[ ii. the north tunnel ]

august 3rd, 2033

➸➸➸

NERVES ARE ALREADY BEGINNING to eat Lena Ramsey alive.

The sun has nearly set, and the entire quarantine zone feels empty as Joel Miller leads Lena and her niece further from the curfewed city. The north tunnel—Joel and Tess's rendezvous point before they take their smuggling journeys beyond the wall—is not far now, Joel insists, but Lena is already preparing for the moment that the three of them are caught and arrested by one of the evening patrols.

Lena knows that military will not harm Ellie; she is still only a child and would likely be put back in an orphanage or juvenile detention, but she and Joel are as good as dead if captured. Hell, Lena would not put it past the military to execute them where they stand without reason and then lie to their fellow officers, insisting that they, the civilians, had attacked first. The zone was having an overpopulation issue, after all, and it was not unlike the military to hurt the very people they were once sworn to protect to save their own skins.

"Holy shit!" Ellie Williams abruptly exclaims as the three of them round the corner of an abandoned building. Lena's light green eyes suddenly widen at the sight of the freshly fallen and buckled bodies in the middle of the empty street. The blood is still wet and pooling where the remains of blasted brains lay on the dry asphalt. "We heard all the shooting, but . . . What happened?"

"These are Marlene's men," Lena informs as she creeps closer, stepping lightly on the balls of her feet. She recognizes the uniforms; particularly, the small insect patches sewed into the left arm sleeves. "Some of them, at least." She only sees three bodies in the street, but Marlene had set off with more than that earlier in the afternoon. Maybe some Fireflies had managed to escape the zone with their lives.

"Do you think the others got away?" Ellie asks, growing nearer.

Lena tries to stay between her curious niece and the dead bodies, attempting to shield her sight from the gruesome executions. "I think they did," She assures. "This isn't everyone."

Joel kneels near one of the bodies that lays strewn against a broken newspaper dispenser, likely searching the corpse for weapons. Unfortunately, whoever had killed these Fireflies has already stolen whatever they could find. All that is left for these fallen is for them to rot. "We need to keep movin'," Joel urges, standing back upright. "Same thing's going to happen to us if we don't get off the street."

He then sets off down the street once more and Lena is quick to follow, stepping close in his shadow as she spares a glance over their shoulder. The dead are already far behind them. "Do you know the patrol patterns in this part of the city?" She questions.

"No," Joel answers shortly.

Their footsteps echo hollowly on the stone steps as they move down from one empty courtyard to the next. "Oh," Lena says, slightly taken aback by the sharpness in his tone. "Well, I just figured that if you're in this place that often—"

Joel sends her a cold look from the corner of his eye. "Do you know any patrol patterns?" He interrupts.

Lena can tell that he expects her to say that she does not know any of the officers' movements within the zone, so she is more than eager to prove his arrogance wrong. "Actually, I do," She snaps. "You're not the only person that works in places that they shouldn't around here. I've got every last pattern on the south side covered—"

"South side?" Joel repeats with a scoff. "Lot of good that does us, then, considerin' we're movin' north and all."

Lena rolls her eyes at the man's bitterness and holds her tongue, allowing a terrible and tense silence to smother the trio as they continue to walk. Overhead, the piercing yet annoying drone of the PA system sounds once more, echoing off the rooftops around them, "Attention! Harboring or aiding wanted criminals is punishable by death. Do not place yourself at risk! Report any suspicious activity immediately. Attention! Harboring—"

"Get down!" Joel swiftly commands, dropping to a crouch to remain hidden beneath a shortened brick wall at the edge of the courtyard. Lena quickly follows suit, but then dares a peek over the edge, eyeing several armored military vehicles approaching from further down the street. Ducking back down, Lena glances over to Ellie to find the young girl already looking back at her nervously. With only a single crouch to conceal themselves from a true threat, this escape mission has become all the more real—all the more dangerous. "Okay," Their guide breathes after several moments. "they've moved on. Come on. Through here."

