Chapter 203
The air in the tunnel was still thick—wet, rotting, alive with the smell of mildew and old blood. Marcus coughed once, then bit it back, trying not to wheeze too loudly. Every sound echoed in these damn walls.
And Richard’s boots were dragging. Worse, so were Marcus’s.
"Come on, man, you have to move," Richard hissed, arm locked around Marcus’s waist. "You’re not dead yet."
"Feels like a technicality," Marcus rasped, his voice hoarse, pain spiking through his thigh as his boot scraped uselessly against the floor. "You’re lucky I like you."
Richard didn’t laugh. His grip just tightened.
"Lean forward," he said. "Let me take more of your weight."
"I already am," Marcus muttered, but he did it anyway. The side of his face pressed against Richard’s shoulder, slick with sweat. His ribs screamed with each breath, and his left leg... well, that was more dead weight than limb now. Torn somewhere deep. Maybe even fractured. He didn’t want to know.
The tunnel curved, dipped, then sloped sharply upward. That was both good and bad. Good, because it meant they were headed toward the surface. Bad, because Marcus had about ten feet of stamina left and no painkillers.
Behind them, the dark yawned like a throat. No telling how far back the last of the facility’s twisted guardians had followed. But they’d heard the thing—heard it scrape metal with bone, heard its wet breath as it sniffed them out. It had a scent, like burned wires and decay.
Marcus shivered.
Richard felt it and didn’t stop.