The Price of Survival

Chapter 4

Lucy's POV

The path he led me down wasn't really a path at all, just gaps between crumbling buildings and piles of rubble that might have once been streets. My legs felt like jelly, and I had to stop and lean against a wall every few steps to catch my breath.

"Keep moving," he said. "We're still too close to where that werewolf attacked us."

I nodded and pushed myself off the wall, following his dark figure through the fog. The makeshift bandage around my throat was already soaked with blood, dripping down my shoulders, and I felt like my throat was going to come off any second.

"What's your name?" I asked with a low voice.

"Amon," he said without turning around. "Amon Claremont-Diaz. And you?"

"Lucille. Lucille Reyes…" I paused. "Or I was, anyway. If I'm really dead like you said."

That caused him to stop and look back at me. His face was all sharp angles and shadows in the dim light filtering through the fog. "You don't remember dying?"

"I remember falling. My sister…" The words caught in my throat. "My half-sister pushed me off a building." I touched the cloth around my neck. "But I don't remember hitting the ground."

"You didn't." Amon started walking again, slower this time. "Not in the way you're thinking. When you die violently, suddenly, sometimes your soul gets... displaced. Pulled into places like this."

"Places like what, exactly?" I looked around at the empty, fog-shrouded city. "What is Lenore?"

"An underground country. Sealed away from your world." He gestured vaguely at the gray sky above us. "We're not on the surface anymore, Lucille. We're beneath it. Far beneath it."

The thought made me dizzy. "That's impossible."

"A lot of things are impossible until they happen to you," he said, cracking. The surface world above us is crawling with monsters, or rather anomalies; we call them things that used to be human or never were human to begin with. This city, these underground territories, they're all that's left for safe human civilization."

"Safe?" I almost laughed, but it became more of a choked sound. "That werewolf thing nearly killed us both."

"That was nothing but a Class D threat at most." Amon stopped at what looked like a solid wall but pressed his hand against it in a specific pattern. Part of the stone slid away, revealing a narrow passage. "The real monsters stay on the surface. What you saw back there was just overflow."

I followed him into the passage, which was barely wide enough for one person. The air was stale and smelled of old smoke, but it was warmer than outside. "You keep talking about this like you've been here for years."

"I have been." His voice echoed in the narrow space. "Seven years, three months, and sixteen days. Not that anyone's counting."

"How did you di..." I started to ask, then stopped.

But he answered anyway. "Military service. Afghanistan. I was trapped beneath a building when it collapsed during a bombing," he said. "Woke up here just like you did. Confused, bleeding, no idea what was happening."

"I'm sorry," I said quietly.

"Don't be. It was a long time ago, and you’re here too," he cackled. The passage opened up into a wider space, and I could hear voices ahead. What matters now is that you understand what you're facing."

The voices grew louder as we approached what looked like the entrance to a cave. But when we stepped through, I realized it wasn't a cave at all; it was a camp. Tents and lean-tos were scattered around a large underground cavern, with a fire pit in the center casting dancing shadows on the walls. A dozen people moved around the space, all of them armed with various weapons and wearing torn or faded clothes.

"Welcome to Base Camp Seven," Amon said. "One of the safe zones."

Several people glanced up as we entered, their eyes quickly fixing on my throat bandage with expressions that ranged from concern to suspicion. I felt like a wounded animal being assessed by predators.

"New arrival?" asked a woman with short gray hair and scars across her left cheek.

"Yeah," Amon confirmed. "Lucille Reyes. Fell from a building, landed about six blocks from here."

"Throat wound?" The woman gestured at my bandage.

"Deep gash with rough edges, probably happened during transition," Amon replied. "She'll need proper medical attention."

"I'll take her to Marcus," the woman said, then looked at me directly for the first time. "I'm Sarah. I run this camp. You're safe here, but there are rules. Amon will explain them to you after we get that wound looked at."

She led me toward one of the larger tents, leaving Amon by the fire pit. Inside, a middle-aged man with gentle eyes and steady hands cleaned and stitched up my throat wound without asking too many questions. The medical supplies looked scavenged but functional.

