The tracks behind them blurred into a rattling dream. Each step rattled the boy's weight against Rafi's ribs, bruising the bone but tethering him to reality. The braid girl ran ahead, sometimes turning back to be sure he hadn't vanished into the hush's open throat.
They reached an old commuter platform just after dawn cracked itself wide on the city's shoulders. No trains came here anymore — only pigeons and stray dogs with fur patchy from mange and hunger.
They crouched behind a rusted bench half-eaten by ivy. The boy shivered so hard Rafi thought he might splinter apart. He tore his own coat open and stuffed the child inside it like an extra heartbeat. The hush's memory still scraped under his skin: Hush now, boy. I'm still here. I never really left.
He bit his tongue until he tasted metal, just to drown that voice.
The braid girl peeked above the bench. Her eyes darted from the cracked tracks to the street beyond the fence, measuring how far to run next. She was planning too fast — he could see it in the tremor of her fingers. Plans made fast broke faster.
Somewhere down the tracks, a metal door banged open and shut. Footsteps. Not the hush — real feet, real scuff of boot soles on cracked concrete.
Rafi pressed his palm to the braid girl's knee. Wait. She froze. Her braid brushed his cheek, smelled like sour rainwater and salt.
Two men appeared where the overpass dipped into shadow. Not cops — Rafi knew a badge when he saw one. These men wore city grime and the kind of frown that came from dealing favors too cheap to be honest.
The taller one carried a crowbar. The shorter one had a grocery bag that clinked glass against glass. Neither looked up right away, but the hush coiled at Rafi's ear like a jealous snake. They smell you. They want what you hide.
He held the boy tighter. The boy's fevered breath seeped through the coat's zipper, hot enough to steam the morning air.
The braid girl tapped the bench twice: Run?
He shook his head. If they bolted now, the men would smell prey. Better to lie still, a trick Rafi learned from feral dogs behind the old convenience store.
The men stopped a dozen steps away. They talked low. Words about scrap metal, a dead car battery, maybe the food bank that opened at noon. Rafi filtered them through the hush's chatter, snatching the meaning like catching crumbs in the wind.
Then a bottle slipped from the grocery bag. It smashed on the rail, sharp enough to pierce the hush's whisper for a breathless heartbeat.
The taller man spun. His eyes swept the platform, snagged on the bench's shape that bulged too big to be empty.
"Oi." He pointed with the crowbar. "Who's that? Come out now."
The braid girl's hand darted to Rafi's wrist — Please.
He forced his legs to uncoil. He rose slow, pulling the boy with him like a second skin. The braid girl stood beside him, chin lifted so her fear looked like defiance.
The men stared. Three runaways. One too small to fight. One boy with eyes that never softened. One girl who never spoke. Easy meal, if they dared.
The short man sucked spit through his teeth. "Ain't safe here, kids. You runnin' from someone?"
Rafi flinched. The hush shivered inside him, amused. Tell him, boy. Tell him how you taste.
He shook his head. "Just passing through."
The crowbar man lifted the tool, scratched his beard with its blunt edge. "World's full of bad shadows. You got food?"
The braid girl's shoulders stiffened. Her braid flicked like a tail ready to lash.
Rafi said, "We don't want trouble."
"Trouble's everywhere, kid." The short man smiled, but it looked more like hunger than kindness. "Got something to trade? Or maybe—" He licked his lips, eyes sliding to the braid girl.
Rafi stepped in front of her so fast the hush laughed at his foolish courage.
Behind him, the boy squirmed, half-conscious, murmuring nonsense about the hush's hollow trees and teeth.
One wrong word and this would end bloody. Rafi's head spun with options — none good. The hush purred: Let them have her. Trade her fear for your freedom. You'd be lighter without her.
He snarled back, No.
Then the faintest hum cut through everything — a real train's horn, distant but coming fast. Ghost rail or real? Rafi didn't care. He grabbed the braid girl's elbow and the boy's leg.
"Run!"
They bolted. The men shouted, lunged, but shadows can't outrun hunger. The hush chased their heels, but the city wind chased faster.
Down the broken platform, over the tracks, into the tunnel's throat where light flickered uncertain and the hush's claws scraped the walls just out of reach.