“He’s with us too,” Erik says. “Well, another group.” He closes his mouth like he’s afraid to say too much.
Another group exists. James is with them. Somehow I’m not surprised. I hadn’t let myself think too deeply about it, but James was stabbed with a Spore sword. So was I. I know from experience it doesn’t kill.
“Well, what about the other people who got crushed beneath the cart when these Spores attacked us?”
Erik stands in front of me acting all rescued and happy in this new life hiding underground and kidnapping children, like he and I didn’t witness death together, didn’t fight together, didn’t fear for our lives as the Spores wreaked havoc.
“Their deaths weren’t intended,” he replies.
“Well then, you and your Spores need to think of a different way to stop a Tunnel cart.” I don’t know why I’m so angry. It feels like months ago, but seeing Erik not seeming to care for those who were killed in the attack eats at me.
“Adelphoi,” he says.
“What?”
“We call ourselves Adelphoi. Not Spores.”
I roll my eyes. “Just another Roman word to keep track of in this place.”
“It’s Greek.”
Stranna places a hand on his arm. “Let it go, Erik.”
The anger has begun to pulse beneath my skin, and I know what’s happened the last few times it escalated out of my control.
Stranna turns to me. “I think you should go now.”
“Go?”
She doesn’t say it again. Instead, she makes her way back toward her comrades, eyes on the bed of the wounded Spore. Adelphoi. Whatever.
Erik gives me an apologetic glance, then follows her. Another Spore trembles and buries their face in Stranna’s shoulder. I’m an invader here. I don’t belong.
I backtrack into one of the catacombs, though I don’t know how to get out. Stranna knows I’ll get lost, but she told me to go. I stalk down a tunnel, not really caring where it leads. I don’t get far before footsteps catch up to me. It’s the oldest of the kids, the one who got to the basketball first. The one who followed us when we first arrived.
“You’re trying to get back to the coliseum, right?”
“I guess.” I don’t really feel like going back. I can’t stay here, though. I’m not welcome.
More than ever I feel homeless.
“Thanks for the basketball,” the boy says. “Follow me.” He doesn’t blindfold me. Doesn’t ask for secrecy. He just leads me through the maze toward the exit of the catacombs.
Neither of us says anything for a while, but then I see the opportunity for answers.
“Thanks for leading me out. I’m Cain.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What’s your name?”
“Everett.” He ducks under a broken bit of arch. Who designed these catacombs to be in such disrepair? Any decent Draftsman would want the dreamscape to sustain itself. Once places start falling apart the rest of the dreamscape unravels too. But Tenebra seems outside of all the rules I learned at university.
“How did you get here, Everett? To the catacombs?” I try to ask the question delicately so I’m not accusing him of being kidnapped. If the Spores are so good at poisoning and tricking the mind, then Everett likely sees them as allies.
“I woke up in Tenebra like anyone else after I got infected, but I wasn’t with Mom and Dad. They told me they woke up in a dark Tunnel, but I woke up in a wheat field. There were other kids there too.”
“Any nightbeasts?”
“Yeah, but they couldn’t enter the field. Angry dogs and things without faces. It seemed like the more scared we got the more there were. So we stayed in the field and didn’t get near the edges, but the longer we waited the more kids came, and we started running out of room.”
From what Everett says, it sounds like kids have their own entry point in the Nightmare. They didn’t have to escape a Tunnel, but they were still trapped in a field somewhere.
“No adults woke up in the field?”
“Nope. We didn’t see any grown-ups until Stranna and the others came to harvest.”
Harvest kids? Or harvest grain?
“What did the Spores do?”
He looks at me quizzically. “Spores?”
“Uh, Adelphoi. Stranna and the others.” His ignorance of terms tells me he’s never been to the coliseum—at least not for long.
“You call them Spores?”
“What do you call them?” I want to make sure I’m saying that Greek word Adelphoi correctly.
