The first wrong child slammed into the braid girl's ribs. Her knife flashed once, twice — dark fluid sprayed across the pale wallpaper flowers. The thing made no sound of pain, only a hiccup of wet air before collapsing like a sack of bones.
But more crawled from under beds and through ceiling cracks. Their laughter cracked like radio static, broken in places but relentless.
Rafi swung the rusted crutch, catching a small, gray skull with a hollow crack. The wrong child fell apart in pieces that twitched until he kicked them deeper under the bed.
Behind him, the sick boy moaned and clawed at Rafi's collar. His eyes rolled white, sweat slicking his hair to his forehead. He whispered broken words: Mama. Door. Home. Over and over.
The braid girl hissed between her teeth, driving her knife into another thing's chest. Its ribs splintered like driftwood, but its hands kept crawling, nails scraping at her boots until she stomped them to pulp.
Rafi knew they couldn't keep fighting. They weren't soldiers — just two starved shadows trying to save one more broken child. And the hush, that rotting god above and below, fed every scream into its belly.
He ducked a swipe from a wrong child that had no eyes at all, just sockets dripping black fluid. The thing gnashed baby teeth at his throat. He rammed the crutch into its mouth so hard the stick splintered. It gurgled, then folded backward over itself and lay still, giggling even in death.
The braid girl grabbed his sleeve — her hand sticky with someone's blood, maybe her own. She dragged him to the corner of the ward, where a broken service door hung on one hinge. Through it: another hallway, choked with toppled supply carts and a flickering exit sign.
He shouldered the boy higher, felt the boy's heartbeat flutter like a dying moth.
The braid girl motioned: Now. Or dead.
Together they shoved through the door. It squealed on its hinge, a shriek that drew the echo-laughter after them like hounds on a scent trail.
Down the corridor they stumbled — past blood-slick floors, half-eaten gurneys, and scribbled prayers on the walls. The boy's muttering turned to thin wails, wordless now.
Rafi's vision swam. He'd forgotten to breathe between swings, between terror. The hush pulsed in his eardrums — soft, mocking.
Behind them, the wrong children poured through the shattered ward door. Their feet dragged but their hunger propelled them faster than the fear inside Rafi's chest.
The braid girl shoved a mop bucket into their path — it barely slowed the mass of crawling, half-formed flesh. She grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall, swung it like a club. Another skull split. Another giggle died in a wet gargle.
Rafi kicked open a stairwell door at the end of the hall. They tumbled inside, concrete steps coiling up and down in stale blackness.
The boy seized in his arms — a convulsion so violent Rafi nearly dropped him. His mouth frothed pink. The hush's whisper wormed through Rafi's skull: He is ours. He is hush-born now.
No.
Rafi pressed his forehead to the boy's burning brow, mumbling nonsense prayers. The braid girl barred the stairwell door with the extinguisher, then threw herself against it as the wrong children slammed into the other side.
She met Rafi's eyes through the gloom. Her lips shaped a question: Do we run up? Or down?
Rafi stared at the sick boy in his arms — fever burning so bright it felt like a tiny sun dying in the crook of his elbow. The hush wanted him either way. Maybe they'd carried him back into its teeth. Maybe they'd feed it more than they'd save.
Up meant Hollow City. Down meant deeper roots, deeper veins of the hush — maybe escape, maybe hell.
Behind the braid girl, the stairwell door cracked inward. Tiny hands poked through the gap, clutching at her hair, her throat.
Rafi swallowed his own scream.
He chose.