I matched Red's pace as we made our way down the street into another alley.

Red's eyes were pleading me to reconsider. "Do we really need to do this?"

I hobbled over to the manhole cover. "The police and the rest of the wards are probably rushing to her position to check up on her. They'll also comb the area to find us. The sewers are Rotter territory, and most people think twice before going down there."

"We'll be trapped if the cops figure out where we went."

I sighed. "We don't have any other options."

Red swore and pried the cover away, revealing algae covered walls and several slimy, rusted ladder rungs. I tied my covering over my nose and climbed down into the sewers, and Red followed me, closing the cover and dropping down as well. He summoned a thin stream of fire, and we began to walk into the darkness.

The sewer smelled. It was a mixture of nausea and revulsion that made me want to hurl. The wrappings around my face weren't doing anything about the smell, and Red seemed to be even more affected than I was, making weird gagging noises as we made our way south.

It didn't help that the sewer had no sidewalk or anything that wasn't an inch under sewage water. The walls seemed to close in on us, and the fire cast weird shadows, with an occasional dripping sound thrown in for extra creepiness.

I decided to distract myself by taking to Red. "Let's keep going south for a couple more blocks, and then we'll surface again." I said, as loud as I could.

Red nodded and continued the conversation, grasping it like a lifeline. "Think we'll run into the freaks?"

I placed a finger over my mouth and shushed him. "Don't call them that. They might be hiding in the walls."

He scoffed. "I can't believe they live down here. Sounds more like an urban myth that we made up for cape tourists."

"The sanitation workers who came down here and nearly died would probably beg to differ."

Red moved closer to me. "They came out alive, didn't they?"

"Barely." I whispered.

"Where do they even live? This sewer doesn't look like the kind that has several empty rooms in it."

"No one knows. Maybe one of them has an ability that opens a portal to an interdimensional storage space or something."

"That's a pretty good guess, but shame it isn't true." A female voice intoned.

The water around my feet sloshed as I hastily turned around. Red's flame flickered before lighting up again to reveal the woman and the abomination next to her.

A thin woman with dirty black hair tied back in a bandanna stood next to a creature that seemed to be an eldritch monstrosity in the flesh.

I stumbled back and tripped, landing in the water." Meat hook."

Multiple long arms with spindly hands had been fused into an approximation of a spider's midsection. Multiple eyes dotted every surface available, with corded muscle peeking out where the skin had been stretched too much. More hands seemed to have been grafted onto the main body, and bony protrusions popped from every joint, and the hands themselves were covered in razor sharp bone.

The thing didn't have any eyes or a mouth or anything even resembling a face, but it managed to convey aggression without needing any of those things. The woman stroked the thing lovingly, and it shuddered in response.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Red raised his free hand and aimed it at the creature while I stood in shock. He was preparing to send out a wave of flame before we both heard the sound of more footsteps.

Before I could do anything, a knife found its way to Red's neck, and hovered inches in front of it. Two more men emerged from the darkness, holding a pistol and a rather rusty rifle.

The girl holding the knife moved it closer to Red's neck. I could feel Red's anger from where I stood, and I needed to defuse the situation before Red torched the girl and we were filled with lead and mauled by an abomination.

I put my hands up in the universal sign for surrender, and Red seemed to realize that we were outgunned and outnumbered.

The woman whistled, and the monster moved forward and clasped two of its hands over our eyes and dragged us along the winding paths of the sewer. We moved through the passageways completely blind at a breakneck pace. We took turn after turn, and I quickly lost my bearings.

After what seemed to be an eternity, the sound of our footsteps stopped bouncing off the sewer walls, and we were hit with a wave of heat.

The monster moved its hands away from us and pushed us to our knees. I opened my eyes and regarded the surprisingly well lit space before me. Fluorescent lamps tied to poles lit the space up nicely, while fires burned at the edges of the giant chamber, driving away the damp of the sewer. The walls seemed to have been made by scooping away the dirt and brick, and they were unnaturally smooth.

People started to form a ring around us and the chatter in the room picked up. The people in the crowd wore threadbare clothes and were pale and sickly and several of them sported an assortment of scars, missing limbs and burns, both caused by fire and of the chemical variety.

The outcasts of the city sneered down at us as a man made his way toward us. Just from the way he walked and the way the crowd parted without a word before him, I knew he was the leader of the group.

A blood stained bandage covered his right hand, and he walked up to us until all I could see were his feet.

"Well, it seems like the sewer has given us a good bounty today! Two ripe hollow points to take out our anger on!"

The crowd around us cheered and edged closer. The man gave me a grin and pulled out a knife out of his torn jacket. A stubble graced his cheeks, and the sharp angles of his face almost seemed lupine under the harsh lights.

He pulled his long hair out of his face and placed the knife on Red's neck.

"You don't kill, you never do!" I blurted out in a desperate attempt to distract him.

He looked at me before bursting into peals of laughter, and the crowd around him followed with even more mirthless laughter.

"We don't kill because we don't want the cops to find our little nest and send the capes to ruin it. Killing a couple of government janitors isn't worth the heat it would draw on us."

He spun the knife around in a slow arc. "But you, you're a bunch of nameless thugs from the hollow points. Your boss is already out to get us, so a couple more dead metahumans might tip the scales in our favour."

Everything faded away as the knife twirled in his hands. The light bounced off it as he held it against the curve of my neck.

"Say goodnight!"

I closed my eyes, my nails digging into my palms in fear. As I tensed my neck, Red cried out, a note of uncertainty in his voice.

"Wait, wait! We can pay you!"

The knife drew blood from my neck, and a hot line of pain appeared on my throat.

"Payment?" The man cocked his head in amusement, like he was allowing us a couple more moments to add to the spectacle.

"We know a guy." Red continued. "He can get you drugs and stuff. The cold and damp must have given your people some nasty diseases. We can get you antibiotics, and if you give us what symptoms they have, we can treat the diseases itself."

The crowd started up again, and this time the sound was more hopeful and concerned than angry. But the murmurs were distrustful as well, and Red's next words would either kill us or let us leave here with a debt.

"They say you take in every meta who gets abandoned by their family, and everyone who can't make it on the street on their own. You have a personal creed and a heart of gold and all that, I get it. But each person you take in probably spreads something in your ranks. We can help you with that. Your recruits don't need to die because they didn't get proper treatment. We can give you enough of a stockpile to treat anything that pops up."

Looking around, what Red was talking about became apparent. Several people gave small coughs that turned violent before dying down. Others had pale skin that had nothing to do with the lack of sunlight. Even more shivered and cleared their throats.

The man considered the offer before laughing again.

"It seems you aren't nameless thugs after all."

He put his knife back in his jacket and scratched his injured hand.

"You have two days. Snitch!"

The girl who put a knife to Red's throat walked over.

"Go with them and tell them what we need. Make sure they don't try to ghost us or trick us."

The girl nodded.

The man helped me up and made a show of dusting me off.

"Well, show's over, folks!" He cried.

As the crowd dispersed, the girl made us walk over to the abomination. It put its hands over our eyes and as it dragged us off, I couldn't help but feel like the noose around my neck had gotten even tighter.