"They were my men... and I killed them all for you..." Krish's words haunted Ezra as they slowly moved through the dark and long abandoned tunnels beneath the City of Sydney. The ones she'd heard her Dad mention when she was a teen, trying his darnedest that his bright young lady would not be joining any undergrounders in the hope of partying hard and recovering harder in the old, abandoned train stations as was the trend then.

"It's an old rumour, from back in the days of World War II," he had mentioned while peeking over at her from his newspaper on his tablet. Young Ezra had imagined the look he would have given her had they been in one of those vintage movies where old men gave scrutinizing gazes over its folded edges. "They say there are these secret tunnels that spread beneath the city. Beneath the old trains. Long abandoned. Some say there are even strange humans living there, adapted to the pitch black—their eyes white and glazed like those crabs deep at the bottom of the sea. Maybe humans who have never been topside..." or he'd add with a mischievous glint in his eyes, "and maybe they don't even have eyes!" An addition that always gave poor young Shaki nightmares. Nightmares that made sharing a bed with her oh-so difficult.

Ezra'd kill to have a trembling Shaki latch onto her and not let go. At least that way, she'd know she was safe.

I hope they are. Her and Dad.

With a pinch in her throat, she continued walking through that damp, pitch-black of the tunnels with nothing more than Rai's helmet light and a flimsy torch between her and Tehreem. She could imagine milky eyes winking at her from the darkness. It gave her the creeps.

The air had that uneasy scent of decay, with a stranger undertone of something putrid she couldn't quite place. It hung in her nose and cloyed at her throat like honey, making her crave fresh air. Though calling Sydney's air 'fresh' was probably insulting the truly fresh air she'd once breathed at the farm when she'd been little.

Whatever did happen to that old farm?

It made her wonder, how deep underground are we? How far was that surface, how far away from that farm, that fresh air, those ideal days when she had been content and happy?

They moved slowly because of her, but they were moving. And she was exhausted already. How much further until we stop? Sweat clung to her inner clothes, gluing them to her damp body. Her legs trembled somewhat beneath her. If she could see herself, she'd have looked like a woman who ran a marathon, sweaty and ready to pass out.

I could pass out. She placed a shaky hand on the cold damp walls, its iciness helping keep her alert. Just keep going... just keep going...

Ahead, Krish kept a steady pace, barely glancing back at them, barely breaking a sweat. He hadn't spoken, other than to give them instructions after his confession. It was as if his words had opened a chasm between them. He couldn't bridge it and neither could she. Not yet.

He killed people for me? How many? Why? Why me? Why save me?

Nausea pushed against her throat. Ezra fought to shake the image of the dead guard from the lab, one of Gracery's men, the one Krish had laid her next to in that hallway. Did he kill him? Or his men?

The guard's haunting blank eyes stared at her from her memory. 'What do you think?'

She had never thought there'd come a day when people died because of her, but here she was, not only looking at the results of a pandemic of her design, but also the back of a stone-cold killer who shot people dead at the lab...to save her.

But is he saving me? Or taking me somewhere worse? Some people worse?

She watched Krish's back, at those wide shoulders she'd grown fond of, a back she'd run her fingers down many a night together, pretending what they had or where they were, was entirely all normal. Pretending they were two souls drawn to each other, perhaps even loved.

A shiver coursed down her spine. I slept with him. I slept with him... a killer...

Ezra stopped walking and doubled over, retching what little food had made it into her stomach, roast chicken or not—she hadn't had the appetite.

I slept with a...

"Krish. Wait up." Tehreem placed the back of her hand on Ezra's forehead. The cool of it was a relief to her and Ezra wished Tehreem would continue to use her cold hands to cool her head.

"Don't call him. I'm fine." She tried to reassure but Tehreem wasn't having any of it.

"You're not fine. You're burning up again. You need another hit of antibiotics." Tehreem called out again, at the man causing Ezra's nausea in the first place.

"No," she could barely get the word in when he ran back to them.

