5:10 p.m.

  Mike turned toward Harrow, his jaw tight, his voice low and deliberate.

  "I think it's time we had an honest talk," he said. Then, slowly, his gaze swept the group. "All of us, actually."

  The others fell into a hush. Dana's eyes flicked toward Jake, who frowned but said nothing. Sam sat cross-legged beside Dexter, his breathing low and steady, the dog's ears perked but still. Even Tess, wrapped in silence for what felt like hours, lifted her head slightly. The tension in the air prickled like static on skin.

  Mike turned back to Harrow.

  "I don't know who you really are," he said. "And honestly, that's not the most pressing thing right now. What I need to know is what's the oldest abandoned station you can get us to?"

  Harrow didn't speak immediately. He rubbed his jaw, the beard scratching softly beneath weathered fingers. He glanced toward the ceiling as if consulting a constellation only he could see.

  Finally, he said, "If it's old you're after, then the crown jewel's Old City Hall. Closed since 1945. Beautiful place with arched ceilings and bronze chandeliers. But to get there now?" He gave a crooked chuckle. "You'd have to die three times just to reach the entrance."

  Mike waited. Harrow's grin widened.

  "Your best options?" he said. "Nevins Street Lower. Far out in Brooklyn. Very old and sealed in the '60s. But it'll be a long journey, maybe 10 hours if we're careful. The trip is safer though. Not much left down there but old ugly graffiti to attack our eyes."

  Harrow's eyes twinkled with the kind of amusement that always made people uneasy.

  "Then there's Worth Street. Closed back in the early '60s as well. But it's closer though, maybe 2-3 hours, but crawling with things I'd rather not name and half collapsed tunnels." He continued, "It's a dangerous journey, yeah but if you follow my lead and stop trying to play the hero, we might get there in one piece."

  Mike didn't answer right away.

  A voice piped up from the group's edge it was Dana, tentative, uncertain. "Didn't you say even the abandoned stations might be sealed off, Mike? Why would an older one be any different?"

  Mike turned toward her slowly. He didn't answer right away. Instead, he took a long, heavy look at every person there. The quiet lasted just long enough to start making people nervous.

  He pointed back into the dark, toward the tunnel Reese had led his splinter group through. The air there seemed colder somehow, like the shadow of something that had already happened.

  "To be honest with you, if you're here looking for a way out, a way to return to the surface, then you should follow Reese."

  Everyone was stunned at the declaration.

  Jake blinked. "Wait what are you saying?"

  "I'm not going to look for a way out," Mike said, not meeting Jake's eyes.

  There was a beat of stunned silence.

  "What?" Dana's voice rose an octave. "Mike, what the hell are you talking about? You don't want to leave the tunnels? Are you seriously saying you want to stay here?"

  Mike opened his mouth but didn't speak. Words caught in his throat like splinters. He looked like he was having trouble finding the right words.

  Harrow chuckled.

  "Oh, boy," he said, voice like gravel and mischief. "You're always welcome to keep me company down here. But you're the one preaching honesty. Might as well tell them everything."

  Mike glanced at him for a second. Was Harrow just pretending, or had he really been able to read him all along?

  He looked at the group again. Dana's eyes were locked on him. Jake looked uncertain. Eli was watching him like a student waiting for the test answer that might decide everything.

  Mike sighed. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft. Measured. Too quiet for how loud the truth was.

  "When we were debating about going to Times Square... I gave you all the reasons I could think of. I said it could be a trap. That survivors might be hostile. That the message might've been bait from the gunmen."

  He looked up. "I lied."

  Nobody spoke. No one dared interrupt.

  "I didn't mean to deceive you. I just didn't know how to explain it back then. Hell, I'm not sure I can explain it now. But... the moment I saw that message scrawled on the wall, something inside me turned. My gut twisted like something inside me was trying to crawl away. It's more than fear; it's a kind of instinctive revulsion."

  He turned, slowly, until his eyes met each of theirs in turn.

  "Throughout everything that's happened in my life, I've survived this long by trusting that instinct. Every time I move, every decision I make whether to turn left or right, whether to wait or run has always been guided by something deeper than reason. Call it instinct or call me crazy, I don't care. It's something in me that's kept me alive."

