Breathless City Read online

  For the first time, she didn’t think about the strength of the oxygen pill in her lungs. She didn’t think about holding back to make sure she had the strength to run straight to the underground city. The only thought on her mind was just keeping up, just making it now and ensuring she wasn’t the one tangled in nails, ripped to the ground to be eaten alive.

  They ran as the buck to their right went down, bleating in a furious struggle to live. Stella muscled her way deeper into the herd, surrounding herself and Gavin by a furred wall of deer, far away from the bucking and thrashing of that desperate animal. As the sound of struggles quieted, Stella knew they had finished him.

  The herd moved as one, turning sharply out of the way of a building and following the curve of the road. Stella turned along with them, seeing the building ahead and anticipating the change. The sharp movement coupled with the sweat from their combined exertions was just enough to wrench Gavin’s hand out of her own.

  Stella continued to run for a moment, rocked forward by momentum, before she reached behind to take Gavin’s hand once more. She felt nothing. There was no one there. Frantically, she pivoted, looking for him.

  Stella had stopped running completely, seeking him out. She stood stock still as the deer veered out of her way with nimble precision. He wasn’t anywhere. Every human figure around reached out for her with blind, infected eyes.

  Stella stood frozen with indecision. She bit down hard on her lip to stop herself from screaming out his name as panic clouded her judgment. She strained to hear if they had gotten to him already. Was he fighting them? Where? What could she do?

  A human hand latched on to her shoulder, pulling her back firmly, and she had to fight down the scream that wanted to tear its way out of her throat. She whirled around, ready to kill, just to find Gavin’s face there instead, his kind eyes laced with worry.

  Before she had time to do something completely stupid, like cry out his name or lean forward and kiss him right here, in the middle of a stampede, Gavin swung her right off her feet and into his arms.

  He took off, gaining back some of the ground they had lost. Stella leaned against his chest, listening to the hammering beat of his heart as he sprinted. Even holding her, Gavin began to regain lost ground. Watching the world stream by, surrounded by muscled arms, Stella realized Gavin was holding back. He was a lot stronger than she had thought.

  He ran until less of the infected raised their hands against them, the numbers dropping off with each successful kill.

  When Gavin was sure that none of the infected were running after the herd, he slowed his run down to a jog, letting the rest of the herd run on to seek their pastures. As the noise of the deer passed off into the distance, the two were left in silence.

  Gavin slowed to a halt, bending to let her down. When her feet touched earth, Stella didn’t move away. Instead, she leaned against him, pulling him tight against her in a fierce hug. She burrowed her face right in the crook of his neck, feeling the heat of his skin against the night chill.

  There was still danger all around them, but here with him, Stella felt safe. She didn’t want to think about what would happen after she took him back to the oxygen factory. He was here, and he was safe for now. Stella held him close before taking his hand in hers and setting back on course to the underground city.

  16

  Gavin watched her raise the lid with caution, letting sand drift off slowly, revealing the entrance to the underground city. The two of them stared into the depths uncovered, and Gavin couldn’t help but feel that the way into the underground looked like a darker pit than anything else out in the night.

  Walking down the curving iron staircase out of the scant moonlight, the air became chilled and dank against his skin. Descending those stairs felt nothing like stepping into a new city that could sustain a number of human lives. This was a tunnel, buried deep under the earth.

  Now he understood Stella’s grim expression every time that she mentioned the underground city. Gavin wasn’t just walking into danger, but getting suffocated by it. The walls were tight as they entered the tunnels, distancing themselves from the latch that served as the only entrance and exit.

  The light sound of their footsteps resounded in the hallway. Gavin looked to the end of the narrow corridor to the little he could see around the bend, wondering if there were any people around. How could people live confined like this? Who wouldn’t want to escape from this place?

  “No one’s out now besides the night watch,” Stella said in a soft voice. It was the first time either of them had spoken since they were back with her gang. “Should be quiet for the next few hours. But if we get spotted by the wrong person, we’re going to have to run, or fight. This city is like a giant maze. If we get separated, just remember that all the tunnels lead to the supply room. From there, you’re just a steel door and two guards away from the shipment station.”

  The shipment station. Having been so focused on surviving, he hadn’t considered what would happen next. He was close to getting back home. But then what would happen after Stella brought him to the shipment station? Would he ever see her again? Was he ready to let her go?

  Stella prowled through the corridor, keeping close to the wall with one hand casually poised near the holster at her side, ready for danger.

  The cold air clung tighter to him. The low ceilings and solid walls were too close, trapping him in. Gavin shook his head. It was just in his mind that there wasn’t enough space.

  He had to snap out of it and focus. They weren’t out of danger yet.

  At first, the only sound Gavin could hear was the light tread of his boots over the static hum of fluorescent lights. The city was so quiet that he could hear the swish of fabric as he moved and the dripping of water off pipes. Then, he heard something. Stella paused, motionless, her focus on a point up ahead.

  A brawny voice echoed through the hallway. “If they haven’t sent it by now, it’s not going to happen. What do they expect us to find?”

