Bird's Eye View

Chapter Four

"God it stinks in here," I murmur.

"Suck it up," Red's voice is tense.

He's giving me no room to complain. The way his eyes scan the area and the way his knife stays unsheathed tells me enough about these sewers.

"Have you even been down here before?" I step over a brownish, greenish looking puddle with a grimace.

"Once."

I eye him carefully, his body nothing but a figure in the dim light and shadows of the tunnel. I know that half of surviving means going to new places, but it seems like he knows virtually nothing about down here. Uneasy is an understatement for how I'm feeling, my entire body tense just like his. The thought that if we were to have to fight, he would have to do everything for me. My life is in his hands, completely. This just dawned on me even though this had been the case for the past two days. That feels wrong.

"For a very short time," he adds once he notices how I'm looking at him.

"So we're walking in here blind?" I question.

He stays silent at this.

"You have no idea what's down here, do you?"

He continues to not respond, he just stares at me. His eyebrows are slightly furrowed and his red eyes reflect what little light comes down here, making him look honestly freaky. They're shining with no pupil in the centre, almost making his eyes look like a flashlight. Kind of like how animal eyes are when they reflect light.

"Look, I trusted you to get through the buildings because clearly you've been living here for a while. But this? You could be leading us straight to a death sentence and you wouldn't even know!" I whisper yell.

"Feel free to go topside and get captured by the people who live up there," he crosses his arms, "or follow the guy who's saved your ass more than twice."

"You don't even speak unless spoken to. Why would I trust you? I don't even know how old you are."

"Is that not what you're supposed to do?" He looks genuinely confused.

"What? What do you mean?"

"Aren't you supposed to only speak when spoken to?"

I stare at him, mouth slightly open in confusion as well, matching his facial expression. We just stand there for a moment, sharing the awkward feeling.

"No. No, you're supposed to speak whenever you think is appropriate," I swallow hard.

His shoulders droop a little and he sighs. Did he not know that he's allowed to speak whenever he wants? Seriously? I mean, from the way he carries himself and the other people in Ottawa speak about him, he must've been in the army, so not speaking unless spoken to must be common there.

"Oh."

He turns around and starts walking with a little hesitance in his step. He stays quiet for a while as we make our way through the sewers, but suddenly his voice breaks the silence.

"I'm twenty-four," he says reluctantly, "and my name is Crow."

There's a short pause between him and I as I gawk at him, shocked that he revealed this. He kept it safe guarded for so long you'd think he was a terrorist wanted in fifty different countries.

"Wow, a miracle! You told me something about yourself," I gasp dramatically.

"Oh shut it. If you react like that I'm never telling you anything about myself ever again," he mutters.

"It's a big deal! I've known you for what, a couple of days? And you finally told me your name."

"You kept bringing it up," he insists as if I held him at gunpoint for this information.