The feel of hands grabbing her out of bed forced a short scream, but a hand quickly covered her mouth.
“Quiet, Em.” It was Kyle and he was already running with her in his arms, down an unlit stairway.
The frantic way he moved scared her. She thought back briefly to the past two weeks she’d spent mostly
in bed, and couldn’t wrap her mind around what the problem was. Her coughing had stopped a few days
ago and she’d even managed to go out onto the balcony for a while the previous evening.
In the darkness, there were hurried voices and she realized they weren’t alone.
“We don’t know yet, just get her down there,” a female voice said, inhumanly fast.
“Which direction?” Kyle hissed at the other woman.
“East, they have to come through the city to get here,” she answered.
Emily was too frightened to speak, too afraid to ask the questions that were on her mind. Her eyes
furiously tried to adjust to the darkness, but failed.
The descent ended and they were all running through what felt like a damp tunnel. She realized that at
the speed the heku ran, they had to be hundreds of feet below the ground now and the panic swelled
further.
Kyle finally put her down and gently led her to a chair, where she sat and curled up, wrapping her arms
tightly around her legs. Someone put a blanket over her shoulders and she shivered at how cold it was.
“Do we dare?” a strange man said.
“We should be ok down here,” the woman replied.
“No,” Kyle hissed, and nothing else was said about it.
“What’s going on?” Emily finally managed to ask, and she could feel eyes on her, though she was unable
to see anything in the blackness.