"What's wrong?

This is wrong. This is all wrong... Ezra tried to push Krish's hand away, but he was strong as he held her shoulder and she was too weak to deflect it. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine." Tehreem hovered before her, watching her carefully.

Krish checked her temperature with the back of his hand as well. When did thermometers get replaced with filthy hands?

His touch alone was making her feel sicker, so she looked beyond hit, at the phantom eyes in the darkness. "How much further?"

"You're not going anywhere like this." He slipped the backpack off his back and rooted around in it.

"We need to keep moving..." Ezra tried to fight him off when he came at her with antibiotics in a new syringe.

She was running a high fever. She could feel its heat burning her limbs and her cheeks, but getting help from him right now felt worse even as her leg threatened to buckle beneath her.

"Ezra."

You're a killer. She ignored him and asked instead, "What's the current death toll?" as she put one foot in front of the other; hand bracing the filthy black walls to keep herself upright.

The two remained silent.

"What's the death toll already?" Her voice came out sterner than she meant, and it bounded off into the hollow tunnels eerily.

She eyed her best friend and the man who might have been someone... if he wasn't a killer. "Tehreem?"

Tehreem chewed her bottom lip looking like she was close to tears.

Ezra's stomach dropped. "How bad is it?"

Tehreem looked away.

"Thousands?" Ezra considered, seeing how it had only been released a few weeks ago. By whom? She'd wondered that ever since she'd come to. When Tehreem didn't make eye contact and even Krish faintly cleared his throat she pressed on. "A hundred thousand?"

Silence.

"Hundreds of thousands?"

Krish jabbed her with the antibiotics and threw away the syringe. "We should be able to surface now... it's almost midnight and roads should be fairly clear."

"Half a mil?" Ezra continued, feeling a desperate need to know how many people had died. Needing to know if she was worse than Krish on the fatality score. "How many people?"

Krish hoisted his backpack up, grabbed Ezra's arm, and looped it around his shoulders, saying, "Come on. You're moving too slow. There's an exit to the surface just up ahead. We're burning darkness here..."

Ezra, though glad to have the strong arms keep her from buckling, yet still repelled by those same arms, refused to move her feet. "How many, Krish? Please. I need to know. I need to know what I've done... I need to..."

"No, you don't," he hissed quietly before turning to Tehreem. "Take the lead, Dr Malik. There's an exit about five hundred paces from here, to our left. It will bring us somewhere close to the city town hall. From there we'll move as quickly as we can towards the bridge. Just past it, in one of the old abandoned wharf houses is our meeting point. I'll be able to reach my benefactors from there, get us an extraction."

Ezra burned a hole in the side of Krish's head. That was more than he'd said to her all evening. "Look at me," she whispered.

Krish glanced far too quickly before looking away.

"Look at me," she almost begged, suddenly realising Krish had barely met her gaze all night. Was he avoiding her just as she'd avoided him? Out of guilt or something else? "Krish."

"We gotta move." Instead, he knocked her legs with his. "Ezra, please. Move."

"I will if you look at me."

"Fine. Here." He turned. His eyes burned something wicked. "You wanna know how many you have killed? How many I have killed? Then the answer is enough. There isn't enough karma in this world to wash away what we both have done, but I'll do it again if I have to. I'll kill twice as many if it means I can save millions. I'm okay with that. Are you?"

Ezra stared gobsmacked a moment. It's like he'd read her mind. But she still wanted to know the toll she'd wrought on the world in an effort to save it. Had it all been for nothing, the year and a half of skirting General Watergate's scrutiny as she played with deadly concoctions of viral traits? "How many?"

"Too many to count, Ez." Krish's voice was deflated as he held her tight and pulled her forward.

"Krishna. I need to know," she whispered against his shoulder. "I need to."

She felt him let out a sigh, his shoulders shagging beneath her arm. "Last I heard, it's spread to most parts of the world. No one knows the full toll yet, but they are saying this is the worst pandemic that the Spanish Flu, and it's only been a month.

