Chapter 61: The Bunker (1)
Damian’s POV
“I am a monster for excusing myself at the deaths I should have saved.”
––Damian Stark
The lights flicker once, twice, and then die, plunging us back into darkness. I sit among the others, illuminated only by the failing glow of broken ceiling tubes—some hanging at odd angles, others completely dead. Dust drifts downward like motes in a stale shaft of light, settling on my skin, making my eyes itch. Time has passed. I have no idea whether it’s been over a day or merely the last dozen hours. My body is curled tight, knees to chest, armpit pressed against shin. I am too tired to uncoil.
Around me, murmurs ripple through shadows, distressing and unintelligible. I crouch, isolated by near deafness—an echoing hush as if I’m diving through murky water. My goggles gone, vision blurred; I can see the outlines of ten others who were too close to the blast, their faces gaunt in the half light.
Flicker...dark...flicker...dark.
Sometimes I drift across the wide corridor of the bunker like a ghost, but no one recognizes me as a doctor. Those I had helped before are gone—either carried away to other tunnels or already dead. Down here, at least a dozen meters below earth, none of us were severely wounded. I was caught just off the path—in a sub chamber between the tunnel and this bunker. If it weren’t for that sky plate falling, we never would’ve made it here in time. It shattered my hearing, but spared my life. Ears don’t matter much compared to survival.
Still, all the injured lie above now, beneath the stone, buried or lost. Some may have reached other bunkers near the lake, but most didn’t make it.
I stand—more a lift than a move—and remain rooted beside a silent stranger. My face drains of what relief I felt at surviving. Survival itself feels shallow now, insufficient.