  A second voice answered, unsettlingly close. “Nothing like this has happened before. Obviously, the administrators have no idea what to do about it.”

  “Keep your voice down if you’re going to say things like that,” the first voice snapped.

  Before Gavin had time to make sense of the conversation, Stella jerked his shoulder back, pulling him down a side corridor.

  Passing the same spot where Stella and Gavin just stood a moment before were two men. From their height and muscle mass to the batons strapped to their belts, to the stoic expressions on their faces, these were men who lived in violence. Gavin understood the danger on a primal level, the same as he could look at a rattlesnake or jaguar and just know.

  As their footsteps faded off down the tunnels, Stella leaned into his ear and whispered, “Those are the advance guard. Stay away from them.”

  Gavin didn’t need the warning, but he appreciated the way Stella lingered near, close to him.

  He couldn’t imagine himself in the shipment station, turning around to say goodbye to her. Parting ways on their separate journeys home—he’d go to the oxygen factory, while she faced these narrow passageways alone.

  How could he say everything he felt? With her, he had escaped death time and time again. He didn’t have words for what she meant to him.

  Gavin turned and pulled Stella into a hug. His anxiety melted away with the warmth of her touch. His head drifted to rest at the crook of her neck as her arms wrapped around him. He didn’t want to let her go. From Stella’s tight embrace, he guessed she felt the same. All he needed was one moment longer to forget.

  Soon he’d be ready to run and face down death again. Soon, he’d face the likelihood that he’d never see her again. Just for now, he forgot everything, imagining instead that they were safe.

  At the sound of marching, the two of them broke apart.

  “Something happened,” Stella whispered. There were more footsteps than the paltry night watch Stella had described.

>   Gavin thought back to the conversation between the two advance guards. If they haven’t sent it by now...

  “What day is it today?” Gavin asked, comprehension dawning on him.

  “Monday night,” Stella replied.

  Tonight was the night after shipments came in. He hadn’t given enough thought to what was happening back at the oxygen factory.

  “Guards aren’t usually out now,” Stella said. “They should mostly be asleep. They all have day shifts overseeing the cargo.”

  “Then what would the guards do if the shipments didn’t come?” Gavin asked.

  “The shipments always come on Monday,” Stella replied automatically, before she paused and her tone grew cautious. “Why wouldn’t it come? You think they didn’t send it?”

  “They might not have. Not if they were busy looking for me,” Gavin replied. His father was so overprotective of him. Gavin couldn’t even imagine what he had been going through for this past week.

  Stella was quiet for a moment, considering. “The shipments have always come. They’ve come every Monday since before I was born. People won’t know what to think, they’ll panic.”

  “There’s no need for that, we can just ship it out later,” Gavin replied.

  “Yes, but nobody here knows that. No one but you,” Stella said. Her voice trailed off as the thud of footsteps became too loud to ignore.

  They froze when an intense light shone directly in their faces, blinding them.

  “Told you I heard something.”

  Gavin tensed. That was the voice of the advanced guard. His eyes strained to adjust and see around the high-powered flashlight that burned past his eyes, clawing at the back of his mind. The light glared red behind his eyelids when he shut his eyes for a moment, and he forced them open again. They wanted him disoriented. He wasn’t going to let them throw him off.

  Gavin focused on their feet, the only thing he could make out through the glare. The men were approaching. They wanted to get into position, to corner him, get him vulnerable. Beside him, Gavin heard Stella shifting her stance, ready to spring into action.

  “He’s a big one. Must think he’s tough, coming down here. Thinks he can just come down for a raid, take what’s ours. You think he’s as strong as he looks?”

  Gavin couldn’t let their insults distract him as he focused on their movements.

  “Forget him. Look at the girl.” The advance guard spoke in a faint whisper, but not quite soft enough. After a week of living out among the infected, where sound was a death sentence, the words echoed in Gavin’s mind.

  Besides, Gavin didn’t like the leer in the man’s voice when he spoke about Stella.

  “She must be that albino’s daughter.”

  Didn’t Stella say that the administrators would do anything for a cure? Gavin could recall the exact numb look on Stella’s face when she told him, “My father didn’t just die. He was murdered.”

  If Stella had heard what the guards had said, she showed no sign of it. She stood motionless.

  Gavin watched as the advance guards shifted their angle, trying to cut him off from Stella. They were just a few steps away from reaching her, and Stella stood stock-still.

  Then Gavin charged, slamming straight into the guard, knocking him to the wall.

  A stunned moment followed. They all paused and watched the guard’s body hit the wall awkwardly and collapse on the ground.

  Stella and the remaining advance guard reacted at the same time. Stella pivoted and ran. The other guard turned and punched Gavin hard. Gavin rolled his body back with the momentum of the punch, and as the guard lifted his fists into a fighting stance, anticipating the retaliating blow, Gavin ignored him. He raced down the full length of the hallway, pushing himself hard. He caught up with her just as she turned sharply down a side passageway.

  Gavin ran with her as she weaved her way through the empty corridors and side passageways. They entered one alley and blew past a lone guard so fast that he barely had time to register who they were before they were around the bend.