  The flickering lamplight played tricks on his face sometimes hard, sometimes haunted.

  "So when I saw that message... I knew. I knew in the marrow of my bones that I needed to avoid it. That going there felt wrong, like a bloody lie dressed up in holy hope."

  Jake stepped forward slightly. "Alright... that's intense. I won't follow Reese either, I'd rather stick with this group. But I don't get one thing why go so far? Why not even try to find an exit?"

  Mike didn't hesitate.

  "Because thinking about the surface makes me sick."

  The room went still.

  Eli shifted uncomfortably. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean it literally," Mike said, his voice steady but strained. "When I try to picture climbing out of here... standing under the sun again... my body reacts like I've swallowed poison. It's like my brain's trying to rip itself apart. That's how wrong it feels. That's how dangerous it feels."

  Dana spoke, her voice thick with confusion. "That doesn't make any sense."

  "I know it doesn't," Mike said gently. "But I believe down here, in these tunnels we might actually be safer than we ever will be above."

  As if summoned by his words, the station began to tremble. Even the massive metallic door bearing the message shook loudly, its metal groaning against whatever mechanism held it in place.

  The tremor from the surface was so intense that it resonated deep underground, vibrating through their bones like a tuning fork struck against stone.

  No one knew what to say. And yet everyone seemed to understand Mike's feeling about rejoining the surface a little more at that moment.

  The shaking faded away, and Dana's voice was the first to cut through the silence.

  "Okay, I guess it's not smart to head to the surface at the moment, if we're being attacked by fucking nuclear weapons or something similar." She shook her head. "But then why do you want to head to an old station? If you're convinced we're better off underground, why risk that trek at all? Any journey with the gunmen running around is dangerous. Even more so if it's this guy leading us." She pointed at the grinning Harrow. "It would be better to just stay here and wait until everything settles down."

  "Because of these," Mike said, pointing at the metallic door sealing the exit.

  Jake stepped forward to get a better look. "What do you mean?"

  "The metallic doors," Mike answered. "A massive monolith of reinforced metal, five-by-six meters, dropped straight from the ceiling like they've been there forever. You've all seen them."

  Sam nodded, subdued. "Yeah, no kidding. But where are you going with this, kid?"

  Mike looked around, seeing the questions forming in their eyes.

  "I've checked every door we passed. I've examined the release mechanisms. These things were not added recently. The system is too sophisticated to have been put in place in a few hours this morning by a terrorist group. These doors have been built into the infrastructure."

  Eve whispered, "That's impossible."

  Mike shook his head. "No. It's not. It just means someone planned for this. For a very long time."

  The weight of that statement settled over them like dust.

  Eve straightened. "You're saying... this whole thing what we've been living through was planned?"

  "I think it might have been, yes," Mike replied.

  Eli was still confused. Holding his wounded arm, he said, "But what does that have to do with the abandoned stations?"

  "Because if we can find an old station no one's used in decades," Mike said, "and it still has the same mechanical door embedded in the ceiling... then we'll know."

  "Know what?" Jake asked.

  "We'll know who planned all of this."

  A beat passed. Someone let out a slow breath. Another gasped softly. The gravity of it finally began to settle in.

  Mike continued, "If we find the same kind of door same material, same complexity, same structural integration at Worth Street, a station closed more than fifty years ago, then we're not just dealing with some crazy militia or chaotic terrorist organization." He paused. "We might be dealing with something as big as the government itself."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "We're dealing with someone who built this system from the beginning. Someone with reach. With power."

  Dana stared at him, mouth slightly open. "You think this was done by... the government?"

  Mike didn't answer right away. He pointed at the metallic door again. "I think these kinds of massive doors were built into the stations from the first day of metro station construction. That's not a private job. That's an operation with permits, with oversight, with planning on a citywide scale across hundreds of stations in the metro system. We're dealing with someone with the power to build this system from the beginning."

  Jake ran a hand through his hair, his voice tight with frustration. "For what? You're saying the subway was built as a trap? That the government designed this whole thing to cage us like rats? Come on, that doesn't make any sense, Mike."