Joel stands once more and pushes off the wall and leads Lena and Ellie through a gap in a weakened chain-link fence located east of the courtyard. Though they are still securely within the quarantine zone, Lena is not surprised to see these fences damaged and tampered with. Lena even wonders if Joel or Tess was responsible for this shortcut.

"Where are we going exactly?" Ellie inquires.

"Up there." Joel motions above both of their heads and Lena looks up to see a rusted yet damaged fire escape platform. "That'll get us to the north tunnel."

"There's no ladder," Lena points out.

"There isn't," Joel confirms hotly. Lena's frown only deepens. There is no way they are getting to that new height without one. Even Joel is not tall enough to boost either of the girls up to reach the platform.

"Then how are we supposed to reach up there?" Ellie asks. She, too, appears irritated by Joel's standoffish response.

"Just gimme a minute," He replies. Without another word, he steps around the side of the building complex and vanishes from sight. Lena watches him go with pursed lips, a sense of unease pumping unsteadily in her stomach. Joel Miller has barely spoken, has barely even looked at either of the two girls since they left the freezer.

"What do you think his problem is?" Ellie whispers beneath her breath. Relief fills through Lena at the perception that she is not the only one bothered by Joel's strangely hostile behavior.

"He's certainly not a talker," Lena gathers, speaking back just as quietly. God knows what the man might do if he accidentally overheard them talking about him. "But it's also not entirely his fault. I'm sure the last thing he expected to ever do today was deal with us."

"Well, the feeling's mutual," The young girl mutters with a sharp roll of her glowing green eyes. "Thank God we've only got to deal with this asshole until we reach the Capitol building."

"Hush. We don't know that he's an asshole," Lena quiets Ellie and her bitter attitude as Joel promptly returns, pushing a large, green dumpster towards them. Both of them are silent as he pushes the dumpster directly against the fire escape without so much as a single explanation.

"There's your ladder," Joel declares. He then clambers up on top of it and easily scales to the next level of the fire escape. All Lena can do for an entire minute is watch the man with disbelief, anger and embarrassment struggling for control of the reddened blush growing on her cheeks.

To avoid Joel's watchful gaze, Lena then looks to the small girl beside her. Naturally, Ellie is already looking back at her aunt, a disgruntled yet playful smirk pulling at her lips, as if she can read the older woman's mind already.

"He's an asshole," Lena dismisses.

Ellie chuckles under her breath and with a push forward from Lena begins to climb the dumpster after Joel. Lena follows close behind them both, climbing atop the large bin awkwardly and unsteadily. She takes longer to scale it than she likes, but she works better on solid ground; not balancing on wheels and a plastic lid that threatens to concave beneath her weight. As she then pushes herself to her feet, rust clings uncomfortably to her skin which she hurriedly brushes off before jumping up to catch the edge of the fire escape landing next. Ellie waits for her above and offers her a small hand, which Lena gratefully takes, allowing herself to be pulled to the higher level.

Meanwhile Joel is already waiting at the top of the staircase near the open door for both girls when they arrive. He does not speak but Lena can read the annoyance so easily on his toughened features that he might as well be an open book to her.

"After you," Lena huffs.

Joel does not respond to her as he restlessly rounds on his heel and enters the empty and shadowy building. There is no electricity this far out of the zone, so a long and dark hallway greets Lena when she follows him indoors. If it were not for the dying orange sunlight peeking through the slits in the thick wooden boards that cover the windows, she would not be able to see a damn thing in front of her.

"So, this tunnel," Ellie addresses to Joel from her place in front of Lena. "You use it to smuggle things?" The floorboards creak loudly as the three of them walk and Lena winces at the aching sound, feeling the warmth of the sun fall away from her skin as a dreadful coldness consumes her. She does not necessarily like taking the back of the pack—but she still finds it better than leading the way. If only Marlene was with them to watch her back.

"Yep," Joel answers.

"Like illegal things?"

"Sometimes."

"You ever smuggle a person before?" Ellie presses.

"An adult, yes," Joel reveals. "But a kid, no. That's a first for me."

"Is it difficult smuggling people?" Lena questions. Her curious voice echoes down the long hallway before them, chilling her clammy skin all over again.

