Chapter 215: What the Dark Keeps
The forest was breathing in silence.
Camille stood with her back pressed against the cold concrete outcropping, fingers curling and uncurling around the strap of her satchel. The vent slat beneath her palm had gone slick with condensation, cold seeping up through her skin. Alexis stood just a step away, motionless but tense, her posture coiled like she was listening for a sound only she could hear.
"We’re wasting time," Camille whispered. "If this place has power, it might have lights. Radios. A map. Something."
Alexis’s response was quiet but firm. "And if it has a broken elevator shaft? A pit? Collapsed floor? One wrong step in the dark and it’s over."
Camille gestured to the half-buried structure. "And what if it doesn’t? What if it’s safe and we lose the chance because we were too cautious?"
Alexis didn’t answer. Her eyes were on the forest now. The light had almost completely drained from the sky. Every vine and trunk was a silhouette. Every shadow, a wall. The silence wasn’t comforting anymore—it was dense. Waiting.
That’s when they heard it.
A snap.
Branches crunching. Brush slashed aside in sharp, desperate bursts.
Alexis grabbed Camille and yanked her down behind a broad knot of roots just as the noise grew louder—closer. Not wandering. Not animal.
Someone was running.