Free Three by Jay Posey

thighs. There was a dryness in her mouth, a stretching feeling at the back of her throat almost like the need to yawn, a certain restlessness deep in her lungs. The quint was getting low. Already. That much had used to last her days. Now, her body seemed to be burning through it faster than she could find it.
    The man rematerialized.
    “Do you remember the way to the stairs?” he whispered.
    Cass nodded, forgetting he couldn’t see her.
    “Good,” he said, before she had a chance to speak. “We’re leaving.”
    Cass checked her internal clock. 06:17 GST. Sun wouldn’t be up for another half hour, at least.
    “What’s going on?” she asked.
    A distant, digital croak answered for him. Cass stiffened, felt the hairs rise on her neck.
    “There was another one,” Three said. “It brought help.”
    Another croak echoed down the tunnel, eerie in its origin, otherworldly with its reverberation.
    “Let’s move,” said Three. Cass actually heard him shuffle backwards this time, presumably out of the alcove. She took Wren’s hand in one of her own, and used the other to feel her way out, leading him along behind. The barest movement of air, a trace of coolness, signaled when she’d reentered the cavernous tunnel. Back to her right, towards the stairs, the endless blackness continued. Off to the left, however, a faint twinkle of blue glowed at her, bobbed, a wisp in the willows. It was joined by a second. Then a third.
    Cass felt Wren pull away from her, and instinctively her hand clenched tight.
    “It’s alright,” Three whispered, barely letting the air escape through his lips. “I’ve got him.”
    Cass reluctantly let Wren go. From the rustling, she gathered that the man had slung Wren up on his back.
    “Hold on, and stay close.”
    Cass slipped her fingers through Wren’s belt, and bumped up tight against him.
    “Here we go.”
    Like a gentle tide, Cass felt Wren receding from her, so smoothly and silently, at first she thought she was falling backwards. She caught herself, and stepped forward, feeling clumsy and jostling in her gait compared to the flowing pace of the man in front of her. After a few steps, however, she found a rhythm that, if not matched, at least complemented his, and together they slipped off in the darkness.
    The trio floated down the tunnel towards the stairs, haunted by the occasional squelch of white-noise echoing from the Weir behind them. Though they weren’t sounding any closer, Cass was unnerved to notice they weren’t sounding any farther away either. The squawks and croaks usually came in clusters, almost as if it were a conversation composed entirely of static. And now that she was paying more attention, she could pick out peculiarities in the sounds, or voices, if she dared call them that. One was thinner, drier; somehow more brittle. The others were fuller-throated, less harsh in aural frequency, but more fierce and guttural in tone.
    Cass felt lost in the swimming darkness, her only anchors to any sort of concrete reality the floor under her feet and her hand on Wren. He was being awfully brave, she thought. She wondered how far they had left to go. It certainly felt like they should’ve made it by now.
    She pinged the nearest satellite, located their position in the schematic she’d downloaded from before, ran an internal app to measure the distance. Eighty-three meters to go.
    Suddenly, an electric shriek shattered the tunnel, ricocheted like sonic shrapnel; pierced her ears. Reflexively she clapped her hands over them and glanced behind. The blue orbs were there, now closing fast.
    “What’d you do?” Three barked, snatching her around to face him.
    “What?” she stammered. “No, nothing. I – ”
    He ignited the chemlight on his vest, and the ferocity on his face frightened her. He growled a wordless curse, and slid his hand down to her wrist, gripping it. Hard.
    “Come on.”
    He jerked her to a run. All grace and fluidity disappeared. The three of them