Chapter 4: Ch 3. They are lurking in the shadows

A dim light of a torch was lighting the tunnels.

A small group of men walked on the second level of the capital’s underground tunnels.

Originally the second level was built as a back-up for the main network, and later connected to it. Now it is the heart of the underground gangs’ activity.

One of such gangs, a small bunch of people in rags and whatnot was currently patrolling their share of the tunnels.

“Boss, can we even find anything here…?” A grunt asked a middle-aged man.

“It’s not like we’ve got many options, ha?” The man, Acherson, looked at his mighty ‘host’, and hoped that they will at least encounter anyone, at least a stray homeless.

Ever since his gang settled in this part of the tunnels, all sorts of troubles kept following them. They are cold and hungry. Food is scarce, and above that, rats started to disappear. Unlike on the surface, there is a pressing lack of wood and weapons. There is not enough money, and it’s getting even harder to gain anything, now that the 1^st Corps returned from the war and cracked down on the criminals. 

And to make matters worse, now the fruit of the gang’s hard labor was stolen.

It took them an entire month of efforts to gather enough cash and prisoners to buy that elixir.

“Now that you squandered the elixir, we have to hope that we will survive here. Since our ticket to the surface is lost…”

With his scarred face, Acherson was already well-known to the authorities. He fled into the catacombs to avoid being caught, and had to leave most of his illegal business on the surface. But if he was to return and gather the margins…

Acherson grumbled, as he remembered how ecstatic he was to save enough money from their activities here to buy a small bottle of transformation elixir. The second most expensive thing in the underworld.

A bottle of this elixir could change one’s appearance for an entire day. More than enough time to beat the money out of Acherson’s former ‘partners’.

‘Damn this motherf*…’ He had no idea what to do now. With his entire business lost, and his gang being driven to the worst outskirts of the second level of the catacombs, where neither a respectable law-abiding citizen nor the lowest of scum would pass, he lost his only chance, his only ticket to see the sky once again, without being apprehended immediately.

Well, if he was to sell out his entire gang, a little less than 20 souls, he may convince a shady alchemist to brew a second elixir. It will give him a day of freedom. And then he will die: either being left to rot in a prison, or will be killed by another gang.

Down here there exists only one law: the strong lives, and the weak perishes. They are still alive only because they are in such a s*hole, that nobody gives a damn to touch them. And those who do give a damn don’t want to risk losing their men for this scarce place.

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“Just what am I supposed to do now…?” Acherson kicked a pebble, and it flew somewhere into the darkness.

‘Rustle’

Then, he swears, he saw something run into a side tunnel.

“Have you seen it?!”

“Erhm, Boss, there was nothing… Like, I get it, you are pretty p* off, but…”

‘KICK’

“SHUT THE F* UP! Are you going to call me a lunatic now? After I saw a f* rat?!”

“Sorry, Boss!” A couple of grunts lit another torch, and walked fast towards the side tunnel.

Acherson walked there too.

The tunnel was a dead end, and only one thing was telling him that something may’ve been here: a hole in the rock wall.

Those caverns were eroded by all sorts of things, so unlike on the first level, there are many small tunnels like those here.

Rats love them, and gangs love them too, since they can catch those fat, disgusting rats.

The grunts already turned around, and headed back to the others.

But Acherson felt like he saw a footprint on the mud.

A child’s footprint.