"No more difficult than smugglin' anythin' else. No matter what you're movin', there's always a risk."

"I see." Lena swallows stiffly as she rings her boney knuckles together. Her eyes are locked on the back of Joel's broad back, hearing the slap of the man's own heavy backpack against his brawny shoulders in the dark. "Well, thank you."

Joel still does not turn around as he leads them onward, but she can hear the fresh frown in his voice when he asks, "For what?"

"Taking the risk."

A long and very awkward silence overtakes the trio in the moments that follow, but Lena does not expect anything less. Though she can express her gratitude towards this stranger for offering to keep her niece and herself safe, it is up to the man himself to actually take her words beyond a grain of sand. She does mean what she says, though. She really does. But Joel leaves it at that, opting to change the subject to something less concerning with himself. "So, what's the deal with you two and Marlene, anyways?" He wonders.

"She's an old friend of mine," Lena explains, letting the change in conversation take flight. "We go way back. Before the fall."

"And she raised me," Ellie adds innocently.

"Raised you?" At that, Joel finally turns his head over his shoulder to look at the pair of females. "The leader of the Fireflies raised you? What're you, like, twelve? How did she manage time for that?"

"She knew my mom. I guess . . . she felt obligated," Ellie defends. "And I'm fourteen—not that that has anything to do with anything."

"I'm assumin' you know her mother, too, then," Joel comments dryly. His attention is back towards the shadowy path before them.

"You could say that," Lena half-heartedly agrees. "She was my sister. I'm Ellie's aunt."

At that announcement, Joel startles—as if his mind suddenly cannot wrap around the intertwined relationships between Lena, Ellie, Marlene, and Anna. She does not blame him necessarily; it is complicated. Nonetheless Lena is honestly surprised that the man even cares enough to be genuinely confused. "So . . . you're her aunt . . ." Joel repeats slowly. "You lived in the same quarantine zone . . . and yet Marlene is the one who raised her?"

"It's not her fault," Ellie is quick to clarify. But if only she knew the truth, Lena wonders how quickly her niece would cut all freshly formed ties and refuse to defend her. "Technically neither of us even knew that the other existed until two days ago. Right, Lena?"

"Right," Lena confirms with a stiff nod of her head. Lying is in the older woman's nature but hearing the lone word of deceit slip from between her cracked lips deepens the crevice she feels in the pit of her guilty heart. There is a genuine softness in Ellie's eyes, as the young girl looks towards her aunt, that Lena can see through the soft glimmer of dying light that pours into the narrow hall. Already Lena fears for the moment that the little girl's gentleness starts to fade. "My sister and I were not exactly close."

"Oh," Joel says.

"Yeah."

The conversation dies quickly with that. Lena despises that their attempts at talking normally keep reaching feeble ends. If it is not an awkward expression of thanks, then it is the remembrance of siblings that would seemingly rather be left forgotten that promptly ruins the weakened politeness that they are all trying to scrape by with. Lena Ramsey finds that she does not know how to talk to this man in the slightest; hell, she does not even truly know how to just talk at all. Small talk did not exist in a world like theirs.

Quite frequently, before Marlene came pounding at her door in the dead of night, there were long days that would stretch by and Lena would not utter a single word aloud. She had not needed to. She did not have friends—she did not have anyone to talk to.

"So, kid." Joel bravely breaks the quiet once more. "Instead of just stayin' in school, you just decide to run off and join the Fireflies, is that it? And that's how you found each other?"

Ellie blinks. "Kind of."

"And now—"

"Look. We're not supposed to tell you why you're smuggling us if that's where you're trying to go with this—"

"You want to know the best thing about my job?" Joel challenges, easily cutting the young girl off. There is a new and sudden darkness to his tone—a smothered anger burning its way back to the surface. "I don't got to know why. If I'm bein' honest with you, I could give two shits about what your people are up to."

"Well, great," Ellie clips back, just as pointed in her own response.

"Good."