"You're lucky," Marcus said as he worked. "A quarter inch deeper and you would have bled out before anyone could help you. As it is, you'll have a scar, but you'll live."

"Will I?" I asked. "Amon says I'm dead. That we're all dead."

Marcus paused in his bandaging, studying my face with a strange expression. "You don't know yet, do you?"

"Know what?"

He glanced toward the tent entrance where Amon had disappeared, then back at me. "Look at your hands, child."

I looked down at my palms, confused. They looked like my hands—five fingers, normal proportions, and the small scar on my left thumb from when I'd cut myself opening a letter. But something was different. The skin tone was paler than I remembered, and my fingers seemed more slender.

"That's not..." I started to say, then stopped. Because it wasn't just my hands. My voice sounded different too—higher-pitched, with a slight accent—but I didn't recognize it at first because of how crazy things had gotten.

Marcus handed me a small mirror from his medical kit. "The transition changes us sometimes. Takes us into bodies that died at the same time we did."

The face looking back at me wasn't mine.

This face was younger, maybe early twenties instead of twenty-seven. The hair was longer and blacker, falling in waves instead of my usual straight style. The features were sharper and more delicate, with a haunting quality that made me look like royalty and a ghost at the same time.

"This isn't my body," I whispered, touching the mirror's surface.

"No," Marcus said gently. "But it's yours now. The woman who died in that body, her soul passed on. Yours took its place."

I set the mirror down with shaking hands. "Who was she?"

"We don't always get those answers. Sometimes people arrive with fragments of memories from their new bodies, sometimes not." He finished with my bandage and stepped back. "Dead to the world above, yes. But very much alive down here. The question is whether you want to stay that way."

"What do you mean?"

"He means," Amon said from behind me. “That being here comes with a price. And that price is service."

I turned to face him. "What kind of service?"

"The kind that keeps you breathing." He sat down on a crate across from me; his eyes looked serious. "This isn't some afterlife vacation, Lucille. This is survival. And survival here means one thing: you hunt, or you die."

"Hunt what?"

"Anomalies. The creatures that slip through the cracks between the surface and down here. Things like what we encountered today, but worse. Much worse." He leaned forward, his voice dropping. "Every person in this camp, every person in every camp throughout Lenore, is bound to what's called the Hunter System."

"That sounds ominous."

"It is." Marcus finished with my bandage and stepped back. "The System tracks everything. Every creature you kill, every mission you complete, every credit you earn. It's not optional, Lucille. From the moment you arrived here, you were automatically enrolled."

I looked between them, feeling lost. "Credits?"

"Currency," Amon explained. "You kill anomalies, you get credits. Credits buy you food, shelter, equipment, and medical care. Everything you need to survive. But it's not just about money; it's about advancement. The System has stages and levels of progression that determine what kind of missions you can take and what kind of creatures you can face."

"And if I don't want to participate?"

The look Amon gave me was almost pitying. "Then you die. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. The System doesn't give you a choice, Lucille. It gives you a purpose. The only question is whether you're strong enough to fulfill it."

I sat there in the flickering light of the tent, processing what they'd told me. Dead but not dead. Trapped in an underground world full of monsters. Forced to become some kind of supernatural bounty hunter or starve.

"This is insane," I said finally.

"Yes," Amon agreed. "But it's also reality. Your reality now."

"How do I get out? There has to be a way back to the surface, back to my life…."

"There is." His voice was quiet but firm. "One way. You ascend through the System. Step by step, level by level, until you reach the top. Until you're strong enough and skilled enough to earn your freedom."

"How long does that take?"

Amon was quiet for a long moment, then said, "No one knows. No one from this camp has ever made it that far."

"But it's possible?"

"In theory." He stood up. "The reality is that most people who come here die within their first month. The ones who survive longer usually die within their first year. The System is designed to push you harder and harder until you break."

"That's encouraging," I said dryly.

He moved toward the tent entrance, paused, and looked back at me.

"Get some rest, Lucille. Tomorrow holds a lot already."