The Immortality Game

Without the warning, Zoya might have impaled herself on a narrow, rusty pipe jutting up from the rubble. She carefully stepped around it and sighed as the tunnel opened up ahead. They splashed on through the water and a few minutes later came again to dry tunnel. Several rats scurried amongst a scattering of bones along the far wall.

“How far did you say?” Zoya asked.

“Maybe twenty minutes at this pace.”

“I thought you said it was close?”

Another shrug. “That is close.”

“Where are we going? Another station?”

Leonid nodded. “You aren’t going to like it. Tis a haunted place.”

Zoya had seen far too many dead people to believe in the supernatural. “What does that mean? Ghosts?”

Leonid didn’t respond except to jog a little faster.

Just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, Marcus’s feet plowed into cold water. The entire run through the tunnel, he had ticked off in his mind the number of new ways he had been terrified this day and tried to number the excuses he had for giving up the chase. Now he added to his list the feel of ice cold water pouring into his shoes while running through a dark underground tunnel. He groaned and then groaned again as he saw the light he had been following grow dimmer ahead. He had come so close to losing it altogether when they had changed stations, but he had managed to keep glimpsing the faint light ahead even as he had struggled up dark, unmoving escalators and stairs.

Every bone in his body felt bruised and he felt as if acid were rushing through his bloodstream. Just give it up. Retrace your steps and go sleep for a week in the apartment. Yet again the image of Zoya’s pouting smile and warm brown eyes asserted itself in his head, and he knew he couldn’t give up on her, regardless of how terrible he felt.

His father’s last words returned to him, and he scowled at the memory. What makes you think you’ll be able to help her? Those men are trained killers, and they have guns. He kicked at the water and splashed onward. You see one pretty face and you’re willing to throw your life away like a love-struck teen? He shook his head. No, he may have only just met Zoya today, but he’d experienced more—and more intensely—with her in this short time than he had ever experienced in his life.

A sharp rock stabbed into his foot and Marcus hobbled close to the wall and braced his back against it to allow his free hand to massage the injured sole. Whatever it was, at least it hadn’t punctured through the shoe. He was so tired that he was having trouble even holding up the torch. The thought of giving up rose up through the chatter in his head again, always in his father’s voice. Mentally he shoved the thought away with all the violence he could muster. He gritted his teeth and set off after the distantly bobbing light.

It was the smell that told Zoya they were getting close, the same faint whiff of corruption that she smelled in the morgue every day at work.

“There is death ahead,” she said.

“I told you that you wouldn’t like it,” Leonid replied.

They trotted on for several more minutes until the light from the lamp showed the tunnel give way to a broad darkness, and Zoya knew they had come to the station.

“What station—?” She squealed as she tripped and landed hard on something both soft and hard. Her hand closed around a sticklike object, and opening her eyes she found herself staring in the dim light directly into the empty sockets of a human skull. Now she screamed and scrambled backward, her hands shoving at rib bones until she collapsed against Leonid’s legs.

“It’s Polyanka station,” he said.

Zoya glared up at him, then grabbed his arm and pulled herself shakily to her feet. In the dim light she saw a neat row of skeletal corpses laid out along the track in rotting sleeping bags or blankets. “What is this?” she whispered, a hysterical note in her voice.

“Come,” he said and stepped over the bodies as he headed for a set of wooden steps leading up to the platform.

Something’s missing, she thought. She had nearly grown accustomed to the cold metal of the gun gouging her skin of her lower back, but that feeling was gone now. Her hand encountered nothing but her waistband when she reached for the weapon. It must have fallen out when I tripped. The idea of being without a weapon with Tavik on her tail terrified her, but trying to scrounge through corpses in almost total darkness seemed even worse. I don’t have time for this!