Finally, after another flight of stairs in the dark, Lena sees light. Upon reaching the top story of the building, she finds that whoever had once fortified this complex had determined it was not worth boarding up this floor's windows. Perhaps this decision was intentional; maybe it was once a lookout point before the military rolled through and cleared whoever had lived here out. Or, like with the chain-link fence from earlier, Joel and Tess had tampered with the defenses of this building, too. Either way, Lena is relived to see the light of day. She spends enough of her time in the darkness due to the frequent blackouts of her own apartment back across the city.

"How much farther?" Lena wonders.

Joel does not choose to answer her until they reach the end of the long hall when he comes to a stop at the last door on the right. "This is it," He informs.

He then slowly pushes the chipped white door open and walks inside, leaving Ellie to chase after him and Lena to shut the door behind them all. Her hand lingers on the doorknob as her gaze locks on the splintered and damaged wood. It seems as if more than once that someone has tried to break this door down. "Should I lock it?" She adds.

"No," Joel replies over his shoulder. "Ain't no one goin' to find us here."

And here, to be exact, is an empty apartment that is not too different from Lena's own. The furthest wall is lined with windows, but they are dirty and tinted with age; it would be difficult for anyone in another building to see them through the layers of grime. Aside from a lone table with three rickety chairs scattered around it, and a torn couch pressed against the furthest wall of the living room, there is no other furniture in sight. The kitchen is empty with several wooden cupboard doors hanging open, looted and abandoned. As she steps further into the navy blue-painted apartment, she notices that there is only one bedroom. Through the crack in the barely opened door, she sees nothing beyond a partially full bookshelf pressed against one of the peeling walls.

No bed. No food. One hell of a place to be.

Joel is quick to make himself at home, though. He tugs his backpack off his shoulders and tosses it to the dusty couch before laying his head down upon it, using the padding as a pillow. With one arm slung over his eyes, Lena expects he will be asleep in minutes.

That is until Ellie raises a hand towards him. "What are you doing?" She blurts out.

"Killin' time," Joel retorts, unmoving.

"Well, what are we supposed to do?"

"I am sure you will figure that out."

"What if we leave?"

"There is nothin' stoppin' you from tryin'."

"Okay, look, why don't you stop—"

"That's enough, Ellie," Lena shuts them both down in an instant. Her light green stare has narrowed into a glare as she hovers above the occupied couch, putting herself between the bickering pair. With a gentle touch, she pushes Ellie towards the empty table across the room, but before she follows suit, she turns her attention back to Joel and with as much coldness as she can muster, she spits out, "Enjoy your nap."

Joel still does not move his arm from his eyes. "I plan to," He responds dully.

Lena scoffs in disbelief. She cannot stand this guy. One minute he is a calloused and experienced smuggler and the next he is a mocking and arrogant dick. No wonder half of the black market in the zone cannot stand the guy. Lena no longer blames them.

From across the room, Ellie has her arms crossed stubbornly over her chest. "Asshole," She mouths.

"Come on," Lena beckons quietly as she finally moves away from the couch. Though she does not turn back, she wonders if Joel is watching them now. She will not give him that satisfaction of seeing the blatant annoyance on her own face. "Let's look around."

Or, in other words, let's leave Joel the fuck alone.

For a moment, Ellie looks as if she wants to argue. What could they possibly find in an apartment that was practically empty? Yet with one stern look from Lena the defiant young girl gives up the rapidly brewing fight and, reluctantly, she follows her aunt out of the room.

But not without one last childish jab over Lena Ramsey's unsuspecting shoulder.

And right before the bedroom door closes heavily behind them Ellie Williams snips, with finality, at Joel Miller, "Your watch is broken."

➸➸➸

A STORM HAS OVERTAKEN the skies by the time night falls over the Boston quarantine zone. Crackling lightning brightens the shadowy rain clouds and echoes of devastating thunder boom overhead, rattling the windowpanes that are streaked with warm droplets of rain. Lena Ramsey watches from her place at the rickety table as streams of water race one another down the dirtied glass to the rotten wood of the sill. Some droplets have managed to seep through the cracks, dotting along the moldy wooden floor, but no one ever bothers to clean up the mess. Instead, the water soaks into all that it touches, rotting the very cores of things that were once surely stable, seemingly impossible to break.

