CHAPTER 25

  Cornered

  Turning the corner, Bash almost plowed straight through Patrick, who skidded to a stop.

  Luis and Nora pulled up short behind him, all three of them running hard in the opposite direction Bash had been heading.

  “Oh. Hey, guys,” Bash said, already raising a hand in a weak wave.

  Luis got the first real look at him. His face went slack. “Madre de Dios,” he choked out. “What the hell, Hermano.”

  The stench rising off Bash was still thick, reeking of sewer water, troll gore, burned goblin, and whatever else had been brewing under Londonland.

  Luis bent at the waist and lurched toward a nearby wall. He barely got his hand up in time before he started dry heaving.

  Bash glanced down at himself. He had almost forgotten about the viscera crusted on his clothes, the wet smear of something green-black stuck across his chest, the grit dried along his arms. The system even had the decency to simulate clumps.

  Patrick stared at him with a look Bash hadn’t seen yet. Anger perhaps? “Was that explosion you?” he asked.

  Bash tried to smile, but it came out more exhausted than triumphant. His whole body still ached from the fighting and explosive ending. “You guys missed all the fun. Two hundred goblins, and a huge troll.” He half joked, “It was epic.”

  Bash expected a small congratulations, maybe a pat on the shoulder. Something. Instead, Patrick’s face tightened and Nora’s expression went straight past unimpressed into something colder.

  “You idiot,” Nora snapped. “I told you to find another way out. Not blow up half the city.”

  Bash’s fingers twitched, already knowing where her neck was. The idea startled him, and he took a step back. Blinking, he forced away the thought. "It... it was just the sewers," he muttered.

  “You were missing for three hours.” Patrick scolded.

  Nora swept an arm toward the avenue behind them. “They know, Bash,” she said. “They know Richard is missing. His guard is already calling it a kidnapping or an assassination, and now there is an explosion under the city.”

  Patrick scanned the roofs and street mouths as she spoke, eyes never resting in one place. “They will shut everything down,” he said. “No one in or out.”

  Bash swallowed. “Right... I didn’t think about that.”

  Nora turned that glare back on him, and this time it felt personal. “I am starting to realize you do not think at all.”

  Luis stood, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Come on, Nora,” he said, still sounding strained. “That is harsh. Bash is the whole reason you and I are even free.”

  “Do not remind me,” she shot back.

  Patrick cut in, voice raised. “Enough.”

  They all shut up. Even Nora.

  Patrick never raised his voice, not like that. He took a breath through his nose, steadying himself in a visible effort. When Patrick spoke again, it was back to the controlled tone, but the edge remained. “We move now,” he said. “We go toward the slums. There are people there who can help us get out or at least hide.”

  “People?” Bash asked. “What kind of people?”

  “The kind who do not talk to Richard’s loyalists,” Patrick said. “Stay close. Do as I say.”

  They slipped into a narrow alley, then another, tracing a jagged path away from the main streets and deeper into the poorer districts. Doors slammed as word spread. Somewhere a child cried, then went silent at a hissed warning.

  Bash grabbed a clean sheet hanging from clothesline as they walked. Using it as they walked, he tried to clean his face and scrape some of the filth off his arms and chest. The city felt different already. Before, Londonland had been a big quest hub. Shops, barks, wandering NPCs, the usual. Now it felt like a clenched fist around them, every street a finger closing in.

  They ducked through a cramped passage between two leaning warehouses, stepping over crates and broken barrels. Patrick checked the corners before each turn. Nora was close on his heels, eyes flicking over ledges and windows. Luis and Bash followed.

  They were one turn from the wider lane Patrick had been aiming for when the way ahead became blocked. Five figures stepped out of the shadows. Two in front. Three slid in behind, cutting off the way they had come. No temple robes or noble colors at least, but they had hard faces.

  Everyone stopped. Nora’s hand went to her dagger. Patrick’s hand moved to the spear strapped across his back. Luis gripped his sword’s hilt and began to lift his shield.