  Does she have a plan? Or is she reacting like a cornered animal, moving in random patterns and putting distance between herself and danger?

  He didn’t know.

  No matter where they ran, there was only one exit. Unless they could reach it, they were trapped. They couldn’t keep running forever.

  Shouts and footsteps echoed through the tunnels. There were more of them, and they were after Stella. He was sure of it.

  They ran until Stella reached a door that looked the same as all the others and skidded to a stop. Gavin almost ran past her and lost her. His heart drummed, pumping adrenaline through his veins. What she was up to?

  Stella reached beneath her tank top and lifted a key that dangled from a simple chain around her neck. She lifted the chain over her head, placing the brass key into Gavin’s hands.

  “Go straight through until you find a steel door. This key will unlock it and get you to the shipment station.”

  Gavin saw resolve in Stella’s eyes, and he didn’t trust it. “You’re going out there alone?”

  “Gavin, it’s the only way you can get back home,” Stella said.

  “What about you?”

  Without pause, Stella closed the space between the two of them and kissed him. Gavin felt a surge of fierce determination behind those soft lips, and he let himself get lost in it. Warmth burned through him as his heart raced for her.

  When Stella pulled away, Gavin took a step back, stunned.

  “Promise me. You have to promise me that you’ll make it there,” she said.

  Gavin nodded, not knowing what else he could say.

  “Go.” Stella pushed him in the direction of the door. “I’ll distract them.”

  Then she ran, without a single look back.

  He was alone. The passageways around him were empty now. He listened to the footsteps of Stella and the guards until the sound became too distant for him to hear. Gavin looked at the little brass key Stella had pressed into his hands. He wanted to chase after her. He needed to know she was okay. But the weight of the promise he had made to her stopped him. Gavin turned and made his way to the shipment station.

  17

  Stella told herself that Gavin was safe now. She had given him a chance to escape.

  All it had taken was her freedom.

  They’d caught her.

  She forced herself to look up, staring into the eyes of the men who had killed her father.

  Their beady eyes were fixed on her. Those eyes stared at her with hunger, and a shiver coursed its way over her skin.

  She looked back at her feet, her determination fading in the face of their unnatural gazes. She was on stage at the administrators’ lounge, surrounded by murderers. Though her glance was brief, it was enough to count them and to know that all of them were here. From the administrator of maintenance, to the administrator of shipments, all of them were here.

  All along her arms, Stella could feel aches that were already blossoming into angry purple bruises, dark against her pale skin. She ignored the pain, reminding herself instead that it was nothing but a sign that she hadn’t made this easy for them. They had bound her hands together, even with all the guards in the crowds, and with more lined up along the hallways outside. It was one eighteen-year-old girl against hundreds of men, and they still had taken the precaution of tying her hands together. The administrators definitely viewed her as a threat, even now. But this time, she wasn’t going to get away.

  So this was how it would all end. Not from the toxins in the open air or from a life of scavenging. Not from the infected who tried to hunt her down for years. This was her ending: here, under the bright stage lights, and at the hands of people who were still human.

  Stella held all of the emotions down within her. She wouldn’t let herself cry, wouldn’t let a single tear slide down her cheeks. These monsters didn’t deserve to see it. She wasn’t going to give in. All Stella wanted to do right now was try to
hold on to the sensation of living—these last moments of sheer existence. Just a little while longer, before it was gone.

  “Yes, I’m certain that’s my source. She has the blood,” spoke a low voice that Stella recognized.

  Stella looked up to see her contact, the nurse, whispering into the ears of administrators. She glared at him, but he refused to look at her. Maybe he could feel her eyes on him, but guilt kept his gaze away.

  Why had she ever let herself trust him?

  He seemed so normal. Nervous. Paranoid that the very walls had eyes that would turn on him at any moment. She had misjudged the man, never seeing him as a threat.

  Word about her had spread among the nurses. There was always at least one person willing to trade with her. She hadn’t worried that the information would fall into the wrong hands. The consequences for any kind of contact with a gang member were too severe for that.

  Stella should have known something was off when he used an administrator key as a trade. How else would he have gotten it? They gave it to him, trying to lure her closer. It had all been too convenient, and she hadn’t even noticed anything was wrong; she just let herself fall into the trap.

  What little talking there was in the room ceased as a sharply dressed man with his hair gelled back joined her on the stage. The man clutched a microphone and walked around Stella with a smile, though she noticed he was careful never to come too close.

  “Welcome one and all tonight!” he announced in the rich cadence of an announcer’s voice.

  “I’m Tristan Kotterman, your auctioneer, and what a lovely specimen we have here with us,” Tristan said, gesturing at Stella without ever looking at her himself. “Gentlemen, just take a look here. Just take in the color of that skin. Might be the last time you ever get the chance.” As he directed their attention, Stella felt the gazes of all of those eyes, now intensified, as they watched and speculated.

  “Let’s start the bidding at ten thousand pills. Do I hear ten thousand? Ten thousand, now eleven. Eleven thousand, will you give me twelve?”