45. Hannah
Hannah
The tunnel smells like rust, river water, and death.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The deeper we move beneath the old Romanian church, the harder it becomes to breathe around the memories clawing their way back into my head.
Clay stays directly beside me while Gabriel leads with a flashlight stolen from Mason’s tactical pack.
The beam cuts through dripping darkness ahead of us.
Ancient stone walls.
Flooded tracks.
Old transport rails disappearing deeper underground beneath Bucharest.
My pulse stutters violently.
Because I know these tunnels.
Oh God.
I know them.
Russ moves carefully behind Gabriel, rifle raised while Lucas keeps watch at the rear despite blood soaking through the bandage around his shoulder.
Nobody talks much.
The silence feels wrong down here.
Heavy.
Like the earth itself remembers what happened beneath this city.
Water drips steadily from overhead pipes.
Somewhere far behind us, church bells continue ringing through the storm.
Then suddenly—
I stop walking.
Clay notices instantly.
“Hannah?”
I stare toward the left tunnel branching into darkness.
My stomach twists so violently I almost double over.
“No…”
Gabriel turns sharply.
“What?”
My voice barely works.
“That way.”
Everybody goes still.
The flashlight beam shifts toward the side tunnel.
Old steel doors line the corridor beyond it.
Numbers painted on them.
Faded now.
But visible.
A memory detonates behind my eyes—
Children drugged inside transport trucks.
Tiny hands reaching through cage bars.
A guard laughing:
Don’t worry. Most of them won’t remember this place anyway.
I physically recoil.
Clay catches me immediately.
“Easy.”
“No,” I whisper shakily.
“No, no, no…”
Gabriel’s face drains of color beside me.
Because he remembers now too.
“This wasn’t just transport,” he says quietly.
Russ looks between us sharply.
“What was it?”
Nobody answers immediately.
Because deep down—
we already know.
The steel doors.
The rails.
The underground routes connected to ports.
Children moved between countries like cargo.
Human trafficking beneath churches.
Beneath schools.
Beneath orphanages.
Hidden under places people trusted.
Lucas mutters a curse under his breath.
“Jesus Christ…”
Mason shines another light farther down the corridor.
The beam catches something painted on the wall.
A symbol.
Black circle.
Three vertical lines through the center.
Gabriel goes completely still.
“What is that?” Clay asks.
Gabriel’s jaw tightens hard.
“Original Sentinel.”
The words echo coldly through the tunnel.
“Before Wu.”
That gets everyone’s attention.
Russ lowers his rifle slightly.
“There were people before him?”
Gabriel nods once slowly.
“Wu inherited the program.”
Ice floods my veins.
No.
No no no.
Because that means Sentinel wasn’t created by one monster.
It survived multiple generations.
Institutionalized evil.
Built carefully over decades.
My breathing starts accelerating again.
Overlap pressure slams into me hard—
and suddenly the tunnel disappears.
Flash—
I’m small again.
Maybe eight.
Standing barefoot beside the rails.
Children lined up beside me.
A woman in white gloves kneeling in front of us.
Smiling gently.
“Good children obey.”
A little boy beside me asks where they’re going.
The woman smiles wider.
“Somewhere useful.”
Then the guards separate him from the line.
I never saw him again.
The memory snaps so violently, I gasp out loud.
“Hannah!”
Clay grips my shoulders before I hit the wall.
I’m shaking hard now.
“He wasn’t real,” I whisper.
“Oh God…”
Clay’s face tightens.
“Who?”
“The boy beside me.”
Tears burn instantly down my face.
“I forgot him.”
The horror of that crushes me more than the memory itself.
Because how many children did Sentinel erase from us?
How many names disappeared?
Gabriel steps closer slowly.
“Hannah…”
“They made us forget each other.”
My voice cracks completely.
“That was the point.”
Silence settles heavily around the tunnel.
Nobody knows what to say to that.
Because there is nothing to say.
Clay brushes wet hair back from my face carefully.
Gentle.
So gentle it almost undoes me.
“You remember now,” he says quietly.
Maybe.
But remembering feels like drowning.
Russ suddenly raises a fist.
Everybody freezes instantly.
Movement ahead.
Far down the tunnel.
Flashlights.
Multiple.
Mason swears softly.
“They followed us.”
Of course they did.
Wu won’t stop until every witness is dead.
Gabriel kills his flashlight immediately.
Darkness swallows the tunnel whole.
Only distant water echoes around us now.
And somewhere ahead—
boots splash slowly through shallow water.
Searching.
Hunting.
Clay pulls me carefully behind one of the rusted steel doors while Russ, Lucas, and Mason quietly spread into defensive positions.
My heartbeat pounds so hard I’m terrified they’ll hear it.
The approaching lights grow brighter.
Closer.
Then—
a child’s voice echoes faintly through the darkness ahead.
Soft.
Terrified.
“Please don’t take me back…”
Every single person in the tunnel freezes.
My blood turns to ice.
Because that voice didn’t come from memory.
It came from somewhere deeper underground.