He’d acted a little too hastily: it was pitch dark.
He couldn’t see a thing.
52
FINN FELT HIS WAY DOWN the damp stones as the stairs beneath him fell away in a spiral to his left. It smelled at once of dust and mold, like his grandparents’ basement. He counted the stairs as he went: ten, eleven, twelve… before they leveled off. He walked on the flat now, straight ahead, his left hand skimming a rock wall, the occasional cobweb tangling in his fingers and making him jump. Finn didn’t like spiders.
The sound of his running shoes scraping the concrete changed; he could feel he was in a more open area. His vision, which had shown him nothing but sparkles and curlicues, improved to where he could make out a haze both to his left and right. It hung in the air like a gray mist. And now, slowly forming, a lump, an interruption in the mist. An imperfection in the horseshoe-shaped glow that continued to define itself.
“Jez?” he called out softly.
The lump moved. He thought it might have turned in his direction.
He called her name again, this time a little more loudly.
“If you’re a dream, go away!” Jez’s voice!
“It’s Finn,” he said, taking steps toward her, his hand still guiding him along the wall.
“Why can’t I wake up?” she muttered.
Finn felt good. His heart swelled in his chest. It was not simply the pride of success, of beating the odds and finally finding her. It went beyond that, to something more. He felt an importance in being here. A significance. He was saving Jez. He was doing something that really mattered, not just studying or wasting time on his computer. It gave meaning to all the effort they had gone to, all the risks they had taken.
And then the tunnel filled with a colorful glow, like a light warming up. And it was a light warming up. His light. His DHI. It filled his end of the tunnel, and what had been a lump of darkness transformed into Jezebel. She stood up from her slumped position looking almost angelic and came toward him slowly, as if she were floating. He couldn’t sustain his DHI, and it vanished. He pulled out the BlackBerry, using its glowing screen as a flashlight.
He thought of her as having jet black hair and bone white, almost translucent, skin. Intriguing eyes. That had been how she’d looked when he’d first met her on the Sports Complex soccer field, what seemed like years earlier. In fact, it had only been a matter of months. But Jez had made a radical transformation when Maleficent’s spell had been lifted. Her hair was now a shocking blond—almost white. Her thin lips shined luminously red.
She came into his arms, like a young child hugging a parent, and then let go.
In the BlackBerry’s weird light, they both looked vaguely blue.
“I didn’t think…” she stammered. “I hoped and even prayed, though I’m not very good at praying…I wired up the iPod but couldn’t be sure…”
“Amanda found a page in your diary,” he explained. “We followed your sketches.”
“I don’t even remember what I drew.”
“Dreams,” Finn said. “Amanda said it was what you dreamed.”
“Nightmares is more like it. I’ve had them here as well—down here in the dark.”
She explained the ordeal she’d been through. It was much as the Kingdom Keepers had come to suspect: her detention on the savannah; her escape, which turned on a mistake made by one of the monkeys; her flight across the savannah and over a wall that turned out to be the tiger yard. The early morning release of the big cats and her finding herself following one down a wooden hatch and into the tunnel while being stalked by another left behind in the upper yard.
“The hatches both closed at the same time, and I was trapped. At first I realized how lucky I was, because the Overtakers would never think to look in such a place, but then as time went on, it occurred to me that no one would look down here. That I was not just hidden, I was trapped. And that’s when I realized that a dream I’d had—of a landscape, but from above, like from a plane—made all the more sense. I was in the tunnel, under the C in the photo.”
“It was a satellite photo,” Finn said, explaining. “One of your sketches led us to it.”
“And that’s when I realized the song on my iPod might help you find me. I used my earbud wire to connect to a box.” She turned the glowing iPod, revealing a series of three junction boxes mounted to the stone wall and a number of wires leading from them. “I couldn’t be sure it would work, but I thought it probably should. And maybe you’d hear it. If you were even here in the Park. And so I decided to save the battery and only play the song every few hours.” She pointed at the glowing face of the device. “It still has some power, though not much, I’m afraid.”
“We need to get out of here. Amanda and Charlene are up there waiting for us. Philby is on VMK with Wayne—”
“But VMK is closed!”
“Wayne fixed that. The two of them are monitoring network traffic and also trying to see if they can control the hatches in the tiger yards.” Finn had nearly forgotten about the DS. He checked that it was turned on.
No signal. He tried the BlackBerry: no bars, no signal.
“To get down here,” Finn said, “I had to cross over to get through a maintenance gate. You can’t turn yourself into a DHI the way I can. You can’t cross over to get back out.” He paused, trying to think clearly. “We’re kind of stuck down here.”
“You can still get out.”
“That’s not going to happen. I’m not leaving without you.”
“You don’t happen to have a hamburger and fries in your back pocket, do you?”
“I’m going to try the DS again, closer to the hatches.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
She disconnected the iPod and carried it in front of her as a very dim flashlight. Finn did the same with the BlackBerry. The tunnel’s floor was concrete, its walls, stone. The tunnel was longer than Finn expected. Nearing the far end—the end leading into the upper tiger yard—the tunnel floor began to rise, forming a ramp. The space became lower and tighter, ending in a box of concrete three feet square, a space Finn could just tuck himself into.
“It’s exactly the same on the other end,” Jez said.
Finn already knew their situation had improved: the static in his ear had lessened. “Have you tried opening it?”
“Yes. Of course. It doesn’t open.”
“What if two of us pushed?”
“It’s not that it’s heavy. It’s latched shut. Tigers are much stronger than either of us. I’m sure it’s constructed to stop a curious tiger from opening it.” She paused a moment. “Why do you keep checking your watch? It’s only a few minutes later than when you first looked.”
Finn said nothing. But he checked his watch again. She was right, it was 5:18. He’d last checked at 5:15.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The Park closes at six.”
“So Amanda and the others will have to leave. That’s not the most awful thing.”
“It isn’t just that,” he said. “They move the animals—all the animals—out of the Park at closing.”
“Including the tigers.” Jez made it a statement.
“I’m afraid so.”
“And if we’re down here when they move them Her voice trailed off.
Finn caught himself nodding.
The DS beeped, indicating a connection.
philitup: Finn? Finn?
Finn: i’ve got jez!!! she’s ok!
Messages started to compete, but Philby cut everyone off with an announcement.
philitup: found the virtual switch, i think i can open the hatches, want me 2 try?