Chapter 16 · Two Mayas

"Eli?" Maya's voice drifted through the dark. "Please. I'm so cold."

Eli took one step toward it.

Marcus caught his arm hard enough to bruise. "Don't."

"That's her."

"No, it isn't. Listen."

The voice came again, closer this time. "Eli? I can't feel my hands. Please."

Same pitch. Same breath between the words. But nothing behind them. No fear. No anger. No Maya.

Like a recording wearing her voice.

Eli's light pulsed across the tunnel walls. "How long has the dark been doing this?"

"Since the zones opened."

"You could've mentioned that before we went underground."

"You would've run faster."

"I might've run smarter."

Marcus released him and raised his flare. Its red light pushed back the black for a few feet. "The dark records voices. It plays them when it wants you to make a stupid choice."

"And if I don't listen?"

"Then it finds another voice."

They moved beneath the old transfer station, shoulder to shoulder. The tunnel pressed close around them. Eli's boots scraped through grit and broken glass. Every sound came back wrong.

Maya laughed somewhere ahead.

Eli flinched.

"Keep walking," Marcus said.

"That was her laugh."

"It was a sound."

"You don't know that.