  Mike looked at him, and for a long moment, he said nothing.

  He knew Jake wouldn't accept this easily. The guy had worked the rails for years. This place was more than tunnels and concrete for him. The idea that it had all been designed with a trapping system baked into the foundation? That kind of truth didn't land clean for him.

  So Mike didn't argue. He just asked:

  "You ever hear of MKULTRA?"

  No one responded, but Harrow gave a loud chuckle. This guy really knew the metro and its history well.

  Mike continued, his voice quiet, even the tone of a man stating facts, not seeking drama.

  "It was a CIA project in the '50s. Look it up if we ever get a phone signal again. Human experimentation. Mind control. Psychological warfare. Everything was on the table to experiment on. And they used American citizens as test subjects without their consent. People just like us."

  Jake frowned. "That's ancient history"

  "But that wasn't the worst part," Mike said, his voice lowering. "In the 1950s and '60s, they ran something called 'Operation Big City.'"

  He let that hang in the air for a moment.

  "It was a field simulation. They released what they called 'harmless' bacteria into the New York City subway system, just to see how a biological agent might spread in a real-world scenario."

  "The idea was simple: infect one person, track them, see how long it takes for the entire system to get exposed. No one gave consent, of course. No one even knew it was happening until everything was declassified decades later."

  Mike turned toward Jake. "That was seventy years ago. But it sounds awfully similar to what we're living through right now, doesn't it? What if they never stopped their experiments?"

  He looked at the group, then at the massive metallic gate behind them. "What if those doors were put in place as a containment system in case their experiment went wrong and everything spiraled out of hand?"

  Jake didn't respond. His jaw worked, but no words came out.

  Everyone wanted to refute Mike, to tell him he was wrong and just talking crazy. But how could they when they'd already seen Anna die from a mysterious infection?

  The theory made too much sense to be denied.

  Silence stretched between them, heavy as the concrete walls surrounding them.

  No one had anything left to say for a moment. Then Mike took a breath. "And that's not the only reason we can't stay here."

  He hesitated, then, with a steady breath:

  "I think I'm infected... And if we're being honest with each other, I think everyone is already infected."

  The words landed like gunfire.

  Heads snapped toward him. Dana recoiled as if struck.

  "What?" she snapped, voice sharp.

  Mike's voice didn't waver.

  "We might not be showing symptoms; not the same ones, anyway. And maybe our bodies are reacting differently. But if this is airborne... if it's in the tunnels, in the vents, in the air we've been breathing since this morning then the real surprise would be if we weren't infected."

  No one spoke.

  Sam looked down. He didn't argue.

  "I said I'd be honest," Mike continued. "And I can't say exactly what's happening to me, but something is. I have no symptoms of bleeding yet. No fever either. But I feel... wrong. Off. Like something's crawling under my skin. Like something's in my blood that wasn't there before."

  He rubbed his arms like the sensation was trying to surface.

  "It's like... like something's moving through me. Changing me. And I don't believe a cure is coming our way. So no, I'm not going to sit still and wait to see what I turn into."

  The silence that followed felt thick as fog.

  And then, for the first time in what felt like forever, Tess spoke.

  Her voice was quiet. Hollow, but clear.

  "So if we're infected... and the government knows... and they sealed the metro... and no one's come to help..."

  She looked at Mike.

  "They're not trying to save us."

  Mike nodded slowly.

  "They're trying to erase us."

  That silence was colder than the door behind them.

  Tess looked at her hands. When she spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper. "I think I'm infected too."

  No one interrupted her. No one even shifted.

  "Since the train... since Anna... I've felt like I'm drowning. Suffocating. At first I thought it was the shock, the grief. I was so numb I thought maybe I was just broken inside. But it's not that. It's something else. I feel it when I close my eyes. Like... like I'm not alone in my own skin anymore."

  Then, quietly, like someone afraid to speak too soon:

  "And I don't want to be afraid of that anymore."

  The admission hung in the air like a prayer.