Summer storms are entirely unforgiving on the Eastern coast of the country, so it is only fitting that Boston—which has not seen a drop of rain in a good long while—decides that on the very week of Lena Ramsey's illegal escape that the skies above will pour ruin down upon her.

"Do you think the rain will make it easier or harder to sneak out?"

The quiet question comes from Ellie who sits across the table from her. Her innocent eyes are still locked on the outside world, but her attention is towards her aunt. For a moment, Lena ponders just how much the weather might actually affect their travel. "It may be of some help," She decides. "The rain and thunder will mask the noise, but if we aren't careful, footprints in the mud might ruin our escape."

"We'll just have to travel lightly then," Ellie figures.

"We will," Lena agrees. "I wish I would have thought to grab a thicker jacket, though."

Lena looks down to her own attire. In the hurry to leave her apartment, all she has are the clothes on her back. She wears a dirtied pair of light blue jeans, already scuffed from the afternoon's trek; a plain charcoal gray tee; a lighter and oversized smoky gray jacket with a deep black hood; and her familiar leather boots that she never takes off. Not the best of clothing to keep her warm against the current elements, but it will be very effective when moving through the shadows of the city.

Ellie is not that much better off, either. Dark jeans, a crimson-colored, long-sleeved graphic shirt, and an old pair of sneakers. Unsurprisingly, the young girl is not at all bothered by her state of dress. "It shouldn't be too cold," She insists.

"But it will be wet," Lena reminds her.

"It'll be okay."

A small smile pulls at Lena's calm features, listening to Ellie continuously find the good in their situation. It is a good quality to have in a world so bleak. Lena was like that once; or at least she tried to be. It never came easy for her. Anna, on the other hand, was a natural with her goodness and remained a hopeful spirit even on her deathbed. It is a mystery as to which way Ellie will ultimately lean on the family tree. The girl is still so young. She still has so much to see, and learn, and grow from.

When Ellie soon poses another aimless question, Lena is quick to answer but before the first word can even leave her mouth, she hears another faint mumble from an unconscious Joel. The man has been asleep on the couch for over an hour now but even Lena knows he is not finding solace in his dreams. Lena recognizes a nightmare when she hears one.

Suddenly, though, Joel jolts awake as if whatever had been playing out behind his eyelids had been too much for even his mind's eye to bear. Stiffly, he pushes himself into a sitting position and brushes a hand over his bearded face, unaware that Lena and Ellie are both watching him so closely, their past conversation lost to the rain beyond them.

"You mumble in your sleep," Ellie says, causing Joel's head to turn in their direction. "I hate bad dreams."

"Yeah, me too," Joel murmurs tiredly. His low voice is hoarse and groggy, and impossibly deeper as he tries to wake up, blinking several times into alertness. Then even as Ellie looks towards the window once more, Lena still watches the unguarded man. In the aftermath of a nightmare, this is the most exposed she has ever seen him. For the briefest moment, Lena considers opening her mouth to comfort Joel in his abrupt waking but then she ultimately thinks better of it. There is no point. In only a few hours, they will be well on their separate paths and never see one another again. "How long has it been raining?" He asks.

"Not long," Lena answers. Their eyes meet in the shadows of the room, darkened hazel on daunting green, but the woman hurriedly looks away at the familiar and echoing pain of ghosts still trapped in his exhausted pupils. "Maybe twenty minutes."

"Okay."

Lena now senses Joel moving around behind them, but her gaze remains locked on the wet world beyond the window. White stadium lights burn in the distance from a far-off military lookout, a beacon for both allies and threats. Even closer still is the very tall wall that has protected them all for so long. "You know," Ellie sighs. "I've never been this close to the outside. I mean, look how dark it is."

Lena follows where Ellie points beyond the wall and her eyes land upon the dark, towering skyscrapers off in the distance. One has fallen halfway into the other; it is a miracle both buildings are still standing. Lena can only imagine how many Infected might be trapped within them, lost in shadow. "It's a big and forgotten city," She shivers. She can barely remember the liveliness city before the fall, and she has lived in Boston her entire life.

"It can't be any worse out there, can it?" Ellie asks.