"Which is why I need you to man up and move, Ezzie. I need to get you and Tehreem and that package to the WHO. We have to get your vaccine out there. And I can't afford to lose you now."

'I can't afford to lose you now.' It was an odd balm to her aching heart. "You're working for WHO?"

Krish gave a curt nod. "They needed someone on the inside. I was recruited straight out of university with a sole purpose. Join the army, move up the ranks, and see if I could get a seat at the tables that made big decisions, black-ops kind of decision. 'Yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata abhyutthanam adharmasya tadatmanam srjamy aham.' Whenever evil takes over society, God will come to earth, to restore the good. God can't be here, Ezra, not in this world, but... Sometimes, in order to do good one has to destroy the evil... my methods may not be what you approve of, but I'm not the bad guy here..."

The saying sounded familiar to Ezra. Her mum used to quote it when she was little and bad things happened in the news.

She tried to wrap her head around that nugget of information. "So you're the good guy?" She mused, finally voluntarily moving towards the exit, albeit with his help.

"I don't know about good. But at least I'm not the one planning to wipe out the human race albeit the elites hauled up in their secret bunker cities around the world."

At the mention of the bunkers, Ezra's mind went back to Watergate's promise. Back to Dad and Shaki. "I need to find my family... and Tehreem's."

Krish nodded as they came upon the exit to the surface. "We will, but not yet. Our priority right now is to get this to the people who can make the vaccine immediately. Then, I'll help you both look for your families."

"By then it could be late." Ezra searched his face for assurance.

There was none. "I'm sure they're being safe," was all he said.

Ezra hoped to god they were. Being safe. 

"And you're sure WHO is ready for us?" She struggled up the steps one at a time, sweet beading her already toasty brows.

"According to our last correspondence, yes. With a whole team in a secure lab. One no one knows of."

"And we're headed there?"

"Yes." He scooped her up in his arms, a determined look on his face. "If we can get to the safe house."

"Will we? Get to the safe house?" She peered at his face, aglow beneath his headlamp, some of those old feelings fluttering back again.

"It's a Gorkhali's promise. You'll get there one way or the other." He glanced at her briefly before focusing back on Tehreem ahead of them.

"What's that? Gorkhali's promise?"

"I'm a Gorkhali. Our people are famous for our motto. We'd rather die than live as a coward. Don't worry, Dr Mayur, this Gorkhali will get you to your destination even if he has to kill or be killed."

"You'd do that for me?" Ezra stared at him astonished. "Why?"

Krishna Rai said nothing more, just a soft glance her way before he trudged up those steps with Ezra in his arms as if he'd been born for this role. To be her wingman. To do the hard things Ezra could never do herself.

Yada yada hi dharmasya... Ezra couldn't remember the rest of it, but at that moment, she could see it, the good in Krishna Rai she hadn't yet seen. And perhaps, he was right. They could do it. The three of them. They could defeat the evil in their world. Together.

It was a dream. But a dream was all they had. And for now, it would have to do.

"Let's do it!" she said, finally feeling somewhat back to herself, the determined and resourceful young woman her folks taught her to be.

"Do what?" Tehreem asked from a few steps above them.

"Let's save the world."

And so, the three of them emerged on the quiet, curfewed surface near Sydney Town Hall, close to the safe house they needed to reach.

~~ The End~~
{For now}

A/N: Alas, that's the end of the expansion for now. I do have a second part of the story churning in my head, but life's gotten a lot more complicated now and I have a new responsibility (which I love). One day, when I'm not smitten with bub and my mummy duties, I'll consider expanding this further, but I hope I've brought it to a good resolution, one that gives you hope.

Thank you for reading, voting, and commenting on VIRULENT. You've made writing this story so enjoyable. I think I may have found my second favourite genre to write after contemporary romances/romcoms. 😉

P.S. Please note I'm uploading this from the hospitals. Hence, sorry if you find typos and errors. I'll clean it up when time allows.