Chapter 146 Tough Pt. II

Chapter 146 Tough Pt. II
"Grace..."

"Shut up."

"I'm considerably heavier than you."

"I noticed. Hold onto the torch, you can at least do that much."

With one determined breath, she heaved him onto her back, the weight nearly drove her back to the ground. Her knees buckled, and every muscle in her body screamed in protest. For one terrifying second, she thought they were both going to fall.

Then she steadied herself, till she was standing, just barely. But at least, she was standing.

"Comfortable?" she asked through gritted teeth.

"I've had better rides."

She snorted despite herself, "Ungrateful bastard."

Then she took a step forward, It was slow. Painfully slow, the next step came easier.

Then another.

She didn't need to walk fast, she just needed to keep walking.

Forward was all that mattered.

"You don't get to die," she gritted out as she took another forward step, "Because, I have to kill you myself." She took another step. "And Molly better be alive when we get out of here. I mean it."

Enzo scoffed.

She kept walking, marking the walls as she went, reaching out at each junction with the sharp piece of stone she had kept in her pocket and scratching an arrow, one-handed, without stopping. The marks were getting harder to read in the fading torchlight and she did not want to think about what would happen when the torch went out entirely, so she walked faster.

The sound of cars above them was clearer now. She could distinguish individual vehicles from the general rumble. The surface was close enough that if she stopped and stood still she could probably feel the vibration of it in the floor through her feet.

She did not stop.

Enzo's head was against the side of hers, his breathing audible at this proximity, and she tracked it as she walked.

It was shallow. Irregular in a way it had not been at the beginning. But it was there, she randomly said things to him to get him to respond so he wouldn't fall asleep and succumb to the poison.

Grace did not know exactly how many hours had passed. Long enough. Too many, she walked faster.

The tunnel angled upward slightly and she leaned into the incline and felt the burn of it in her calves but she kept going. The air was moving more now, a faint but real current coming from somewhere ahead, and she turned her face into it and followed it.

There were more skeletons in this section. She did not count them. She felt bad for them, because despite being close they must have given up here. She looked straight ahead and walked as she listened to Enzo's breathing and followed the moving air.

The torch flickered.

She looked at it and it steadied and she walked faster.

It flickered again, she stopped again to look at it, she felt a light breeze, she turned her head towards it and then, she saw it.

Above her and ahead, maybe thirty feet up and another twenty along the tunnel, a circle of grey light sat in the ceiling. The light of a city at night filtered through a grate.

A sewer entrance.

She stood in the tunnel and looked at it, breathing hard. Barely containing her excitement.

Thirty feet up. No ladder that she could see from here, but the tunnel had to have a way to access the grate or the grate served no function, and she would find the way when she reached it, and she was going to reach it.

She started walking again.

Enzo's weight had not changed but something in her had, and she covered the remaining distance faster than she had covered anything in the last several hours and stopped below the grate and looked up at it and looked at the iron rungs set into the wall beside her that she had not been able to see from further away.

She looked at the rungs and hoisted Enzo on her back. It would not be easy going up those rungs with him.

But she began climbing them nevertheless, It was not graceful or fast. She was pushing past her body's limit, she felt pains all over but she continued, one rung at a time, her arms taking the weight that her legs passed up to them on each step, she climbed and she did not look down once.

At the top, she got one hand on the grate and pushed.

It moved.

Heavy, iron, decades of rust and weight, but it moved, she pushed harder, it scraped across whatever surface it sat in and the grey light came in fully along with air, it was cold and it carried the smell of a city at night, exhaust and concrete and the distant smell of food from somewhere, she took very deep breaths and nudged Enzo with her shoulder.

"You feel that? Breathe, make sure to breathe."

She got them through the opening and onto the surface, she sat on the edge of the sewer hole and used her back to push Enzo, so he could lie on the concrete, with both of their legs dangling in the sewer. With his weight off her back, she put her hands on her knees and breathed more easily.

Grace looked at the street around them. A side road, not a main one, the sound of the main road was like a hundred metres away.

She turned to look at Enzo behind her.

His eyes were open and he was looking at the sky above them, he had a little smile on the corner of his mouth. His mouth moved and she leaned in to hear what came out of it because she could already barely hear him.

"Love you..." it was scarcely sound. The barest shape of the words and it made her chest flutter.

She put her hand on the necklace under her shirt and felt the stone of it warm against her fingers.

She had so much left to do. Maddox was out there. Her mother was out there, and there was a pregnancy she had not said out loud to anyone yet, she had confirmed it during her stay in the cell.

She looked at Enzo lying on the concrete.

"My child," she said quietly, to the night, to the version of herself she was still in the process of becoming, "is going to have both parents."

She looked at the streetlight.

"I'll make sure of that."