Page 66 of Salem’s Rise

I slow near the opening to a wider chamber. Van stands near the center with Nicole, the pretty blonde junior from earlier. She doesn’t appear so calm anymore. Dirt and tears streak her face, and she clutches one arm against her chest. It looks broken.

The smart thing would be to leave before Van notices me. Being trapped in a tunnel with that maniac is the last thing I need, but the woman is clearly in trouble. And apparently, despite being in Salem’s Fall for months now, I still haven’t shaken that pesky inability to mind my own business when someone needs help.

“This isn’t my fault,” she cries. “I thought this was the right turn.”

Van’s expression is almost bored. “You said you knew the way.”

Nicole backs up against the tunnel walls. “I—I thought I did,” she stutters. “I must’ve gotten mixed up. I’ll do better, I promise.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” he says. “I don’t think I want a partner anymore.” His gaze flicks toward the ceiling above her. Then he takes a slow step backward, and a loud cracking sound rolls overhead.

Nicole looks up just as the ceiling gives way, taking part of the adjoining wall with it. It all happens too fast for her to run. Stone breaks loose as several feet of dirt and rock collapse over her body in a violent wave. Her screams are quickly silenced beneath the impact.

Dust billows through the chamber, reducing everything to a choking haze. When it finally begins to settle, all that’s left of her is one hand protruding from the rubble. It never moves again.

Van turns then, noticing me. He smiles, and I have the craziest thought that he knew exactly what was going to happen. That somehow, this wasn’t an accident, and he killed that poor girl.

But no… that’s absurd.

Mr. Ashcroft already told us. These tunnels are old and unstable. It was just horrible timing that she was standing under the ceiling when it collapsed on its own.

He catches my eye. “Finding it harder to breathe yet?”

I back away, cursing myself for not running earlier when I still had the chance.

“Stay away from me.”

“No,” he says, his smile widening, “I don’t think I will.”

He lunges so fast I don’t even have a chance to move before his fist slams into the side of my face. Stars burst across my vision, and I crash into the wall hard enough to lose my footing. He grabs the front of my coat and drives me backward again, cracking my head against the stone. Pain tears through my shoulder.

“You don’t belong here,” he says, his breath hot against my cheek. “You’re just a mistake everyone else was too cowardly to correct.”

“Mistake this, you asshole!”

I bring my knee up between us, aiming for his crotch. He twists, taking most of the blow against his thigh, but it gives me enough room to strike a second time, and I drive the heel of my palm into his nose. His head snaps back, and blood appears immediately.

“You… bitch,” he hisses, wiping the blood from his nose and looking at it with disbelief. “You hit me!”

A small, savage part of me delights in the sight, but there’s no time to enjoy it.

Before he can come for me again, I spot a narrow opening behind the rubble where earth has fallen away between two beams. I drop to my knees and scramble through, stone scraping my coat as the passage tightens around my shoulders. For the first time this evening, I’m grateful for the confined space. This new tunnel is too small and Van’s frame too broad for him to follow.

“You can’t crawl forever!” he screams after me.

But he’s wrong. I will crawl as long as it takes to get away from that bastard.

Eventually, I can’t hear his frustrated shouting anymore. I keep moving, losing track of time, until it occurs to me that I haven’t seen or heard another competitor in hours. Crawling through that broken wall must have led me into a hidden section of the tunnels that wasn’t accessible before.

When the passage finally widens again, I start to pay closer attention to my surroundings. I stop choosing tunnels based solely on instinct and attempt to read them as a system. It’s what Josh would do, look for patterns.

This time, when I see the marks in the stone again, I actually stop to study them. The oldest support beams are wider and spaced farther apart. The newer reinforcements appear where the ground has shifted, often near dead ends or collapses. The same small crescent-shaped carvings from earlier repeat at junctions, but only on walls where the airflow moves inward. I think of Silas’s words again and decide to trust him. At this point, I don’t have anything to lose.

The marks appear more often as the ground rises.

I start to follow them.

More hours pass. My cheek swells, aching from Van’s punch. Every breath tastes like dust, but the air eventually grows colder. Fresher. Somewhere ahead, I smell rain. Then I finally see light, a pale gray thread descending through a shaft at the end of a long chamber.