  Jake exhaled, long and low. Then, slowly, like someone surrendering to something he'd been resisting for hours, he sat down on the bench behind him and looked up at the ceiling.

  "Yeah," he said. "Same here."

  He scratched at his jaw, his voice cracking in places. "My chest's been tight since the fight. I didn't even do anything during that moment, but since then I just feel... pressure. Like there's something moving through me that doesn't belong. Like my blood got heavier."

  His eyes flicked to Tess.

  "I didn't say anything... I didn't want to give you a reason to leave me behind. You of all people have the right to push me away from the team."

  Tess looked at him intensely, a little fire storming through her eyes for a fraction of time. Then she closed them, and before she could say anything, Eve, who had not realized the silent interaction between Jake and Tess, stepped forward, one hand resting gently on Dexter's harness. Her voice was small, careful, but strong in its steadiness.

  "I don't have the bleeding. Or the fever. But I hear things now. Not through my ears, but by... vibrations. It sounds like the tunnels are breathing. And my bones shake to the rhythm of that breathing. I can feel it in my chest sometimes, even when I'm not moving."

  No one dismissed her. No one questioned it.

  Dexter let out a soft whine and pressed his head into her leg.

  Dana scoffed, not unkindly.

  "You too, huh?" She stepped forward, arms crossed defensive, as always, but now just shielding herself from the weight of what she was about to say. "Since the tunnels, I've felt like I'm running on something I don't understand. I get bursts of energy that don't make sense. I should be crashing, but instead I feel... sharper. Wired. Full of energy. Like my body's preparing for something at any moment."

  She looked around, the edge softening in her eyes.

  "Honestly, I just thought it was just adrenaline. But hearing all of you now… I'm not so sure anymore."

  Sam grunted in agreement. Still standing, pipe in hand.

  "It's like a fire," he said. "Crawling and burning through me. I thought maybe it was the fight. It reminded me of my prime in the Marines. But if I have to be honest, even at my prime, I never felt so powerful. But after the fight, the feeling disappeared. That heat faded away and turned to ash. The fire still burns, but it's only painful now. I feel like I'd run a marathon with weights in my bones."

  He leaned his weight against the wall and looked down at his hands like he was waiting for them to betray him.

  Lien stepped forward without a word. She looked at them and silently nodded. That was enough. Everyone understood.

  After a few seconds of stillness, Eli hesitantly raised his hand.

  "I think I'm infected too," he said, his voice thin.

  He glanced around, observing everyone's reaction, then looked at Mike.

  "But... you all already knew, didn't you?"

  Mike gave a faint smile. "Yeah, man. Everyone knows."

  A few soft chuckles slipped through the group. Even Lien, always unreadable, cracked a small smile.

  Mike let the silence breathe before speaking again.

  "Yours is the one that confuses me most," he admitted. "You were the first to show symptoms. I remember seeing the blood from your nose when we got off the train. At the time, I thought it was just the stress."

  "But everything changed after Anna."

  His eyes flicked briefly toward Tess. She'd gone quiet, head bowed, folding into herself.

  "Since then..." He turned back to Eli. "You've been trying to hide it, but you've been coughing nonstop and your bleeding is getting worse."

  Mike's voice stayed level, but beneath it was something sharper.

  "You should be feverish, weak, and disoriented by now. But your breathing is still steady. You have no fever. And aside from the injury from the fight, you look... normal."

  He let that sink in.

  "That tells us something important," Mike continued. "Whatever this infection is, it's not uniform. It doesn't act the same way in everyone. Or maybe... the incubation time is different for each of us."

  He exhaled slowly.

  "The question now is understanding why."

  Eli stared down at his hands. He flexed his fingers as if expecting to see something crawl beneath the skin.

  "That's... insane," he whispered.

  Harrow, still leaning against the far wall, finally chuckled.

  "Well," he said, "just a good old back pain, but other than that, I feel fantastic."

  They all turned to look at him.

  His grin widened. Like he was watching a play he'd seen performed a hundred times.

  "But don't let that stop your little support group. Keep sharing. It's good for the soul."

  Mike didn't react. He just turned back to the others.

