"It's worst the first time," the man beside him said. "After a while you learn to hold your breath-that way the dust don't get to you so bad. Come on."
As surefootedly as if he were walking the streets on the surface, the man jumped back onto the tracks. Jeff followed, and a while later his companion ducked into a passageway leading off to the left, then led him up a ladder and through another series of passages, these filled with pipes.
Jeff had no idea how long they'd moved through the tunnels, nor how far they'd gone. There was no way to tell what time it might be, and he'd lost all sense of direction within seconds after he'd climbed the first ladder. All he knew was that if he didn't keep up with the man, he'd be hopelessly lost.
Lost somewhere under the city.
Lost in the darkness.
When he was so close to exhaustion that he wondered if he could go any farther, they came to a heavy, metal door. The man opened it and pushed him through. The door closed behind him with a hollow thud.
At first, the light inside the room had been so bright that its glare blinded Jeff. But a few seconds later, as his eyes adjusted, he realized he wasn't alone. There was another man in the room-a man a few years older than he.
A few years older, and a lot bigger, maybe four inches taller. The man outweighed him by at least fifty pounds, and none of the extra weight looked like fat.
Jeff recognized the orange jumpsuit as what the inmates at Rikers Island wore, once they'd been convicted. It was what he himself would have been wearing now, if not for the car that had crashed into the van.
"You got a name?" the man asked.
He hesitated, then nodded. "Jeff."
"Jeff," the man repeated softly, almost to himself. Then he nodded, too. "I like that. I like that a lot."
The man smiled at him, revealing a missing tooth. "I'm Jagger," he said. His smile faded as he looked at Jeff's clothes. "You ain't from the jail, are you?" he asked, his voice turning suspicious. " ‘Cause if you think I'm goin' back, you better get a whole lotta help. I ain't goin‘ back."
Jeff shook his head quickly as he saw Jagger's right hand ball into a huge fist. "I'm not taking you anywhere. I don't even know where we are."
"Under the hospital," Jagger told him, sinking down onto the mattress that was the only thing in the room.
"The hospital?" Jeff asked. "What hospital?"
"The one they took me to."
"When was that?"
Jagger frowned, then shook his head, shrugging. "Don't know. Sometimes it's hard to think, you know?" His smile returned, and he patted the mattress next to him. "You want to sit down?"
Jeff hesitated, then shook his head as his hand closed on the knob of the door behind him.
Though the knob turned, the door was bolted.
Jagger uncoiled from the floor and took a step toward him. His voice dropped and took on a menacing edge: "You ain't leaving. I don't want you to leave."
Jeff thought he knew which hospital Jagger had said they were beneath. It had to be Bellevue. He'd heard stories about the place from people at the Tombs. "I'd rather be at Rikers," most of them said, shivering. "At least out there, everybody isn't crazy." But why had they taken Jagger to Bellevue? And why had he been at Rikers in the first place?
"I'm not going anywhere," he'd said as Jagger's hand tightened into a fist again. He moved away from the door, and Jagger's fist relaxed.
That had been an hour ago-or maybe two, or maybe even more. Jeff wasn't sure. He'd finally sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall. He thought he might have fallen asleep for a few minutes, but wasn't any more sure of that than of how long he'd been here. But when he opened his eyes, Jagger was sitting on the mattress, watching him. Jeff's muscles ached, and the cold of the concrete seemed to have sunk into his bones.
Then the light had gone off, and the terrible darkness closed around him.
Darkness, and silence.
A darkness so thick and heavy it felt like he was suffocating, and a silence so complete, it seemed he might never hear again.
A moment later, he'd felt something.
Something creeping toward him.
"Jagger?" he said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the darkness.
"Yeah," Jagger replied, his voice little more than a croak.
It sounded to Jeff as if he was still on the mattress on the other side of the room.
Then something skittered across his leg, and when he struck out at it, his hand hit something soft. There was a squeak as the object hit the wall a few feet away.
A rat!
Jeff jerked his legs up, then scrambled to his feet.
Then he heard something else.
It was a voice from the other side of the door.
"Get away from the door. Both of you sit on the mattress and don't move. You move, and the door closes and the light don't go back on. You got till I count to ten."
The man began counting, and for a moment Jeff was paralyzed. Where was the mattress? How was he supposed to find it? "Jagger," he whispered. "Where are you?"
"Over here," Jagger whispered back.
Jeff took a tentative step toward the other man's voice, then another. "Say something," he hissed into the blackness.
But instead of speaking, Jagger reached out in the darkness. His huge hand brushed against Jeff's leg, then closed on it. "It's okay," Jagger said. "I got you."
As the man outside finished counting, Jeff sank onto the mattress.
The door opened, a brilliant halogen beam cutting through the darkness, blinding Jeff as effectively as the darkness had a moment earlier.
"Welcome to the game," the voice said. "You win, you go free. You lose, you die."
Jeff heard the sound of something being set on the floor.
The halogen beam vanished, and the room was plunged back into blackness.
The bolt on the door slid back into place with a dull thump.
And then the light came back on.
Sitting next to the door was a large enamel bowl filled with something that looked like stew. The handles of two spoons protruded from the glutinous mass. Next to the bowl was a canteen.
Jagger got up and brought the bowl back to the mattress, setting it between them and offering Jeff a spoon.
Jeff shook his head.
Jagger shrugged and began to eat.
As he watched the other man consume the food, Jeff thought about the words that had been spoken in the darkness: "You win, you go free. You lose, you die."
His eyes shifted from Jagger to the single dim bulb that hung overhead.
You win, you go free. You lose, you die.
And if the light went off-
But Jeff knew what would happen if the light went off. The terrible suffocating darkness would close around him, and whatever lay hidden in the darkness would once more begin to creep toward him.
He repeated the words to himself again: Welcome to the game. You win, you go free.
You lose, you die.
CHAPTER 11
Keith Converse felt as if he hadn't slept at all. He'd spent the evening alone, which hadn't been a good idea. He'd consumed almost half a fifth of scotch- and not the good scotch he and Mary had always saved for company, either. It had been the cheap stuff that he kept on hand for the days when he felt he just needed a drink after work. The whiskey was raw enough that until last night he'd never been able to swallow more than one or two, and usually he wound up pouring what was left of the second drink down the drain. But last night nothing had gone down the drain. He'd just kept drinking, hoping that the alcohol would eventually take away the image of the burned body he'd seen that day.
The body that everyone had told him was his son's.
All evening, as he sat in his chair sipping whiskey and trying to forget what he'd seen, what Mary had said kept recurring to him: "He's dead, Keith… Jeff's dead, and you've got to face it."