I run.

To catch up to Sheila and the others, I have to be going at a pace faster than theirs. I practically have to fly. I comfort myself by saying that Eli will be okay. I mean, other than dying of thirst or maybe starving to death, there is no real threat in that chamber that could kill him before I got back to help him.

I push my legs harder, leaping over crevices and stumbling over rocks, all while trying to control my breathing. I focus on the pace of my footfalls in correspondence to the pace of my breaths.

How far is Sheila from where I am right now? Two miles? Three?

I quicken my pace; if I can keep a 6-minute mile pace, I can meet up with them in eighteen minutes, that is, if they are only three miles away. Any more than that and my pace would falter. My steps echo in the tunnels, bouncing in one ear, and out the other, seeming like drums in the dead quiet.

My breaths puff.

My heart thumps.

A sound comes from beneath the ground, sending my heart into overdrive and my feet into a full sprint.

Was it a laugh? Or a scream?

I’m not sure which is worse.

In a full sprint, my body protests, my lungs burn, and my head reels in a panic as I struggle to find air in the thick musk of the underground prison.

Breathe.

Breathe.

There’s nothing here, I tell myself.

Forcing myself to slow, I twist check for the origin of the noise.

As I twist back to face forward, I feel something tighten just below my ribs into a rock of pain.

Breathe, I think.

In the through the mouth, out through the nose.

My surroundings start to blur as I continue to concentrate solely on my steps and the ground in front of me.

I exit the branched tunnel and reach the fork in which Sheila and I had parted before. My mind begs me to sit down, to rest. I push on and turn into the other tunnel. I can do this.

A clang behind me sets my nerves up in a flame down my back and into my legs, cramping my stomach and all of a sudden, I’m sprinting again, weaving through various obstacles of rock and silt.

Minutes later, I start to feel pain creep in. I hadn’t stretched or been running for the past few days, and my body was in no shape to output this much energy with the amount of sleep I’d been getting.

In the low light, my eyes burn, tearing against the air flowing against it. A fog of fatigue makes any sounds distant and shapes warped. Waves of heat steal my strength and prevent sweat from cooling me in any sufficient way.

I can no longer find the focus or discipline to maintain a pace.

I just go as fast as I can.

My legs, my feet, all cry out in pain, and I feel myself faltering.

Blinking moisture back into my eyes, and sucking air into my lungs, I notice noises coming from in front of me. I know immediately it’s Sheila.

Sheila! I will them to stop. I want them to hear me.

A surge of adrenaline rushes through me, making my limbs tingle to numb.

Just as quickly, the surge subsides and pain grabs me again, but still, I think I’m going to make it.

A stone I didn’t notice soon enough emerges on the path.

My wearied foot bends at the ankle, and I fall. I have no strength to do much else, but I manage to break my fall just in time to protect my head. The skin at my elbows tear and the dust that swirls around me is sucked up into my lungs as I writhe on the ground.

Pain clutches at my chest and my lungs as I try to draw in breaths but instead get dirt. I feel like I’m drowning. The promising sounds up ahead fade to nothing and black splotches dot my vision. Everything in my being is urging me to get up, to catch up with Sheila. But my body is unresponsive. My limbs feel heavy and hotly pinned to the floor and my head feels oddly floaty.

The muscles in my neck give out and my head hits the earth. All feeling in my body tingles and fades, and I feel my heart thump violently against the solidity of the muck under me. It’s trying to escape, it wants to beat freely, it wants air.

A distant ringing fills my head as blackness fills my vision.

It’s over.

Sheila is gone.

Elie might as well be dead.

I might as well be dead.

I close my eyes and swallow against the dust coating my throat.

My heart squeezes painfully as is it too, knows I’m done.

“Elodie?” a familiar voice, welcome in my ears, gasps. “Oh my God, Elodie?”

A cool hand touches my burning cheek and roughly swipes dirt out of my eyes. “Elodie, listen to me. Can you hear me?”

I mumble in response, feeling too weak to do much more.

A hand that is distinctly Sheila’s wraps around my limp one and I feel her hair tickle the tip of my nose.

Forcing my eyes open, I try to get up with trembling arms.

“Here,” she takes out a chewy lozenge from her pocket, “You need sugar. You need sugar and water, but water is something we don’t currently have.

She watches mournfully as I place the lozenge on my tongue. Her lower lip trembles, “I’m sorry. I was acting childish. I--”

I cut her off with a finger and indicate to my mouth, letting her know I want to finish chewing before I speak. The lozenge releases a sticky, sugar-sweet juice in my mouth and boosts my energy ever so slightly. I swallow and say, “We were both childish. But we’ll have to deal with that later. My stupidity got Elie trapped somewhere in the other tunnel. He’s trapped in The Pit behind a metal door.”

Her eyes widen, “The Pit? As in Lombard’s Pit?”

I nod, and she shakes her head, digging her fingers into the loose dirt. She looks down at the ground in surprise.

“What?” I ask.

“It’s wet. The dirt is wet. There’s water under here!”

“What does that mean?” I question.

Dev, who I hadn’t noticed before, answers for her. “It means that we can get to Elie by going under that metal door.”

“We’d have to dig! There’d be no time!” I reason. I slowly rise from the dirt.

Jayne smiles proudly, “I think there’s already an easy way there. We turned around because this tunnel is a dead end. But I stepped on a spot there and . . . it seemed hollow.”

Her words do something for me, they give me something that I hadn’t had before; they give me hope.

Sheila grasps my arm and yanks me behind her as they speed back down the tunnel. Jayne’s excited voice washes over me like an energizer, “Found it!”

By the time Sheila and I catch up with her, she’s already on her knees about a foot away from a concrete wall striped with yellow, her fingers sifting through the soils. I kneel down and help her dig, ignoring the muck that crawls under my nails and floats into my eyes and the thirst that makes my throat ache.

We eventually hit metal, and I recognize it as a manhole cover--just like the numbers of them on roads that help to counteract the damage from potholes to cars. Together, we heave it out of it’s resting place and gaze down into the yawning chasm of a hole.

“There’s a ladder,” Sheila exhales heavily and starts to climb down. “After this is over, I’m never going into a hole every again,” she grumbles.

I hear as her feet solidly hit the ground.

“Footprints,” she mutters. “Damn it,” She cranes her neck up towards us, “Someone’s down here.”

***

Author's Note:

Okay, so, first time writing something like this (basically describing running for a really long time). Probably not my best, it feels a little choppy, idk.

Anywho, see ya next week!

♥️♥️♥️