**CHAPTER THIRTY?TWO
“The Voices That Weren’t Theirs”**
The narrow passage funneled them downward until it became less a tunnel and more a gullet carved by time and breathing stone. Anna kept her palm on the jagged wall, guiding her children as they slid and stumbled through the dark.
Lukas held the axe. Lena held Anna’s coat. Anna held her breath.
Behind them, the cave mouth glowed faintly as the snow outside pulsed with movement. The Listener’s silhouette appeared, its head tilted, listening—always listening.
Then—
It stepped aside.
Something else entered the cave.
A human shape.
Two.
Three.
They moved stiffly, silently, shadows against black stone.
Proxies.
Infected chosen by the hive to carry the Primordial’s voice, its resonance, its memory of the living.
Anna turned.
“We run.”
But the hive had another plan.
As they fled deeper into the mountain, the first voice drifted down the passage—
Anna’s own voice.
Soft. Warm. Hurt.
“Lukas… wait.”
Lukas froze like he’d been struck.
The voice was perfect. Inflection. Breath. Shape.
“Don’t leave me behind,” it pleaded. “Not again.”
Anna grabbed Lukas by the coat and yanked him hard.
“That’s not me.”
“But—”
“LOOK. AT. ME.”
Her voice was sharp as an axe. His eyes cleared, breath shaking.
Behind them, the passage filled with Anna’s voice again—more desperate this time.
“Lukas… sweetheart… come back. I’m hurt.”
Something crawled along the stone. Something dragged a limb. Something mimicked her sob.
Lena whimpered. “Mama… they’re using your memories.”
Anna tightened her grip. “They’ll use anything they can’t kill.”
They ran.
The tunnel widened briefly before choking down again into a low ceiling of slate and frozen mud. Their breaths puffed white. Their boots slapped stone and slipped on gravel.
And then—
A second voice joined.
Markus’s voice.
Not the broken mimicry from before.
Whole. Smooth. Alive.
The way he had sounded the last morning he left for the mines, hope in his throat, the future in his boots.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Anna,” the voice whispered. “Slow down. You’ll hurt yourself.”
Anna’s knees buckled.
Because for half a second —just half— she wanted to answer.
But the voice shifted, sharpened, cracking through the tunnel like a dropped dish.
“Anna,” it said again—wrong this time, the breath behind it colder than any winter, “bring her to me.”
Anna’s heart stuttered. The Primordial was pushing the voice through a Proxy, riding it like a puppet’s spine.
“DO NOT LISTEN,” she snarled, more to herself than the children.
But subtle as frost, Lena whispered:
“Mama… that sounded like Daddy.”
Anna forced her legs to move again. “It wasn’t.”
“It remembered him,” Lena said. “It remembered how it felt when he said your name.”
Anna swallowed hard. “Then we show it nothing else to steal.”
They sprinted.
The tunnel angled downward sharply. Anna slid the last few feet, dragging both children with her. The walls opened into a larger chamber—small, circular, cold.
No way forward. No way left. Only a narrow slit above them—an escape up a jagged incline of loose rock.
Anna cursed under her breath.
“We climb.”
Lukas threw the axe up first, embedding it in a crack. Lena scrambled upward, hands shaking. Anna pushed her from below.
They had climbed only a few feet when—
A third voice rose behind them.
Lukas’s voice.
Soft. Afraid. Begging.
“Mama… don’t leave me.”
Anna froze.
The sound echoed perfectly—the exact tone he used when he was younger, when he feared thunder in the night.
Lena gasped and turned. “Lukas!”
Lukas trembled. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
But the voice called out again, from the dark behind them—
“Mama… please…”
Ice shot down Anna’s spine.
She turned slowly.
A silhouette stood at the chamber’s base.
Small. Limp. Head tilted. Arms hanging slack.
A Proxy wearing a small body.
The hive had found a child?sized infected.
And now it mimicked Lukas’s cries with terrifying accuracy.
“Mama… I’m scared…” the Proxy whimpered.
Lena’s grip slipped. Her foot jerked. She screamed—
Anna caught her wrist just before she fell.
“DON’T LOOK AT IT!” Anna roared.
Lukas pressed himself into the wall, face pale with horror. “That’s not me. That’s not me. Mama, that’s NOT ME.”
“It’s not,” Anna said fiercely. “And we are not staying here.”
The Proxy stepped closer.
“Help me, Mama… why won’t you help me?”
Lena shook uncontrollably. “Make it stop. Mama, please—make it stop—”
Anna pulled her daughter upward with pure strength of will.
The Proxy lunged.
Anna swung the axe down with one hand, catching the creature across the jaw. It staggered back, shrieking—not in pain, but in broken mimicry:
“Ma?ma?ma?ma—!”
Lukas grabbed Lena’s arm. “Come on!”
They reached the slit above, scrambling into a cramped crawlspace. Anna pulled the axe free and shoved rocks into the opening.
The Proxy slammed into the stones.
Once. Twice. A third time.
Its cries shifted, glitching through stolen voices:
“Lena…” “Anna…” “Lu?kas…” “Help me—” “Mama—” “PLEASE—”
The stones held.
Barely.
Anna collapsed in the crawlspace with her children, breath ragged.
Lena sobbed into her shoulder. Lukas trembled, clinging to her sleeve.
Anna kissed their foreheads.
“Listen to me,” she whispered, voice shaking but sharp. “The hive can mimic our voices. It can steal our memories. It can pretend to be anyone we’ve loved. But it cannot be us.”
She cupped their faces with trembling hands.
“We don’t follow voices.”
She pressed her forehead to theirs.
“We follow each other.”
Outside, the Proxy cried one last time in a perfect imitation of Anna’s terrified sob—
“Come back… please… come back…”
Then silence.
Then footsteps.
Then the Primordial’s low whisper:
“Lena.”
Anna’s breath hitched.
Lena flinched.
The crawlspace trembled with the weight of the monster below.
Anna whispered:
“Run now.”
And they crawled deeper into the mountain—
with their stolen voices haunting the dark behind them.
