Chapter 4 - The Abandoned Subway StationHidden beneath layers of discarded construction boxes and rusted iron reinforcement bars, the abandoned subway station was silent except for the rhythmic drip-drip of leaking rainwater.
Josie huddled beneath her oversized blue coat, shivering slightly as she clutched a dry crust of bread she had found earlier that morning. Her hands were scraped and raw from where the shattering glass had bitten into her skin during the rescue, but she didn't care about the pain.
She cared about the red bottle cap.
Her precious central castle was incomplete without it. She had dropped it in the street just as the sirens began to wail, watching helplessly as it rolled away into the darkness.
“Stupid,” she whispered to herself, pulling her knees up to her chest. “You should have stayed hidden.”
Suddenly, the heavy wooden barricade at the station entrance creaked.
Josie froze. She stopped breathing, her green eyes widening with primal terror.
Footsteps. Heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed down the concrete stairs. Not the erratic shuffle of fellow runaways or the slow sweep of transit workers, but the calculated, heavy tread of men wearing expensive leather shoes.
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“Search every corner,” a cold, unfamiliar voice echoed through the damp tunnel. “Julian wants this brat found and silenced. She saw too much.”
Josie’s heart hammered wildly against her ribs. She scrambled backward, squeezing herself into the narrow gap behind a stack of rotting wooden crates just as the beam of a high-powered flashlight swept across her makeshift room.
