The tunnel's mouth swallowed them before the men's shouts faded behind broken track beds and steel rust. It smelled of cold stone, old rain, and something fouler — the hush's breath pooling where sunlight couldn't bleach it clean.
Rafi's lungs scraped raw. His arm burned from hauling the boy, who sagged heavier by the minute. The braid girl scouted ahead, her thin shape flickering between hunks of concrete and half-buried sleepers like a ghost that refused to vanish.
They passed a mangled shopping cart pinned sideways against the wall. A ragged blanket still clung to it — proof someone slept here once and either escaped or was eaten by a shadow with too many teeth.
Rafi stopped beside it, half-bent over, gasping. The boy mewled softly. Fever sweat made his hair gluey against Rafi's collarbone. Rafi wiped it with a trembling thumb, whispering no words at all, because words only fed the hush's appetite.
The braid girl returned, breathless but silent, tugging him onward with urgent fingers. She pointed deeper where the tunnel dipped, where brambles had forced their way up through broken concrete — gnarled vines, some green, some grey as a drowned corpse's veins.
Rafi grimaced. "There?"
She only nodded.
He adjusted the boy, hitching him higher. The hush chuckled under the tracks — a low gurgle like water choking in a drainpipe. Thorns, boy. Thorns and bones. Go on. Feed me.
The vines scraped their arms as they pushed through. Old beer cans and bits of cloth tangled in the branches — offerings from runaways who slept here before the hush claimed their fear. Thorns bit Rafi's skin, thin red lines blooming on his wrists. The braid girl flinched but kept moving, her braid catching on the brambles like a living snare.
Somewhere behind them, the tunnel coughed a gust of wind. It carried whispers that slithered into Rafi's ear, curled behind his teeth.
Lay the boy down. Rest. Sleep. The hush will hold you all. No more pain. No more running.
He clamped his jaw shut so hard his back molars sparked pain.
The thorns opened into a pocket of dead air: a forgotten maintenance hollow, big enough for three desperate children but small enough that the hush pressed against them like damp wool.
Rafi lowered the boy carefully onto a patch of concrete. The child whimpered, then curled into himself, his too-hot breath rattling with each inhale.
The braid girl traced a circle around them with her finger. Old salt lines — maybe leftover from another runaway's half-learned magic. Useless. The hush didn't fear salt; it liked desperation more than any charm.
She sank to her knees beside the boy. Her fingers danced over his brow, combing sweat from his hair. When she looked up at Rafi, her eyes asked a question that needed no voice: How much longer can we run?
Rafi looked at his raw palms, at the boy's cracked lips, at the thorns quivering as if they breathed. He forced an answer into her stare. As long as we have to.
A train moaned far down the line — an old echo that might have been real once but was now just the hush remembering how it sounded when people still traveled here.
Rafi lay down next to the boy, his shoulder pressed against the braid girl's side. He felt her heartbeat through her sleeve — quick, restless, like a trapped bird.
The hush pressed its mouth to his ear. Sleep, little thief. Dream your mother's voice again. Give me your secrets. I will hold them gently.
He closed his eyes. He did not sleep. He dared the hush to swallow him whole.
In the darkness, the boy wheezed, the braid girl's breath ticked against his throat, and the hush waited for them to crack apart like rotted bone.