Three remained in place, just holding out his hand to her.
“Take this.”
Cass looked down at the chemlight laid across his palm. Her eyes darted back to his, understanding. She shook her head vigorously, but he cut her off, twisting the top of the light, igniting it, thrusting it towards her.
“Take it! Follow the stairs all the way; all the way to the bottom,” Three spoke rapidly now, directing, commanding. “Once you’re there—”
Back down the alley, a pair of electronic shrieks called, responded. Fifty meters away, or maybe twenty. The way sound bounced through the cement corridors made it hard to know for certain. Three saw Cass start to slip again.
“Hey, are you listening?”
She refocused, nodded.
“When you’re at the bottom, follow the pipes to the first alcove you find, get in it, and kill the light.”
He felt her hand on his, half-closed around the chemlight.
“What about you?” she asked. He glanced back down the alleyway, back the way they had come. At the far end, a faint blue light shone, sweeping, searching. He looked back to Cass.
“If I don’t get to you by sun-up, head north.”
He slipped his hand out from under hers, and pushed her gently back. Then, grasping the door handle, Three pulled with adrenaline-fueled strength, and sealed Cass and Wren inside.
As the rolling echoes from the slamming door died off, Cass found herself standing in a pool of pale yellow light at the top of a cement landing, with Wren wrapped tightly around her leg. For a moment, she considered pressing an ear to the door, but the urgent directions sprang to mind, and she thought better of it. She reached down, and took Wren’s hand.
“Come on, baby,” she soothed, annoyed at the tremble in her own voice. “We need to head down… there.”
She held the chemlight out, saw steel-grated stairs, rust-coated but sturdy, trailing off into the darkness below. The pool of light illuminated no more than the first five steps, and she wondered just how far “down there” really was.
“Can you carry me?” Wren asked. He seemed surprisingly unconcerned, and that made Cass feel stronger.
“Sure, sweetheart.”
She knelt; let him scramble up on her back again. His warmth was comforting.
“Here, you hold this,” Cass said, handing Wren the light. “Hold it out in front, so we can see where we’re going.”
“Like a maglev,” he replied, almost cheerful.
“Just like.”
Cass allowed herself a half smile, as she stood, hooking her arms under Wren’s legs, and adjusting him on her back. She was almost jealous of his apparent fearlessness, even knowing it was born of ignorance.
“I’ll be the train,” she said, “and you can be the driver.”
“OK…” said Wren hesitantly, swallowing hard. Cass looked back, saw him staring down into the blackness below. “But not too fast.”
Maybe not as fearless as she’d thought, or perhaps hoped.
“Slow and steady, baby. We’ll keep it on the rails, alright?”
He tightened around her, she felt him nodding against her back. He held the light at arm’s length, showing the few steps ahead and no more. Cass took a deep breath. Slow and steady. Together, they began their descent.
The gloom was heavy, cool, damp; smelled vaguely of earth, and dust, and water. An urban cavern. But one full of energy, as if the darkness that enshrouded the pair were itself alive, eager to consume the meager light they wielded, to embrace them, and perhaps devour them as well. Each step brought a creak or groan of steel, stairs long-unused reawakening to their purpose for the first time in unmeasured years, or even decades. A narrow handrail marked the edge. Cass pressed her shoulder to the wall opposite, mistrusting the protection the rail seemed to promise, and fought the resistance she felt emanating from further below, the timeless fear of the unknown. Forward, onward, downward she drove herself, despite the growing temptation to return to the relative safety of the landing above.
Fifteen stairs down, the steps turned abruptly left, ninety degrees. After another fifteen, another ninety-degree left. This became the pattern as Cass descended, with Wren fidgeting upon her back. The air grew cooler and damper. Cass wondered how far below the streets they’d come. And she wondered where the man that brought them here was now. She hoped he was still alive. Had to believe he was, no matter what the odds against it were. She realized for the first time she didn’t even know his name.
“I’m tired,” Wren said, softly. “Can we stop?”
“Not yet.”
“How much longer?”
“Not much.”
Cass continued on, legs and knees aching, wondering for herself how much farther they had to go. Internally, she checked global-time. 19:07 GST. Outside, somewhere high above them, night had settled fully. One foot in front of the other; automatic now. They’d been descending for nearly half an hour, though at their current, cautious pace, Cass had no idea what distance they had traveled. Not nearly as far as it felt, that was certain.
She felt Wren’s grip around her shoulders slacken, his head bump down on her back. His arm, stretched out in front of her, began to lower slightly, slowly.
“Wren,” she said, quietly. She hated the way her voice sounded in the utter silence, as though speaking drew unwanted attention from the darkness, or whatever might be lurking hidden within it. “Wren?”
Wren’s small hand continued to lower, grip relaxing on the chemlight. Cass reached up instinctively to catch it. Without her arm supporting his leg, Wren slipped sideways on her back, jolted suddenly awake. The chemlight flew from his hand, danced on Cass’s fingertips.
For a breathless second—
—she almost thought she’d caught it.
Instead, it clattered to the stairs, bounced, skittered to the edge. And fell. Cass watched in horrified silence as the pale yellow light shrank into the void, and disappeared, swallowed by the blackness. She never did hear it hit the bottom.
For a time, neither of them spoke, or moved, in the utter darkness that encased them. Then, Cass felt Wren’s slight shudders, knew he was sobbing, silently, mortified. She swallowed her own panic, anger, disappointment.
“It’s alright, baby. It’s OK.”
Carefully, she knelt, feeling the wall to her side to maintain her sense of direction, and swung Wren around, embracing him. Reassuring him; feeling hopeless herself.
“It’s OK, Wren. I shouldn’t have made you carry it all that way. Don’t cry, sweetheart, it’s not your fault.”
He buried his face into her shoulder, hot tears falling on her neck. She caressed his head, ran her fingers through his hair, soothed him; screamed inside. She dared not turn around, couldn’t face the ascent, but her heart revolted at the idea of continuing further down without any way to see what might lie ahead. What if the stairs had given out down below? And who knew what creatures might have found their way in and made their nests in here? Cass’s mind exploded with the possibilities, none of them pleasant.
In the end, she couldn’t bring herself to continue on without some sense of where they were, or where they were headed. Even with the risk it posed, it seemed like the best option of very few. Cass shut her eyes, accessed distant satellites high above the earth, pinpointed herself, identified their current location. She’d already done all she could to mask her signal. Hopefully, no one would notice the query.
Within seconds of finding herself in the world, she had blueprints. They were in the storm-water system, seventy meters of one hundred below the surface. According to the schematics, the concrete floor lay thirty meters further down, a junction between miles of pipes and ducts, each carrying hundreds of thousands of gallons of water back and forth from collection points to treatment centers and on to distribution. The entire system was automated, and apparently remained functional, even now. Knowing where she was somehow soothed Cass, stole some of the menace from the darkness. She felt strengthened.