I slid down against the concrete wall, black moss clinging to it. Images assaulted me like strobe flashes: the shattered window, the fall, the Dream-Eater stepping into the room where Lena and Vargas slept defenseless.
I abandoned them.
Not me. Him. But it's my body. My legs ran. I'm the one safe while they face a nightmare.
"Get up," said a small, steady voice.
I looked up. Sofía stood in front of me. Her unicorn backpack was smeared with soot and mud, but her eyes were dry. No tears. There was a cold determination in them no seven-year-old should ever have.
"We can't stay here," she said, tugging my sleeve. "The smell's changing. The water will rise soon."
"Sofía… I don't know where to go. I don't even know where we are."
She looked at me with a mix of pity and annoyance.
"You're big, but you don't know how to hide. My mom taught me. When bad men come, we make ourselves invisible."
She held out her hand. Tiny, warm.
Seeing it, I felt a spasm in my gut. Not hunger for food — the hollow left by blood-magic. My body, which hours ago had overflowed with the vitality stolen from Méndez, was now in the red. I felt cold in my bones, a constant tremor in my fingers.
But looking at Sofía, the protective instinct crushed everything else. She was the mission. If I gave up now, Lena's sacrifice would be meaningless.
I took her hand. I rose, swaying like a drunk.
"Lead me, Sofía," I whispered.
---
We walked what felt like hours. The sewer system was a maze of cylindrical tunnels, constant drips, oppressive dark.
I should have been the leader. I'm the adult. I'm the one with a supernatural entity in his head. But it was Sofía reading the chalk marks on the walls, knowing which tunnels led upward and which were deadly traps.
"This way," she whispered, turning left at a fork that smelled of industrial chemicals. "We're under the Factory Zone. Fewer cameras above."
My body screamed. Every step was a titanic effort. The vitality withdrawal was worse than any flu. Cold sweat, black spots at the edge of my vision.
Ironic — I wanted to heal people, and my first real taste of power had turned me into an addict of other people's energy.
"You sick?" Sofía asked without slowing.
"Something like that. I'll be okay."
"My mom says pain is information," she said, reciting a lesson learned by force. "It tells you something's wrong so you can fix it."
"Your mom's very wise."
Sofía stopped dead. Her back tensed.
"She's going to be fine. She knows how to fight monsters."
I wanted to tell her the Dream-Eater couldn't be killed. I wanted to tell her her mother was probably gone. But I swallowed the words. Hope was the only thing keeping her little legs moving.
We reached a drier section of tunnel. A rusted metal box was set into the wall behind a loose pipe. It looked like part of the electrical infrastructure, but Sofía went straight to it.
"What's that?" I asked, bracing on the wall so I wouldn't collapse.
"Plan B," she said.
She hooked her fingers into a crack and pulled. The fake panel swung open.
Inside there weren't cables. A yellow waterproof bag.
Sofía drew it out and opened it with reverence.
Inside: bundles of worn bills, two energy bars, a bottle of water, and a disposable phone.
"My mom hid things like this all over the city," Sofía explained, handing me the water. "She said if we ever got separated I should look for the 'Electrical Hazard' signs that are upside down."
I drank the water like someone drowning. I tore an energy bar in two and ate it in two bites. It didn't warm the chill in my soul, but my hands stopped trembling so violently.
Lena was a professional paranoiac.
Sofía took the phone. It was off.
"Should we call the police?" she asked, hesitantly for the first time.
I took the phone gently from her.
"Not the police, Sofía. Lieutenant Vargas was with us and… well, we don't know who to trust. Méndez had a badge, remember?"
She nodded, eyes down.
"Cops can be bad too."
I turned my own phone on. Battery at 40%. I couldn't call anyone. I couldn't try to locate Lena without alerting the Syndicate or the Dream-Eater. But I needed information. I needed to know what was happening upstairs.
I opened the browser and typed the local news site with clumsy fingers.
The screen flared with an urgent red headline. The main photo made me drop the phone as if it burned.
HUMAN HUNT: ARMED, DANGEROUS STUDENT.
It was my photo — the smiling shot from my university ID, the "never broken a plate" face.
But the text below read like a death sentence.
"Eduur Vance (26) wanted for the brutal murder of Sergeant Roberto Méndez and the disappearance of Lieutenant Luis Vargas. Suspect seen fleeing the scene at North Slaughterhouse. Believed to have abducted a minor, Sofía M."
"No…" I gasped, the tunnel closing in.
They'd found Méndez. Alive or dead didn't matter; they'd twisted the story. I was the villain. I was the kidnapper.
And Vargas… "Missing." That meant the Syndicate or the Dream-Eater had him. Or he didn't exist anymore.
"What's wrong?" Sofía asked, seeing my terror.
I showed her the screen, knowing she was too smart for lies. She saw her name. She saw my face.
"They say you kidnapped me," she frowned. "But you saved me."
"People don't know that, Sofía. They think I'm a monster. If anyone sees us… they'll shoot."
I ran my hands through my hair, desperate. We couldn't check into a hotel. We couldn't take a bus. My face was everywhere.
And the Dream-Eater knew I was the Gate. It would track my energy signature. The police would track my face.
I was cornered by the physical world and the spiritual one.
"Eduur," Sofía said.
"What?"
"Look at this."
She pointed out a detail in the news I'd missed in my panic — a recent update, a ticker at the end of the piece.
"Anonymous sources indicate the suspect may be heading toward the Old South Train Station. Citizens are advised to exercise extreme caution."
"The South Station?" I murmured. "I'm not going there. It's across the city. Why would they say that?"
Sofía looked at me with those dark eyes that seemed to see too much.
"Because it's a trap. Or a message."
"A message?"
"My mom told me that if they put us in the news with lies, I should look for the place that doesn't make sense. That's where she'd go."
My heart flipped. Could Lena have escaped the Dream-Eater and planted false info to redirect us to a meeting point? Insane. Suicide. But it was all we had.
"The South Station is far," I said, pocketing the phone and the cash. "And crowded."
"Better," Sofía said, tightening her backpack. "It's easier to be invisible in a crowd."
I stood. The inner cold still gnawed at me, but the adrenaline of being hunted muted it.
We had a destination. Money. And every police department and a criminal network after us.
"Let's go, Sofía. Let's see if your mom left us a miracle."
We climbed the metal ladder to the surface. Daylight filtered through the manhole cover, bright and cruel.
I went up first. I pushed the lid. The metal scraping the asphalt sounded like a gunshot.
I stuck my head out. We were in a back alley behind a laundromat. White steam rolled from vents, hiding us.
I helped Sofía up. Just as I set the lid back in place, my phone — mine, not the disposable — buzzed in my pocket. I froze. I should have thrown it away. I should have destroyed it.
I pulled it out slowly. Not a call. A text from an unknown number.
I opened it. No text. Only an image.
A photo taken from above, very high, as if someone floated over the city. The alley behind the laundromat was visible. The steam was visible. And there was the crown of my head and Sofía's pink backpack emerging from the manhole.
The message arrived three seconds ago.
Someone was watching us. Right now. From the sky.
I looked up at the rooftops, toward the blinding sun, searching for the silhouette of the Dream-Eater or a Syndicate drone.
"Run," I said, grabbing Sofía's hand. "Run!"