Chapter 17: No One Makes It Out Clean
The tunnel yawned open in front of them like a wound torn through the belly of the earth. A breathless void, stitched with rust and shadow, trailing into a darkness that didn't end. Selene went first, stepping over the broken remnants of old infrastructure — splintered rails, cracked stone, old metal bones long since left to rot. Mae followed, her breath ragged, boots scraping over concrete. Aria came last, flashlight in hand, every step pulling her deeper into something colder than night.
The air changed the moment they crossed the threshold. Not just cold — dead. Stale. Like the world forgot how to breathe down here. Flashlights carved ribbons through the gloom, catching the dust in slow motion. The walls whispered everything back to them. Footsteps. Cloth. Breath. All returned softer, warped — echoes that didn't always feel like their own. Aria tried not to think about what else might be listening.
They moved in silence, every footstep a risk. Nearly a quarter mile in, Selene paused — listening, head tilted. A faint rhythm tapped through the dark behind them. Boots. Not theirs. Faster than patrol. Closer than it should've been.
Mae turned first. Her beam swept the corridor behind them — and landed on a face she hadn't seen in weeks. A face she'd grieved.
Jace.
Redhill's shadow. Pale, wide - eyed, lips curled in a wrong kind of smile. Not shocked. Not angry. Just watching like he'd always known this moment would come.
"You left," he said, voice a dry scrape echoing off the concrete. "They said you would."
Mae stumbled, flashlight shaking in her grip. "Jace — what… what are you doing here?"
"They let me go," he said flatly. "After I told them where you were headed."
Aria's stomach dropped. She saw the shift in Mae before Selene could — shoulders locked, breath hitching, guilt etched into her bones.
Selene's voice cut the silence like a blade. "Run."
But Mae didn't move.
"I thought you were dead," she whispered. "I thought you stayed behind —"
Jace raised the pistol.
Aria screamed just as the tunnel cracked with the sound of a gunshot.
Mae dropped to the concrete like a cut string, blood blooming across her ribs. Selene fired instantly — two clean, practiced shots. Jace staggered back, hit the wall, then crumpled without a word.
Then silence again.
Mae's breath came in sharp, wet stutters. Aria dropped to her knees, pressing both hands over the wound. Blood soaked through her fingers almost instantly. Mae's skin was already going pale.
"Stay with me," Aria pleaded. "Mae, you're okay — you're gonna be okay —"
Mae coughed, dark blood spilling from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes locked on Aria's, glazed with panic and pain.
"Tell her…" Mae tried, breath hitching. "Tell her I tried."
Selene knelt beside them, checked the wound, then shook her head with brutal clarity. "We have to move."
"She's still breathing," Aria protested, frantic.
"She won't be in five minutes."
Mae's hand shot out and gripped Aria's wrist. Her fingers dug deep. "Go," she rasped. "I'm already gone."
Her grip loosened. Then fell away.
Just like that.
They didn't bury her. There was no time. Selene dragged her body into a utility alcove in the wall, left her wrapped in a thermal blanket with her name scratched into the rust with a knife. Aria didn't watch.
By the time they made it to the surface, the sun hadn't risen. The world above felt hollow — grey and washed out, like the light itself was tired. They reached the RV in silence, shoes heavy with tunnel dust and blood they couldn't scrub away. Selene drove without a word. Aria sat curled in the passenger seat, shaking in the seams of her coat, staring out at the endless blur of dead road and dying sky.
Her hands were stained. Dried blood ringed her nails like rust. Her lips moved, over and over again, trying to summon a sentence that wouldn't come.
"She was right there," Aria finally whispered. "I was holding her."
Selene didn't answer. Her grip on the wheel stayed locked. The engine hummed beneath them like a tired heartbeat.
"I should've moved sooner. I should've pulled her out —"
"You did what you could," Selene said, but the words rang hollow even as they left her mouth.
"No," Aria snapped, louder now. "I didn't. I froze. I hesitated."
There was no argument that could soften it. No version of events that didn't end in Mae bleeding out in a tunnel.
They didn't speak for miles.
At 6:13 a.m., they pulled off near an abandoned gas station that looked like it hadn't seen power since the world changed. Aria stepped outside first, the door hissing open behind her. She leaned against the RV's rusted siding and stared out at the horizon. The sky hung heavy — dark and swollen with storm, like a wound that hadn't healed. She wasn't sure the sun would ever rise again.
Selene appeared beside her, silent. She didn't say anything — just placed Mae's pack at Aria's feet, then stepped back. The sound of the zipper unfastening was louder than it should've been in the quiet.
Inside the pack was a folded map, corners torn and edges curled. A photograph burned at the top, almost gone — a girl smiling on a rooftop, arms around someone Aria didn't recognize. And a note. Scrawled on the inside of a ration box flap, the words smudged from sweat or time.
If you're reading this, it means I didn't make it. But I hope you did. Keep going. Don't let them rewrite the story.
Aria read it twice, fingers trembling. The writing was crude, but it was unmistakably Mae's.
She sank down beside the pack, knees to her chest, and let it come.
Not a wail. Not rage. Just the quiet kind of crying — the kind that doesn't announce itself. The kind that leaks from a place so deep it doesn't know how to make sound. Her face buried in her hands, she cried for Mae, for the tunnel, for the boy who pulled the trigger, for the silence that followed.
Selene didn't move. She stood watch a few feet away, eyes scanning the road. But the set of her shoulders had changed. For the first time in days, she looked tired.
Not physically. Soul - deep tired.
Mae hadn't been the first they lost. But she was the first who'd believed in something more than survival. She'd carried hope like a fragile relic. And now she was gone.
Aria pressed her forehead to the cold metal of the RV's siding. "We have to finish this."
Selene nodded once, slow. "We will."
No ceremony. No promises. Just two women, in a world that refused to stop breaking. And still — they would go on.
Because no one made it out clean.
But someone had to make it out.