  Bash, on the other hand, just glanced around and reviewed the metadata, all five of them Uploads. “Wait, wait, they are Uploads, stop!” He stepped between his companions and the two in the front, trying to keep everyone calm.

  One of the Uploads in front, a broad-shouldered man with close-cropped hair and a jagged scar across his forearm, studied them.

  “Are you the reason the royal guards are on alert?” the man asked.

  Before Bash could answer, one of the Uploads at the back spoke up. “I know that one.” He jerked his chin toward Patrick. “He’s good people.”

  Another voice chimed in from behind them. “Yeah, he’s a guard, but has let more than a few of us walk when others would have dragged us to the cells.”

  There was a short murmur at that, a shift in posture. Weapons remained in hands, but grips loosened slightly.

  Then a woman with a wrapped headscarf and a burned patch along her neck tilted her head toward Bash and wrinkled her nose.

  “The one that smells like sewage is a player,” she said.

  The air tightened. The Uploads around them straightened. Metal rasped as blades cleared sheaths another inch.

  “Okay,” Bash said quickly, raising his hands a little higher. “Hold on. It is not what it sounds like. Honest.”

  A figure shifted in the shadows behind the group. A woman, unarmed, still shivering despite the mild air. She hung back from the others, arms wrapped around herself, eyes fixed on the ground.

  Bash recognized her. The hollow cheeks. The haunted look. The way she held herself like she was still waiting for something terrible to happen.

  “You,” Bash said raising his voice, “You’re the lady from the sewer.”

  Her head snapped up. Eyes wide, searching his face. The resistance fighters tensed again, confused by the exchange.

  The scarred man glanced between them. “You know him Catherine?”

  She stepped closer, hesitant. “It was so dark down there. I couldn’t see his face.” She stopped a few feet away, studying him. “But his voice, I remember the voice… and the smell.”

  “What do you mean?” the woman with the headscarf demanded.

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  “He found us in cages,” Catherine said, her voice stronger now. “Me and Marcus. The goblins had us...” She didn’t finish. Didn’t need to. “He broke us out. Led us to safety.”

  The silence that followed was different. Less hostile. More uncertain. “And then he went back down,” Catherine added quietly. “Alone.” She looked at Bash with something that might have been wonder. “We heard the explosion from the market. Saw the smoke. I thought for sure you were dead.”

  The scarred man stared at Bash with new eyes. His grip on his weapon loosened another degree.

  Nora stepped forward before anyone else could move. “We killed Richard. So if you have a problem with that, we can have it out here.”

  Silence dropped over the alley. The man in front stared at her, then at Bash again. His expression shifted, not exactly softer, but less hostile.

  “Richard is dead,” one of the women at the back repeated under her breath.

  “We have no love for Richard,” the scarred man said finally. His weapon point drifted toward the ground. The others followed suit. “Most of us have more reason to hate him than you do.”

  “So what are you,” Luis asked carefully, “if not his?”

  The woman with the headscarf glanced toward the end of the alley, where the sound of boots and shouted orders echoed closer. She made a decision.

  “We are the ones who live under his quotas and his temples,” she said. “And under Maximus, on top of that.”

  The man in front raised his hand for silence. “We do not speak about it in the open,” he said. “Let’s get off this street before the guards make their sweeps.”

  Patrick’s shoulders eased a fraction. “We will take the help,” he said. “If it is real.”

  “If it were not,” the man said, “you would already be on your faces with daggers at your backs. Move. We talk somewhere else.”

  Bash swallowed again and fell in with the others as they were turned and shepherded down a narrower cut between buildings. The stink of him filled the air, trailing behind them, earning him grimaces and muttered curses.

  They left the alley and slipped into another side lane, then another, the layout of Londonland folding in on itself as they were guided away from the patrol routes.

  Finally, the Uploads stopped at a plain warehouse door marked only by a peeling scrap of paint. One of them knocked three short times, then two, then one. Locks clicked. The door opened a crack, a pair of wary eyes shining in the gap.

