Dawn broke, thin mist clinging to the ditch bottom like a soul unwilling to ascend. Samira hoisted Karim onto her back, securing him with strips torn from her T-shirt. The boy's breath, a mix of milky sweetness and medicinal tang, warmed the nape of her neck as his fever broke. Ilyas pushed himself upright against the concrete wall, the bandage on his left arm soaked through with blood, dark as a parched riverbed.
"Too dangerous above ground," he rasped. "Follow the ditch north. Three kilometers. Old pump station. Underground pipes lead to the town edge."
Karim stirred in his sleep, his fingers unconsciously tangling in a strand of Samira's sweat-dampened hair plastered to her temple, like a black wick. She didn't brush it away. Instead, she wrapped the end of the strand around his little finger—the only thing she felt certain she could still hold onto.
Groundwater seeped from cracks in the ditch walls, making a sticky, sucking sound underfoot. They moved like nocturnal rats, hugging the concrete shadows. Every few steps, Ilyas paused, pressing his ear to the wall: the *whup-whup* of helicopter blades, distant dog barks, the occasional crackle of radio static—the Shadowhunters' net tightening.
Half an hour later, a rusted iron grate blocked the ditch, revealing a dark pipe entrance beyond. Ilyas pulled a paperclip from his trouser leg and picked the lock in three seconds. A wave of damp, musty air hit them, smelling like opening a buried-alive library.
The pipe was narrower than expected, forcing them to crouch. Samira shifted Karim to her chest, his face pressed against the pinpoint of light below her collarbone. The orange glow burned steadily now, like a lantern with its throat pinched, illuminating a meter of sewage water ahead. Floating debris drifted past: faded medicine packets, shattered syringes, a waterlogged photograph—two girls laughing by a river, teeth startlingly white.
"Don't touch the water," Ilyas warned, his voice low. "Their sensors track heat and chemical traces."
They moved like tightrope walkers, balancing on protruding bolts along the pipe walls. Karim's weight made Samira's shoulders tremble; sweat trickled down her ribs. The pinpoint pulsed with her heartbeat, catching the white fog of her breath on the cold metal.
Around the third bend, a faint white light glowed ahead. Ilyas signaled a halt and crawled forward alone. He returned moments later, his face darker than the pipe's shadows.
"Pump station's occupied," he breathed. "Two. Thermal imagers."
Samira gently laid Karim on a dry ledge. Her fingers brushed the small scar on his brow—a souvenir from a shove in a food line last winter. She leaned down, pressing her forehead to his, as if pouring her own warmth into him.
"I'll go." She untied the bindings, placing Karim's hand into Ilyas's palm. "Ten minutes. If I'm not back… keep going."
Ilyas opened his mouth, then simply nodded. He tucked the small tin with the remaining ash powder into her pocket, his voice a sigh. "Don't burn too bright."
Samira slid along the pipe wall towards the light. The exit opened into a pump station control room. Beyond its glass wall lay farmland veiled in morning mist. Two Shadowhunters stood with their backs to her: one calibrating a drone, the other reporting into a tablet. "E-18-α temperature anomaly, possible relocation." The elongated silver ear badges on their shoulder straps glinted coldly.
Samira's fingertips touched the glass. The pinpoint in her chest flared. She remembered Ilyas's words: *The echo isn't the flame, it's the wick.* She closed her eyes. She pictured the farmland in summer—corn leaves rustling like a river, Karim running barefoot along the ridges, laughter scattering sunlight. The more vivid the image, the softer the glow became, like a dimmed lamp.
Fog bloomed on the glass. At first, just isolated droplets, then rapidly spreading into a solid sheet, like breath on a windowpane. The Shadowhunters sensed the change, turning. The thermal imager's infrared beam swept the wall, registering only uniform temperature—the world beyond the glass was now, to them, a calm, body-heatless river.
Samira slipped into the control room. She snatched a spare battery from the drone's charging dock and palmed a small signal jammer. As she retreated, she glanced back. The fog on the glass was already thinning, revealing the empty, wind-still farmland beyond.
Deep in the pipe, Ilyas held Karim, hearing her familiar footsteps return. The pinpoint reignited, a gentle eye in the dark. Samira shoved the battery into Ilyas's pocket, clipped the jammer to her waistband, and lifted Karim onto her back.
"Ten minutes," she whispered. "Now we have ten minutes unseen."
They pressed on, into deeper darkness. The pinpoint stretched ahead, casting a slender orange path like a river's reflection, or an unyielding wick. At the pipe's end, dawn light crept in inch by inch, catching on Karim's eyelashes like flecks of gold dust.