After a few minutes of fleeing through the sewer tunnels from Sonneillon’s approaching reinforcements, Adena came to a stop. “Let’s take a break.”

With Carlito weighing him down, Rodrigo had been gradually falling behind the others. “It’s not me, is it? If I tag Resent in, he should be able to carry him easily.”

She shook her head. “I just wanted to put some space between us and them as a precaution. They probably sensed us, but with their captain’s tongue ripped out, I don’t see them putting in an immediate effort to push through the flames and pursue us.”

Now that there was a moment to breathe, Rodrigo started to worry. His brother hadn’t woken up through all the movement and commotion. A terrifying thought crossed his mind as he carefully placed him against the damp brick wall. He unbuttoned Carlito’s jacket and put an ear to his chest. Rodrigo exhaled when he heard a steady heartbeat.

“What’s wrong with him?” Raquel asked, teary-eyed.

“No idea, but at least he’s alive. Adena, can you bring the fire closer?”

She did, and Rodrigo looked Carlito over for injuries. Other than a few minor scrapes, he couldn’t find anything.

“Maybe it was the shock wave,” Adena said. “It even knocked me off balance. Carlito likely hit his head on the ground hard enough to pass out. Let’s hope it’s not a concussion.”

“Oh my god, can we please just get out of this hellhole?” Leila begged, sounding more panicked now than in front of Sonneillon. “When we were running, I nearly tripped over a chihuahua-sized rat because it’s pitch-black down here.” She was right. Besides the flame in Adena’s hand, they were practically in total darkness.

“You could always use the flashlights on your phones if they still have any power,” Adena said. “Or maybe Jett could help out some, unlike he did in that fight.”

“I’m just not seeing the point. I mean, what’s the upside of living in a world where so many demons are running wild that even with powers, we’re helpless to stop them? Why even put ourselves through that?”

Something in Adena seemed to snap, because she backhanded Jett, on the unwounded side of his face, with such force that he lost his footing and landed in a puddle of dirty water.

“She’s growing on me,” Resent said.

Though Raquel and Leila gasped almost in sync, Rodrigo couldn’t blame Adena. Jett’s words were discouraging, and their morale was already low enough. Even worse was that these weren’t the ravings of a madman or someone with a history of depression, but questions from one of the more optimistic people Rodrigo knew.

“You know what, Jett?” Adena asked. “If you want to die so badly, I’m not about to try to convince you otherwise. In fact, I’ll even give you a hand if you’re too soft to do yourself in. But if Sonneillon hadn’t been amused by your little meltdown out there, it could’ve gotten all of us, including your cousins, killed. In other words, get a goddamned grip, or we go our separate ways as soon as we make it outside.”

Rodrigo was about to intervene when Jett laughed dryly. “Oh, it’s that easy for you, huh? You’d just brush off seeing your ma torn apart and keep pushing your way through this literal Hell on earth? Are you even human?”

She grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and drew him in so their faces were a foot apart. “Of course I am. I simply haven’t been sheltered like you. Demons are responsible for the death of my entire family, so I know the despair you’re feeling quite well. Thing is, you still have people depending on you. Unless you want to increase the odds of them dying alongside you, then you don’t have a choice other than to push it down somewhere deep and dark, and keep moving.”

With that, she released him and walked away.

Jett sat there for a few seconds while the two other girls traded concerned looks. As their source of light got farther and farther away, Rodrigo was thinking Jett had truly given up, but then he rose with a resigned sigh. “Nobody get too close to me.”

When everyone was a decent distance away from him, green sparks flickered at his feet before rising to encompass the rest of his body. Immediately, the tunnel was illuminated, showcasing the decayed brick and the graffiti that covered it. Seeing Jett’s transformation for the first time, Leila was visibly uneasy.

“Dude, as much as I appreciate you being a human flashlight, is it safe to be using your ability in a wet place like this?” Rodrigo asked as he picked Carlito up again.

“It’s all right. Turns out I’m like an electric eel or something. Nearly stroked out when I lit up in the shower, but somehow I didn’t electrocute myself,” Jett said in that distorted voice of his. “You guys should go ahead of me, though. I might electrify a puddle by accident.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“That’s pretty cool. I’m Leila, by the way.”

“Thanks. Glad to see at least one of Ruy’s new friends isn’t a sociopath.” But then Jett did a double take, and his stare narrowed, which under the crackling electricity looked outright hostile. “Wait. Leila from grade school?”

“Uh, yeah. Why? Did I do something to you, too?” Leila asked defensively.

“Not me, no.”