  “Friends,” the scarred man said. “And trouble.” The door opened wider. “Get in.” someone hissed.

  Together, they stepped into the dark.

  The door shut behind them with a heavy thud. Bolts slid into place. For a moment, Bash could only hear breathing and the faint muffled noise of the street outside.

  Someone lit a lantern. The warehouse it illuminated was not full of crates. No trade goods, no tidy stacks of anything. Just a wide-open space, a few broken pallets shoved to the sides, and a hatch in the floor ringed by lanterns and makeshift benches. Rough bedrolls were piled against the walls. A table in the corner held a scatter of papers, contract fragments, and hand-drawn maps.

  There were more Uploads inside. A dozen at least, maybe more, watching from the edges. Some armed, some not, all of them wearing the same expression when their eyes hit Bash. Suspicion and disgust.

  He could not even blame them. Whatever troll guts had soaked into his clothes were now mixing with the stale air of the warehouse. Luis had taken to breathing through his mouth again. Even Nora’s nose wrinkled.

  “Down,” the scarred man said, pointing at the hatch. “Quickly.” A ladder led into the shadow. Patrick went first without argument, then Nora. Luis shot Bash a look that said a lot and nothing at the same time, then followed.

  Bash put his hands on the ladder and started down. The wood creaked under his weight, damp from whatever leaked down here. The smell shifted from warehouse dust to underground stone, old water, sweat, and cooking smoke.

  The ladder ended in a tunnel tall enough to stand in, carved stone reinforced with wooden braces. Lanterns hung from hooks driven into the walls. Passages branched off in several directions, some blocked by doors, others by hanging cloth.

  Patrick, Nora, and Luis were already waiting at the base. The scarred man dropped down beside Bash a second later.

  “Stay close,” he said. They set off down the main tunnel. The underground air was cooler, but bodies had lived here a long time. It had that settled feeling flats got when people packed in for years without enough windows. Voices echoed deeper in, the sound of children, the low murmur of adults trying to stay quiet and failing.

  They passed open doorways where Bash caught flashes of cramped rooms. People resting on thin mattresses, sharing bowls of food. A woman tending a wound on a man’s leg. A group of kids playing with carved bits of wood, their game halted as the strange party moved by. Eyes followed them, then flinched away once the smell from Bash reached them.

  He tried not to look at the kids too long. Something in his chest reacted each time one of them stared with that wary, practiced focus. No one here was relaxed. Even at rest, they looked ready to run.

  At the end of the main tunnel, they stepped into a central chamber. It was broader, with a high, rounded ceiling. Tables had been set up along the walls, covered in maps, crude diagrams of the city above, tally marks, lists of names. Someone had scratched temple score numbers into one wall and then crossed them out so hard that the stone had chipped.

  A woman stood near the largest table. Short, wiry hair shaved close on the sides and left longer on top, streaked with grey that did not match the sharpness in her eyes. She wore practical clothes, boots laced tight, sleeves rolled to her elbows. A knife rested on the table in front of her, not in her hand, but placed where it could be reached without thought.

  The scarred man stepped aside. “Jill,” he said. “We brought you a problem.”

  Her gaze swept over Patrick, Nora, and Luis, then stopped on Bash and stayed there. She took him in from head to toe. The blood. The filth. The sewer stinks.

  Then she looked back at the others. “I see… Start talking then.”

  “Long story short,” Bash said, taking the lead. “Your local noble is not going to be issuing any more decrees.”

  Jill’s eyes went narrow. “You think that is funny.”

  Patrick stepped forward before Bash could dig the hole deeper. “Count Richard is dead,” he said. “We were involved. The guard is sweeping the districts already. We needed somewhere safe to go.”

  “And you thought of us,” Jill said. “How generous.”

  “I thought of people who do not cry when a man like Richard stops breathing,” Patrick said evenly.

  Jill’s gaze moved between his face and the others, weighing something. “You are asking us to risk everyone down here on your word,” she said. “For all I know, this is a stunt. Richard’s idea of a loyalty test. He sends you here to talk about resistance and then rounds us all up to hang, or worse.”

