He’s not fragile anymore. Not like the boy I found half-dead. His frame is solid now. Broad shoulders, filled-out cheeks—still gaunt, but stronger. Healthier. He’s still filthy like the rest of us, but no longer broken.
None of us are as broken as we were.
A grin tugs at my mouth. It isn’t wide. It’s the one I wear when I’m close to killing. When the air smells like sweat and blood and the hunt is coming.
I move fast. My boots splash near the edge of the water, almost stepping into it.
Gene turns to me. His auburn hair lifts in the breeze of movement. He’s not grinning, but his eyes flash with something close to pride.
My breath stinks. I haven’t cleaned it in days. Could be a week. Could be longer. Time is worthless down here. The night doesn’t end. The sun barely matters.
I think of Ren. My brother.
My grin fades but rises again as I think of the other blood oozing from my mouth as I drink of their dead limbs.
I pivot left. My pace quickens. The stone tunnels echo with footfalls—ours and theirs. Our screams and theirs. The air turns metallic in my lungs.
I bite down on the inside of my cheek until blood fills my mouth. Bittersweet. Warm.
I lick it, savor it like something sacred.
Red strands of light begin to form. Only I see them. Only I feel them. Scarlet threads that dance across my vision. They rise with my heartbeat, tracing my limbs—feet, knees, hands, elbows, shoulders. They move with me. I don’t guide them.
My kin call me Eos. Not for who I was. But for what I’ve become.
Hope. Rage. Fire in a dead world.
I duck right. Slide left. Crawl low, like an animal stalking prey.
“Eos!” someone calls my new name.
He’s in the water—shoulder torn open, bleeding into the sewage. But he smiles. A real smile. Watching me move.
I hear him breathe behind me. I hear all of them. The rats. The blood. The others hiding, revolvers tucked against shaking ribs, held tight behind whatever stone and pipe they can find.
The air is thick. Too warm. Too wet.
“Damn cockroaches!” a voice echoes.
Footsteps. More than a handful.
Derrik ducks behind a stone wall, aiming his gun low. His teeth grit. He doesn’t blink.
Christopher stays low too, revolver in hand—same as the others. Same as me. All stolen. Nothing given.
They call us cockroaches.
Vermin who live in the sewers after surviving two battles. It should’ve been more. We should’ve been dead by now. But we move. We kill. We vanish.
We’ve taken others in. Rescued more. Killed more. Mostly at night. Once in daylight.
Ralph died because of that.
My steps quicken again.
I see them—the silhouettes of blues, blurry, tinged purple from my reddened sight. They don’t know where to shoot. They fire blindly. Cowards. Afraid.
They see my red eyes. My pace doesn’t break. My breathing stays calm.
I move through the filth, boots splashing in thick, stinking water, trousers soaked through. I haven’t changed in days. I don’t care.
More bullets ring out—clumsy, panicked shots that echo through the tunnels like cracking bones. But they miss. As always. It’s like the first time I used this. Like trying to strike fire with wet flint, only to find the blaze already roaring behind you. Their aim is blind, wild—like a child throwing stones into the dark.
So fast I feel the flies.
They’re thicker now. Bigger. Some burst on contact with my skin. One hits my eye. It twitches, blinks hard—but I don’t close it. I never close my eyes. Not anymore.
My hand finds one of them. A blue. Police, soldier—it doesn’t matter. Their name doesn’t matter. What they are does. In their eyes, I’m filth. A cockroach. Something not even worth scraping off their boots.