Down. Rafi's mouth shaped it before his mind caught up. The braid girl didn't argue. She hooked her boot under the stairwell door handle, wedged the fire extinguisher tighter to buy them heartbeats, then leapt past him, taking the first steps down two at a time.
Rafi heaved the sick boy closer, ignoring the burning in his arms and back. The child's skin was ash-cold except where fever smoldered under thin ribs. Each breath rattled like broken glass.
Above, the wrong children clawed at the door. A hinge snapped with a shriek. Laughter crawled through the crack. A pale, wormy hand snatched for Rafi's ankle. He stomped it until the fingers bent backward.
Down. Only down.
The concrete stairs circled them like a throat. Bare bulbs swung overhead, spitting light and shadows like ghosts. Sometimes Rafi caught a glimpse of faded signs on the walls: Level 2 Utility. Level 3 Storage. Level 4 Quarantine.
They didn't stop. They couldn't.
The braid girl glanced back every few turns, eyes wide with that jagged grin of fear and battle. She tapped her temple twice: Keep the boy awake. Keep him ours.
Rafi jostled the boy's shoulder. His eyelids fluttered — gray irises swimming in fevered whites. He mumbled wet vowels that might have been Rafi's name. Or the hush's.
The air thickened. Wet, moldy. Breathing it felt like sucking rot into his lungs.
Level 5. Level 6.
Then the stairwell ended in a locked iron gate. Beyond it: an echo that hummed in Rafi's teeth. A living heartbeat, low and constant, like the hush itself pulsing under the hospital's bones.
The braid girl pressed her ear to the gate. She jerked back, nose wrinkling. A single word mouthed: Root.
Rafi laid the boy gently on the landing, braced his shoulder to the iron. He counted to three.
On three, they slammed it together. Metal screamed, old bolts snapped, and the gate swung inward into pitch black.
They dragged the boy in. The door swung shut behind them, cutting off the wrong children's laughter — but not forever.
In the dark, the hush sang louder. Not words, exactly. Not sense. Just a promise: Below is always home.
Rafi struck an old utility light with the broken crutch. It flickered once, twice.
What it revealed: roots. Veins. Tubes of dark vines coiling through dirt and brick. A hollow corridor eaten through the foundation, breathing like a lung.
He knelt by the boy. Fever sweat pooled in the hollow of the child's throat. His lips twitched in a smile that wasn't a smile.
Rafi's gut turned to ice. He could feel it — the hush's seed deep in this child's marrow. If they didn't cut it out, bury it here, or kill it…
He looked at the braid girl. She gripped her knife so tight her knuckles blanched. She knew too. Her eyes said the same thing: We go deeper. Or we let it take him now.
Behind them, the stairwell door shuddered. Splinters rained from the hinges. The wrong children would find them soon.
Rafi wiped blood and sweat from his eyes.
Downroot. One more breath. One more step into the hush's true belly.
He lifted the boy again. The braid girl turned her face toward the tunnel, toward the hush's ancient hum, and led him deeper into the roots.