"I don't know, Ellie," Lena admits genuinely. "I have not been out there in a very long time. But it is not safe, and you have to remember that once we are out there. You must always be on your guard. Do you understand?"

Ellie nods her head feebly and for the first time since they have met, Lena can see the true fear within her youthful green eyes. Lena struggles to remind herself that the girl in front of her is only fourteen years old. Fourteen years old—a child—and she carries the weight of the entire world on her thin little shoulders. One screw up, one wrong turn, and it is over. Ellie knows that. She knows that even as she is the cure for mankind that she is still not safe from the dangers of the dark. Not even close to being safe, and it is crushing her already. The girl is petrified even as she tries adamantly to put on a brave face.

Little Ellie does not deserve the haunting anguish that Lena can see twisting beneath her broken and scarred skin.

"What on earth do the Fireflies want with you two, anyways?" Joel abruptly inquires, tearing Lena from her exchange with her shaken niece.

Before either of them can even dare to consider a response to Joel, to Lena's relief, the front door to the apartment opens with a gentle click, revealing none other than Tess in the shadowy entryway. Lena's spiked heartrate immediately plummets as she rises to her feet and automatically collects her bag, sensing it is time to move. "Hey," The female smuggler quietly greets. "Sorry it took so long." This time, Tess locks the door behind herself and Lena's stomach recoils at the reason why. "Solders are fucking everywhere."

"How's Marlene?" Ellie automatically questions, stealing the very words that had been forming on Lena's own lips.

"She'll make it," Tess reassures briskly as she makes her way over to her partner. "I saw the merchandise, Joel. It's a lot. Do you want to do this?"

Lena's eyes widen at Tess's words. Are they still considering backing out on them? How can that even possibly still be an option? From over Tess's shoulder, Joel must sense Lena's growing panic because he immediately looks towards her, catching her shocked expression in the brief flicker of distant lightning beyond them. Whatever he sees in her paled features must be enough to solidify the promise of escorting them to the Capitol building. "Yeah," He confirms. "Let's do this."

"Then let's go." Tess breezes past the trio and walks into the single bedroom without waiting for any of them to follow. Lena and the others do, of course, without question, but the woman freezes in the doorway at the sight of Tess moving the bookshelf away from the far end of the room. The sudden realization that the bookshelf was simply a façade for a literal tunnel in the wall hits Lena like a ton of bricks. The north tunnel.

An idle generator waits for them on the opposing side of the wall when Lena finally slips through the crack. Keeping Ellie in front of her, the two stowaways follow Tess onto a rickety makeshift steel-deathtrap of an elevator while Joel quickly brings the generator to life with a roaring hum. Lena winces at the blaring sound the machine makes as it rattles on the rotten floorboards, and cringes even further as Joel joins them on the elevator for its' loud, screeching descent downwards.

Even with no Infected or soldiers in sight, brash noises make Lena nervous. A noise is all that it takes to lose everything that one holds dear to them.

"So, who's waitin' for us at the drop off?" Joel asks of Tess.

Tess lazily shifts her weight from one foot to another, entirely careless in her routine. It is no question that she has done this hundreds of times before. "Marlene said that there's some Fireflies that have traveled all the way from another city," She discloses. "Our cargo must be important." Tess then slides her dark gaze over to Lena, expecting her to speak for her and Ellie both. "What is the deal with you two? You some big-wig's wife or something?"

"No," Lena immediately denies. "I'm not married."

"Then why the urgency behind all this?" Tess prods.

Lena's eyes narrow distastefully at the nosy woman. Marlene had warned her about those who asked for too much information, and she would not be spilling their secrets that easily. "Are you getting paid to interrogate or are you getting paid to guide us?" She icily rebukes.

Lena can immediately see the fire spark within Tess's burning glare, but nothing more comes of it and she knows nothing will come of it while there are payments at stake. If Tess kills them, she and Joel are as good as dead, and Marlene will be sure of that.

