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Now the question of who would have to wait as I heard people coming from the top of the corridor behind me. Which meant I didn’t have time to stand here looking at that broken lock like it would somehow start talking to me.

There was no going back now. There was nothing behind me but men who had been told to sweep every door on every floor and not leave the building without me.

There was only one way left.

So, I dropped the extinguisher and put my shoulder against that door and pushed it open, quickly stepping into the darkness.

But the dark on the other side of that door was a different kind.

Because in the hospital, I’d had those green emergency lights. And now they were useless, as there was nothing down there. Nothing at all. And I mean nothing. I could have been making my way down to the pits of Hell for all I knew.

I put my hand up in front of my own face and couldn’t see it. Not a shape, not an outline, not one damn thing.

So, I put my palm flat on the wall and started walking as quickly as I could. The brick was wet, cold and rough under my fingers. The air smelled like a cellar that hadn’t been opened in fifty years, and every part of me was screaming that I shouldn’t be down here.

But I kept going, because forward was the only direction left.

It was the only direction I knew. Because I didn’t know how to stop trying to escape the threat. To stop running from whatever was chasing me. It was like something primal had taken over these last three years and become the most integral part of my DNA. This need to stay ahead of the hunt even if I thought the predator had lost the scent behind me. Still, I kept running.

Kept surviving.

So, I continued on in the dark, telling myself it would lead to freedom. Every footstep, every second, every erratic heartbeat would be rewarded if I just didn’t stop.

Speaking of footsteps, the tunnel floor was gravel, because that was what they laid in eighteen eighty-four, and it has been down there ever since. And I hated it within about twenty steps. Because it was loud. Every footstep I took came back at me off those walls, crunching and shifting and announcing exactly where I was to anybody who cared to listen.

I tried to walk on my toes but needless to say, it didn’t help.

And that was when I started thinking about Roz.

Was she hurt?

That scream had gone right through me, and I hadn’t been able to do one damn thing about it. Now I was walking away from her in the dark with my hand on a wall. All the while she was back there with men who could take a grown man by the throat in the dark and put him on the floor without making a sound.

He’d said nobody was to touch me. I’d heard him say it from inside a linen cart. But he had never once said anything about her. The guilt was starting to eat me up inside, enough that I turned around to look back the way I’d come. However, the second I did, I felt myself getting lightheaded and I ended up trying to reach for the wall, missing it completely. Which meant I went straight down onto my hands and knees on that gravel.

And it fucking hurt!

Damn, but it hurt more than I expected and I had to bite down on my own arm not to make a noise. Then I forced myself to get back up and I knew when I felt my knees wet and stinging that I’d taken the skin off both of them. It also meant running was out of the question, because I knew my own body well enough to know what was happening to it. The adrenaline had been keeping me upright for an hour and it was now wearing off, and when it goes, it takes everything with it.

Which meant I was forced to take it slower, because I knew exactly what was happening to me. The shaking in my hands had changed into the other kind. My legs were heavy and there was that softness starting at the edges of things that always comes before I stop making sense. Not surprising seeing as I had eaten a sandwich at lunchtime and one candy bar since.

So, no running. Not unless I wanted this to end with me face down on the gravel while he walked up and took his time about it.

About thirty seconds later I stopped dead, because I’d heard something behind me.

I stood absolutely still with my hand on that wall and my heart going so hard I could feel it in my throat. I listened for long seconds until I was assured there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Just the drip of water somewhere ahead and my own breathing, which sounded enormous.

You’re imagining it.

Of course, telling myself this didn’t really help. Especially not once I started walking again, because the gravel was so loud beneath my own feet that I would have had to stop to hear anything else at all. In fact, I was still convincing myself it was my own footsteps that I had heard, when I swear I heard something different.

So, I stopped again.

Silence.