt something in his chest unknot fractionally. They were moving on. They decided that the sound was not worth investigating or decided to investigate elsewhere first. But the pressure of Tomasz's body was unchanged, the hand over his mouth stayed where it was.

Time passed differently in the dark: minutes blurred into seconds. Alistair had no idea if they had been stuck there for five minutes or fifty. All he felt was Tomasz's chest against his. He noticed the rhythm of his breathing and the firm grip of that large hand, even with the adrenaline rushing through him.

Then the cellar hatch started to open.

The light that penetrated was minimal. Gray daylight filtered through kicked-up dust. But after the absolute darkness, it was startling. Alistair's eyes teared at the change.

A silhouette appeared in the hatch opening: a man, German. That much was obvious from the shape of the helmet, the cut of the uniform visible against the grayness. He was looking down, squinting, adjusting his eyes to the transition from the brightness above to the darkness below. His rifle was slung loosely over his shoulder, not an immediate threat but there. The posture of a trained soldier moving through conquered territory where resistance was not to be expected.

Alistair understood, in that moment, what it meant to be prey. To be in a world where discovery meant death was dangerous. Staying hidden was the way to survive. A single gesture could unravel everything he knew.

The soldier descended. He came down into the darkness with a lack of caution, suggesting he did not believe anything in the cellar was a threat. This was just a routine part of the sweep. His boots hit the cellar floor with a jarring thump. His eyes were beginning to adjust, to understand the shape of the underground space. He repositioned his rifle in readiness. But it was too late.

Tomasz moved like a bolt of lightning. There was no warning. There was no escalation. The massive hand that had been covering Alistair’s mouth slipped away. It reached into the dark, fast as a striking animal.

There was no scream, only a muffled grunt that died in the German's throat as Tomasz's thumbs crushed his windpipe. The soldier's body convulsed violently against the wall in a desperate animal thrashing. His boots kicked wildly, scraping stone, dislodging dirt that rained down like judgment. Blood vessels burst in his eyes as they bulged, turning the whites to crimson pools. A wet, rattling syllable escaped him, not quite a cough, not quite a plea, spraying a fine mist that caught the dim light like suspended rubies before splattering across Alistair's face, hot and metallic, marking them with murder.

Alistair's eyes adjusted enough to watch the horror in fragments. Tomasz's silhouette hunched and powerful, muscles corded beneath his uniform, arms rigid as iron bars. His massive hands crushed the windpipe between them, thumbs driving deep into a human form that bucked and convulsed before going slack as a puppet with cut strings. When it ended, the silence crashed down like it had substance, broken only by Alistair's own pulse pounding in his ears.

Tomasz released the soldier’s neck, and he collapsed in the dirt. He made a final noise, a grunt, something beyond language as he was falling. His rifle clattered against the hard dirt floor. Eyes frozen in eternal surprise. Pupils wide and dark. His mouth was dripping with a foam of blood and spit. The German pissed himself. The smell of urine and blood and death mingled with scent of the mold, the rot, and the dampness. It was hot. The droplets that hit his face felt warm against his skin. Even in the cold cellar, it was unsettling.

The open hatch attenuated the darkness. Alistair's ears developed a ringing that would not stop, so complete that he was uncertain he could hear anything else. The world outside the sound was entirely subsumed. But he felt Tomasz moving. He felt the larger man’s body relax. His breath sawed in and out. He sensed a tremor starting in the big muscles that still pressed against him.

The larger man was shaking. Not with violence, but with noticeable discomfort. The tremor ran through his torso and into his arms, into his hands. It was the tremor of someone who crossed a line. He had done something that could not be taken back.

Above them, the hatch hung open. The light penetrated the darkness, illuminating the body of the German soldier crumpled on the earthen floor of the cellar. His arm was extended. His hand was still partially curled around the barrel of his weapon, in a reflex that persisted beyond the moment of death. Blood, dark and spreading, pooled beneath him, seeping into a fissure in the soil.