Rodrigo cleared his throat, wanting to stop this discussion in its tracks. He was rather stoic as an eleven-year-old, or that’s how he remembered himself, anyway. When Leila ghosted him, though, he had whined something awful for months, to anyone who would listen. That was primarily Jett, and clearly, it had left a lasting impression.

As they continued along the cramped walkways, one thing that puzzled Rodrigo about the sewer was its smell. The scent wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it was nowhere near as bad as he was expecting. He had been in public restrooms with more of an odor.

Adena was waiting by a ladder. “Resent should handle this one. Best not to destroy the covers if we don’t have to.”

Resent took over, climbed the ladder while still carrying Carlito and lifted the manhole cover one-handed.

When they all reached the surface, the Manhattan Bridge visible in the near distance, they were surprised to not see a single demon nearby. Adena led them to a ramshackle warehouse on the same block with huge steel doors and windows that were blacked out like the ones from her mansion. There was a chain-link fence on the rooftop, but nothing at ground level.

“Shouldn’t the fence be around the actual building?” Rodrigo asked.

“A normal fence wouldn’t stop even the weakest of demons. Plus, we don’t want it to look like an attractive shelter to other people. There are defenses in place here similar to the ones back at my house, but in larger quantities.” Adena fished into the pocket of her cargo pants and pulled out some sort of ID card. She inserted it into a slot on the wall that Rodrigo wouldn’t have seen if he hadn’t just watched her use it. That prompted a small, pale blue screen to appear next to it, which she slipped off her glove and placed her index finger on.

The screen turned green and the doors parted. Inside was a fully furnished home with exposed brick walls. The high ceiling and rooms that led into one another seamlessly gave it an airy feel. Behind them, the doors shut automatically, as quickly as they had opened. Beside the door, was another fade periapt, dangling from a screw drilled into the mortar between the bricks.

“Where can I put Carlito?” Rodrigo asked.

Adena hung her leather jacket on a standing coat rack by the entrance and moved toward one of two staircases with a steel and glass railing. “It’s best if we assign rooms now, since most of you look like you’re about to drop.”

They followed her up the steps to the open hallway on the second floor, which wrapped around the first level, overlooking the living room below. The hallway had two doors to either side of each staircase, one door in between them, and a ladder that led up across from it. Beside each door were card slots much more noticeable than the one outside.

“The rooms are all more or less identical. Each one has a bunk bed, a computer, and a private bathroom. They haven’t been set up to lock yet. I’ll be issuing unique key cards to all of you later, which will also be the only way in or out of the building,” Adena said.

“What about the windows?” Rodrigo asked.

“They open, but unless it’s an emergency, don’t. They’re bullet-proof glass framed by nethntine. A strong enough demon could still shatter them, but it would probably take long enough that we’d have time to react.”

Jett opened the closest door to his left and disappeared inside without a word. Rodrigo wished he could have brought himself to regurgitate an uplifting platitude, like “she’s in a better place” to ease his cousin’s pain, but to say that with any real certainty struck him as hypocritical. Sure, earth wasn’t a great place to be right now, though at least as long as you survived on it, there was a chance, no matter how small, that eventually you would be able to fight back. All he could do was be there for him whenever he felt like talking and keep getting stronger to reduce the risk of losing anyone else.

Raquel looked at Leila and asked, “Roomies?”

The older girl seemed taken aback, but nodded. Though the fourth empty room meant they could each have had their own, neither one came across as wanting to be alone.

Rodrigo went for the door in between the two staircases, only to find it locked.

“That one’s mine,” Adena said. Of course. She would take the most strategic location.

Raquel and Leila took the room by the right, so he settled for the one next to theirs. The room was fairly bare, but it was about as big as a studio apartment. Rodrigo removed Carlito’s jacket and boots before placing him on the bottom bunk of the bed. He patted around his head in case all that curly hair was hiding a bump or a cut, but again, there was nothing. Rodrigo considered going to sleep himself, but he was still too on edge.

Instead, he put his coat and bag on the top bunk, then went back into the hallway. Adena had gone downstairs to watch the news on a large flat screen television mounted on the exposed brick.

“People are dying at such a rate that the number of casualties are incalculable, and so far there seems to be no end in sight to this tragedy,” a fidgety anchorwoman said. The redhead couldn’t have been older than her mid-to-late twenties. It made Rodrigo wonder whether the veteran anchors had all cut and run or been killed off on their way to the newsroom. “Worldwide, a state of emergency has been declared. Authorities urge everyone to stay indoors, keep lights off, and stay as quiet as possible to avoid the attention of the creatures some are referring to as demons. This is Caity Wright, reporting for CNN on the ninth hour of this unprecedented catastrophe. May God keep us sane.”