The Beloved Daughter by Alana Terry Page A

burned my lungs, but I couldn’t gasp in enough air to force a cough. Above the howls of the inferno, I heard a loud crackling. A smoldering beam fell from the ceiling, nearly striking my companion’s head.
    “We’re going to die in here!” The girl shrieked and dropped to the floor. I turned and knelt down to help her when another prisoner grabbed me from behind.
    “There’s no time!” he shouted. “Move!” He jerked me up by my arm and pulled me forward just as the roof collapsed behind me. I turned around and saw a pile of debris, almost as tall as myself, right in the spot where the girl had been kneeling.
    “Are you hurt?” questioned the man who saved me. I shook my head. There were no other prisoners in sight. “My name is Shin,” he said. “You better follow me.” The main entrance was completely blocked off by rubble so we crawled farther in. I longed for fresh air, wincing in pain with each short breath of soot and ash.
    This was my first time in the train depot. Shin and I eventually made our way to a semi-enclosed tunnel. A current of fresh air howled through, and I coughed so hard that I vomited bile.
    When my body stopped convulsing, I looked around and saw a single train track. Ladders and empty crates cluttered the wooden platform where we were lying. “What is this place?” I whispered, resulting in a second coughing fit. I hunched over as my lungs tried to clear out the black soot from the fire.
    Shin made his way over to the far side of the station where long shadows hid a pile of crates in almost total obscurity. He turned several empty boxes on their sides and made a small enclosure against a corner of the building. As he worked, Shin beckoned me to come closer. Still too weary to stand, I crawled over and joined him behind the crates.
    “What are you doing?”
    Shin put his finger to his lips. “They won’t finish sorting through all this rubble for days. If we disappear on the morning train, wouldn’t they simply assume we were dead?”
    My heart raced. “You can’t really be thinking of escape,” I hissed before another choking episode seized my body.
    Shin patted my back in a feeble attempt to quiet my coughing. “I can’t stay here,” he explained. “I have a daughter. I need to find her.”
     “They’ll send you to the detention centers if you get caught,” I warned Shin. “Do you have any idea what they’d do to you there?”
    Shin cringed. “I know more about it than you could guess.”
    I looked away. What right did this prisoner have to assume that he, or anyone else, had witnessed more heinous crimes than I in those underground torture cells?
    I would have voiced my argument but froze when I heard footsteps. Shin pulled me behind the crates, and we both ducked down behind them.
    “No one here,” shouted a man.
    “Check around,” another voiced sounded from farther back. “Make sure nobody’s hiding by those boxes.” I held my breath, tried to swallow away another cough, and willed the shadows and darkness to cover us both. Our shelter of crates now seemed a shamefully inadequate refuge. Visions of torture back in the underground detainment center ran unchecked through my mind.
    The guard approached our makeshift tower. I could glimpse portions of his olive-green uniform through the slats of the crates. He stuck out his toe and gave our structure a half-hearted kick when a gunshot sounded from nearby. Shin and I both jumped, and I’m certain that I gasped aloud, but the guard was already running back toward the smoldering building.
    “Catch her!” a voice from within the depot shouted. “Prisoner, stop!”
    Someone else called out, “She’s heading for the tracks.”
    Two more gunshots rang out, followed by a warbled cry and a thud just a few meters away. I squeezed my eyes shut and begged my lungs to breathe evenly. For a moment there was silence, and then I heard boots approaching the end of the plank. I bit my lip to stifle another cough.
    “Is