GRENUN: When The Air Killed Us

Chapter 6: First Grenun

1

One. Two. Three.

I slam the heavy steel hatch behind me, pulling the rusted iron latch down until the bolt bites into the frame. The sharp CLANG reverberates through the narrow concrete stairwell, echoing down into the dark, flooded stairwell below.

I press my back against the wet metal door, my shoulder blades digging into the bolts, heaving heavy, ragged breaths into the rubber cup of my mask.

SKRRR-HHHH. SKRRR-HHHH.

The charcoal canisters on my jaw buzz with every frantic drag of air. Moisture from my sweat and breath has pooled in the bottom seal, making a wet slosh-slosh against my chin every time my mouth moves. Through the small round glass viewports of my Dräger respirator, I watch the edge of the steel door.

There is no violent thudding. No fists pounding on the iron.

Instead, after four seconds, I hear the soft, wet scrape of rubber slippers against the gravel on the roof outside.

Then comes the sound through the steel plate—a thin, steady whistle of air being drawn through grey teeth, followed by a long, visible plume of greenish vapor seeping through the rusted gap in the top hinge.

Frau Lindemann is standing half an inch away on the other side of the door, breathing against the metal.

Sixty seconds.

If the rubber gasket on this door was intact, I’d be safe. But the quake sheared the top hinge, leaving a quarter-inch gap where the cold coastal wind pushes her exhaled poison right into the stairwell.

A faint, pale mist curls through the crack, drifting downward toward my face like lazy cigarette smoke.

2

I panic.

I drop to my knees, my leather boots skidding on the slimy, wet concrete steps. My left arm is still clamped around the yellow box like a vice, the sharp plastic corners bruising my ribs. With my free right hand, I grab the hem of my torn lab coat, tearing a long strip of wet cotton off the lining, and shove it violently into the gap above the door hinge.

"Stay locked," I whisper into my mask, my voice cracking, muffled by the silicon facepiece. "Just stay locked."

From the other side of the steel, her voice comes through—not loud, not angry, but shockingly clear, vibrating straight through the iron plate into my skull.

"Silas... why are you hiding in the dark?"

My fingers freeze against the wet cloth seam.

"You left your apartment window open this morning," she continues softly, her tone carrying the casual, domestic cadence of a neighbor chatting over a garden fence. "The rain is getting on your books, Silas. The ones on the bottom shelf. The ones about the Baltic sea floor."

Cold sweat erupts across my forehead, pooling inside the upper rubber seal of my mask, stinging my eyes.

She shouldn't know about my bookshelf. She has never been inside my apartment.

The poison doesn't just hijack their lungs, a terrifying realization flashes behind my eyes, cold and sharp as a scalpel. It digs up everything they ever observed, every detail their brain recorded, and turns it into a hook to make you open the door.

"You must be so thirsty, Silas," she hums through the crack. "I have clean water. The tap in the kitchen is running..."

Her chest expands on the other side of the steel—a deep, wet inhalation—and then she begins to hum again.

Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf...

The lullaby hum vibrates through the iron latch right into my right palm. The sound isn't just in my ears; it feels like it’s vibrating in the marrow of my teeth.

3

I turn and run down the dark stairs.

I don't walk. I plunge headfirst down the steep concrete flight, my boots slamming against the wet steps, taking them three at a time in the pitch black. The emergency lighting is dead. The only illumination comes from the sickly yellow reflection of the floodwater rising from the third-floor landing below.

SKRRR-HHHH! SKRRR-HHHH!

My breathing is too fast, too shallow. The intake valves flutter wildly, unable to supply oxygen fast enough for my sprinting lungs. My vision narrow at the edges, dark purple spots swimming across the murky shadows of the stairwell.

Slow down! my brain screams at me. Hyperventilating burns through your charcoal filter three times faster! You’re wasting your air!

I hit the landing of the third floor, my knee slamming into the rusted handrail with a sickening crack. Pain shoots up my thigh, bright and blinding, but I don't stop. I grab the handle of the fire door, throw my weight against it, and burst into the third-floor hallway.

The hallway is half-drowned.

Black, stagnant water, covered in an oily sheen of floating papers, debris, and green-tinged chemical scum, fills the corridor up to my knees. The air inside the hallway smells through my mask’s rubber edge—a faint, sharp tang of ozone and rotting wallpaper.

I wade forward, the cold water soaking straight through my leather boots, pulling at my jeans like heavy weights.

Behind me, at the top of the stairwell, I hear the heavy steel hatch groan.

CREAAAK.

The iron bolt didn't fail. Frau Lindemann didn't break it down.

She simply turned the rusted latch from the outside. Because Grenuns still remember how doors work. They remember how handles turn. They remember how keys fit into locks.

I turn my head in terror, wiping my foggy visor with my wet sleeve.

At the top of the flooded stairwell, framed against the faint grey light of the roof hatch, her grey silhouette appears.

She steps into the water. She doesn't splash. She doesn't hurry. She walks down the stairs with a slow, agonizingly steady pace, her hands resting loosely at her sides, her head tilted slightly to the left as if listening to a quiet radio only she can hear.

She isn't chasing me. She doesn't need to chase me.

In a world where every building is a flooded trap and every lungful of open air is death, she has all the time in the world. And she is going to walk behind me until my filter dies.