  "We're not alone in this anymore," he said. "Whatever's inside us... it's real. But we'll face it together. No one gets left behind."

  There was no speech. No cheer. Just quiet nods.

  And for the first time all day, something like unity.

  Something like truth.

  5:35 p.m.

  After resting for a few minutes, Mike stood up and turned toward the group, eyes scanning the fatigue in their faces the weight they were all carrying. Then he looked back at the dark tunnel behind them.

  "We go to Worth Street," he said firmly.

  Jake blinked. "The more dangerous one?"

  Mike nodded. "I'm pretty sure I read something interesting about Worth Street. During the Cold War, nuclear-era bunkers were built into the foundation of some metro stations as protection for citizens. Worth was one of them. If that's true, it might have supplies. A secure place to hole up."

  He glanced toward the sealed metallic gates at the edge of the station.

  "But more than that I don't want to just survive the next tunnel. I want to find something we can hold. Something we can build from. If we can make Worth Street ours we stop running. And we start pushing back."

  Dana blinked. "What are you even talking about? You think we're going to confront the people who built this nightmare?"

  "Yes," Mike said.

  The word hung in the air like a challenge.

  Finally, Sam spoke, his voice low and even the tone of a man who didn't ask questions lightly.

  "And what if you're right?" he said. "What if it really is the government? What then?"

  Mike didn't answer immediately. He looked down at the ground, jaw working, thoughts turning behind his eyes like gears grinding in the dark. "If this is really the government's doing, then they'll do everything they can to make us disappear. And I have no intention of agreeing with that.”

  Mike's gaze shifted, landing on the radio clipped to Jake's belt. "I want answers," he said, pointing at the device, "I want to uncover everything that happened here. And I'll do my best to leave a trace of what happened here for everyone to see."

  Jake followed Mike's gesture, then shook his head with a bitter laugh. "This thing?" He unclipped the radio, holding it up. "I've tried it dozens of times since we got down here. Nothing goes out, nothing comes in. Dead air on every frequency."

  "That's because we're trapped down here in a concrete tomb," Mike said, his voice gaining strength. "But if there really is a bunker built to survive a nuclear attack? That place would have been designed with communication in mind. Hardened systems and ways to reach the outside world when everything else fails."

  Jake's expression shifted, a flicker of something that might have been hope. "You think...?"

  "I think if we can get to Worth Street, if we can get inside that bunker, we might be able to jury-rig your radio to their systems. Boost the signal. Find a way to reach the surface."

  The silence that followed was different from before—charged with possibility rather than despair.

  "It's a long shot," Sam said quietly.

  "It's not much, you’re right. But it might be a real chance to tell the world what's happening down here and call for help." Mike looked around at the group, meeting each pair of eyes.

  "And if there is no bunker?" Dana asked fiercely.

  Mike turned to her, his eyes hard as flint. "Then we find another way, and we burn the whole system down if we have to."

  No one cheered. No one clapped. But a quiet fire lit in the eyes of a few.

  Harrow chuckled again, tapping the floor with the end of his walking stick. "I like you more every day, boy."

  "Don't get used to it," Mike replied.

  Jake took a step back and sank onto a rusted bench. He rubbed at his jaw, trying to steady himself. The weight of everything Mike had said pressed down like a lead blanket.

  "This is insane," Jake muttered.

  Dana exhaled sharply and turned toward Harrow. "You said you can get us there. Can you do it without getting us all killed?"

  Harrow gave a crooked smile. "I've walked that path before. I can walk it again. Whether it spits you out whole... well, that's up to you."

  Jake stood slowly, like a man accepting his own execution. "Then let's go. Before I change my mind."

  Eli muttered something under his breath, but when Mike met his eyes, he nodded.

  One by one, they gathered their things. Sam pulled himself up with a quiet grunt. Dana helped Eli to his feet. Dexter rose beside Eve, tail stiff, ears alert.

  They moved toward the tunnel, slow but steady.

  Mike lingered a moment, looking back at the makeshift camp they had built. The cold ashes. The metal doors. The silence.

  He whispered to no one, "We're done surviving. Time to look for answers."

  Then he turned and led them into the dark.