Finally, the elevator clangs to a halt, having reached its destination, and Lena is more than happy to put some space between herself and these smugglers. At the bottom of the makeshift elevator shaft, a partially collapsed room meets them. Bricks and debris litter the tiled floor, but Lena cannot see further than a few feet in front of her due to the blackness of the room. In another life, the area may have been an office or a breakroom, given the numerous broken tables and dented lockers, splayed in the corners of the dusty room.

With the shadows seemingly closing in, Ellie is sticking closer to Lena now, too. "How long is this all going to take?" The young girl asks.

It is only after the question has been asked that Lena realizes Ellie merely asked it as a distraction for Tess; to avert the woman's anger into an emotion closer resembled to one of focus.

"If everything goes as planned, we should get you both to them in a few hours," Tess replies. "Now, once we get out there, you two need to follow our lead and stay close."

Ellie nods determinedly. "Of course."

Joel skims his eyes across the empty room, using the tiny flashlight attached to the strap of his backpack as his guide, and then, upon seeing nothing worth grabbing, begins leading the three women towards a small break in the wall farthest from them. Another part of the tunnel. This time, though, Lena has to crouch low to avoid hitting her head on a low-hanging pipe as she follows Ellie and Joel through to the other side. Behind her, Tess takes up the rear and she can feel another beaming ray of warmth from Tess's own flashlight seeping into her knotted brunette locks that are already beginning to slip from the tie that holds her hair back.

A barely burning oil lantern awaits them at the end of the narrow tunnel, casting orange light on a rusted ladder secured firmly to a reddened brick wall. Joel is first to begin climbing it, going to see if the coast is clear, and Lena watches the man above her with bated breath. What if the coast was not clear? What if there were soldiers right above their heads? Where would Lena and Ellie run?

Slowly, Joel gently shifts a piece of plywood from over the top of the ladder's entryway, and raindrops immediately begin to splatter down on them, soaking their cheeks and foreheads as they look up. For a long moment, Joel is absolutely still as he scours their surroundings. "Hold up," He eventually cautions back down to them, just as Tess is about to climb up the ladder next to see what the holdup may be. "There's a patrol up ahead."

"How big?" Lena whispers.

"I'm just seein' two," Joel responds coolly. Clearly, they must not be that close if he can speak back to her. Another minute passes in silence as Joel holds a hand up, waiting, waiting, waiting, for the moment to move. "Alright, we're good," He finally announces, pushing himself out of the makeshift manhole and into the wet storm. "Come on up."

Lena exhales a quiet breath of relief as she watches Ellie approach the ladder next. Nimbly, the young girl scales it with ease and allows Joel to help her up the rest of the way, but Lena hesitates to follow and instead looks towards Tess. Through the sharp beam of yellow light that shines in her own green eyes, Lena stares pleadingly at the woman who she, unfortunately, might have gotten off on the wrong foot with.

"If anything happens out there to me," Lena begins wearily. "You keep her safe. She is what's important."

Revealing this information to a mere stranger may be against Marlene's wishes, but someone needs to know the costs of one fateful decision. Someone beyond herself needs to know that, if it ever comes down to it, the two smugglers need to always pick Ellie over Lena. If they are both being attacked—if only one can be saved, then it cannot be Lena. Tess and Joel must choose the girl. That is the only way this journey can go.

Ellie Williams must live.

"Okay," Tess agrees. Not once does she suggest that such a possibility of danger will not happen to them. Not once does she try to see the light, to believe that they are all going to make it and be just fine. Not once does she give Lena false hope. For that, Lena's respect for the woman grows vastly. She can trust Tess to make the right call when or if it is ever needed.

Lena nods her head appreciatively as she finally parts from Tess's side. Then she looks back to the ladder and up towards the darkened, stormy sky above her head. Through another strike of lightning, she sees Joel and Ellie looking back down to her, unmoving and quiet. Waiting for her.

Well, she thinks, here goes nothing.

Without another word, Lena Ramsey grabs the slick rungs of the rusted ladder and begins to climb.

~~~~~~~~~~

and the chaos beyond the wall begins. how do we think lena is going to handle the outside? so, what are y'all thinking so far? i appreciate all votes and comments! thank you so much for reading! stay safe and well xx

—B.