  “That is a lot of steps for a man who just got his neck twisted,” Bash said.

  Jill’s attention snapped back to him. “And why,” she asked, “should we trust a player at all?”

  Bash lifted his hands a little and then dropped them. “Look, I get it,” he said. “I smell horrible, and I am technically everything wrong with your life. But can I at least have a bath before the interrogation?”

  Every eye in the room fixed on him.

  Bash felt it, the collective disgust and disbelief, and sighed. “Okay, fine, story time first.” Clearing his throat, he continued, “Yes, I am a player. But I’m also about as anti-Maximus as it gets. If there was a slider, I would be buried at the end that says ‘tear his shit down and burn the slider.’”

  There was a low ripple of sound through the room. Muttered voices. “It is a trick.” “There has not been a new player in over a year.” “Another one of his games.”

  Jill did not move. “Words are cheap,” she said.

  Someone else stepped forward from the side of the room. A man in his forties with a crooked nose and a tired face. “What about you, Patrick?” he said. “We know you.”

  Patrick turned to look at him properly. Recognition lit his face in a small, tight way. “Caleb,” he said.

  Caleb nodded. “Patrick could have dragged me in when I stole rations from the barracks,” he said to Jill. “He did not. Told me to get out of sight.”

  Another voice spoke up from the crowd. “He let my brother out of a line-up when the others were sent to temple punishment.”

  A third added, “He used to walk the poor districts and talk to people instead of cracking skulls. That is why they sent him to Old Village with the rest of the better guards.”

  More nods followed. Not many, but enough.

  Bash looked at Patrick in a new way. He had known the guy was solid, but this was different. This was a history he hadn’t mentioned. Quiet choices that had cost him.

  Patrick did not bask in it. He simply faced Jill again, and spoke. “Bash is the first chance for real change in a long time. I will follow him into death if I have to.”

  The words hit harder than any buff.

  Luis cleared his throat. “He could have killed me,” he added. “He should have. I was a bandit two days ago. Dirty contract, wrong side of the line. He broke it instead. Did not bind me to a new one. Just told me to pick better next time, so I chose to follow him, on my own free will.”

  Nora shifted her weight, then stepped forward as well. Her eyes were still sharp at the edges, but the usual venom had eased. “He rescued me from the Black Hound,” she said. “He did not know me, did not owe me anything. Then he killed Richard for me. Richard was mine to hate. Bash took that on anyway. I respect that.” She paused. “He is an idiot, yes, but he’s also honest, and from what I can tell, a good person.”

  Bash swallowed. His chest felt tight. He had only known these people for a handful of days. Hearing them stack their stories in front of a room full of strangers did something to him he did not have words for.

  Jill watched all of it. The room quieted again. Finally, she nodded once. “All right,” she said. “We will not throw you back to the guard. At least not tonight.” Jill pointed at him specifically. “But you are not walking around my tunnels in that state,” she added. “You will empty the place in an hour.”

  “I have been saying that,” Luis muttered.

  Jill gestured to one of the younger women at the edge of the crowd. “Mara. Show him to a washroom. One of the old supply rooms should have a working line and hot water.”

  Mara grimaced as she came closer, but she jerked her head toward a side passage. “This way,” she said.

  They walked through another tunnel, then another. These passages were narrower, with doors on both sides. Voices filtered through thin walls. A baby crying in one room, someone laughing in another.

  They turned once more and stopped at a door set apart from the others. Mara pushed it open. The room beyond was small but had a large tub and stone basin set into one wall, with a pipe running above it and an old valve handle.

  “There,” she said. “You get one fill of the tub. So I suggest you clean as much as you can before. Do not use all the soap.”

  Bash stared at the tub, the basin, and then at the grime on his hands. “Understood,” he said.

  Mara stepped back out into the hall. “When you are done, I will be waiting. Jill is not finished with you yet.”