by Blair Drake
The sound of something rolling on the concrete made him search the darkness.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” she said, suddenly more panicked than she’d been.
“Somebody is down there. We should go there and ask for help getting out of here.”
The girl shook her head quickly, and reaching out, she grabbed his arm. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
He nodded with impatience. “Yeah, I get that. I’m not looking forward to more trouble. But it’s going to find me if I don’t get back to the headmaster’s office and quick.”
He shrugged off her arm and then glanced at the tunnel, taking a step and then stopping quickly.
“Someone turned the lights on.”
The tunnel wasn’t bright, but it was bright enough for him to see more of what was in front of him, which turned out to be more of the same.
“I’m Reese. Reese Calamita. What’s your name?”
“Raven.”
The name fit her with her long dark hair that flowed down to her waist. She didn’t look as if she spent an hour every morning straightening it like most of the girls did. She wasn’t wearing a truckload of makeup either, which surprised him. Most of the girls did. It seemed to suit her. She was pretty even without makeup.
She didn’t say anything more and that left him with a feeling of dread he couldn’t ignore.
“Raven, how long have you been down here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a watch. But it wouldn’t matter.”
“I didn’t ask you for the time. I asked… Why wouldn’t it matter?”
“Down here there is no day and no night. Not really. At least, things don’t completely shut down. Something is happening all the time. Time is just measured in bells. Days are just days.”
“Bells? Yeah, okay. If you say so.”
“Endel says so.”
He glanced back at the light in the distance. He could definitely hear sounds but he couldn’t make any of what was at the end of the tunnel.
“Maybe you could introduce me to this Endel guy.”
She shook her head. “He won’t like it.”
He felt his brows pull together. “How do you know? I’m a likable guy. People like me. Maybe he can help us.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said yet again
“Can we get past that already?” Reese asked impatiently. “I could say the same thing about you. How did you get down here anyway?”
“The same way you did.”
“Really? Then you can enlighten me while we find this Endel guy. To be honest, I have no freaking clue how I got here.”
She looked at him funny, as if she didn’t believe him. A fingernail of suspicion dug into his skin and poked at him as he remembered what had happened earlier. Jasper was talking about some new freshman who just transferred to the school. Said she was a beauty and he wanted Reese to get a look at her.
Her eyes widened. With the little bit of extra light afforded him, he could see that her eyes were pale blue, like the color of the sea next to the school on a sunny day. They were striking, and he now understood his initial reaction to her staring at him.
“We have to get you out of here,” Raven said. “It’s not safe.”
“We? Oh, you mean you and Endel. Safe from what? You mean whoever is down the tunnel?”
She shook her head and started running her hand over the concrete wall. “They’ll be coming soon. They always come.”
“Who?”
She frowned. “I don’t know what they’re called. I just feel it when they’re near. And they’re coming.”
She’d become increasingly agitated, darting her gaze down the tunnel where they’d heard movement.
“Come with me. Please,” she said, taking his hand and pulling at him, but stopped short when he didn’t move.
“I just came from that direction. There’s nothing there but more concrete. I think it might be a dead end. Damn, your hand is freezing. It’s colder down that way. We should see if there is—”
With a cautious glance into the darkness, she let go of his arm. “Better to be cold than dead.”
“What are you talking about? No one is going to be dead.” He suddenly recalled all those crazy stories about bodies in the basement. “Wait. Is someone trying to…kill you? Is that why you’re here?”
Something was buzzing, low at first and then it grew in intensity like a mosquito that escaped swatting but that continued to come back to taunt you by buzzing against your ear. It was there and then it wasn’t and then it was there again. He checked his pocket for the pin with the stone. It was dark and lifeless.
“What is that sound?” he asked, dropping the pin back in his jacket pocket.
“Something we don’t want to find us. We need to go. Now.”
“Go where? There isn’t any place to go?”
“You’re not safe.”
“You keep saying that. Hey, tell me. Is someone after you?”
Raven peered up at him with those pale blue eyes pleading to him. “No. They’re after you.”
Chapter 2
A door was hidden in the wall. Reese didn’t know how he’d missed it on his first walk down the tunnel. But as soon as Raven pulled at the edges, it became clear. She yanked the door open and then slipped inside.
“How did you know this was here?” Reese asked as he walked through the doorway with apprehension.
“I live here,” she answered.
“You mean at the school,” he said. “You don’t mean this…closet or whatever it is we’re in, do you? You don’t live here.”
She reached her hands above her head and pushed a switch high on the wall that resulted with a cascade of buzzing noises. It set off a chain reaction of small low wattage light bulbs on the ceiling turning on in a long concrete corridor. They weren’t bright. It was just enough light to see each other.
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” she said quietly as she eased the door shut. “Don’t worry. Now that the door is closed, they won’t hear the current.”
“What…why are you here? How come?”
It seemed like an innocent enough question. Reese really didn’t think either one of them belonged there. But her familiarity with her surroundings seemed almost disturbing, as if she’d been here a long time.
Her reaction startled him. Her eyes filled with tears, but aside from that, her expression was nearly blank. Her eyes told the story that the rest of her face didn’t.
She kept walking as she said, “I was sent here.”
When she said nothing more, he asked, “And?”
Raven kept walking. “My parents didn’t want me. It happens.”
Matter-of-fact. Just like that. End of explanation as if that were a normal thing.
His stomach churned with an uneasiness that was familiar, and hated at the same time because being unwanted was something he knew too well. From the moment his mother had remarried, Reese had known his stepdad wanted nothing to do with him, and didn’t want Reese to ruin his new union with Reese’s mom. He remembered when his mother started dating George, a good man she’d said at the time. Someone who would take care of the two of them.
Well, George could certainly do that. He had enough money, and friends with power. But one thing that had nagged at Reese the entire time is that his mother hadn’t laughed or smiled the way she had when they’d been together as a family with his dad. Just the three of them.
He never thought of his stepdad and his mother and him as just the three of them. He’d never felt like he was a part of anything concerning George except something that just came along with his mother when his stepdad married her.
Reese recalled the night four years ago when his mother had come into his bedroom and told him he was going to leave to go to school at the Gray Cliffs Academy. He’d never heard of the school. Why would he? It was in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the country, far away from anything that had to do with anything his stepdad wanted or care
d about. And it became painfully obvious that it was the sole reason he’d been sent to the Cliffs.
His mother’s eyes had been sad, but resolute. It was as if she had fought the battle herself and finally came to the decision that Reese was going to leave without ever talking to him. His only choice was to pack what few things he was allowed to bring with him to school.
He’d missed his real father terribly that day, and hated him at the same time. He remembered his dad, but that was a long time ago and those memories were fading. Still, Reese had wondered why he hadn’t been good enough for his dad to stay. If he had, George never would have come into their lives, and he wouldn’t have convinced his mom to send him away.
Looking at Raven, the sickening pain he’d felt that day returned, as if it had happened yesterday.
“They just left you here? Just like that, for no reason?” he asked.
“I told you. They didn’t want me.”
Anger surged through him. He wasn’t sure if it was for himself or for the shitty way Raven’s parents treated her. How could it be that he was more pissed about it than she was?
He stopped walking. “No. I don’t buy this.”
She stopped walking and turned to him, and for the first time he could see it. Pain as thick and raw as anything he’d felt those first days at the Cliffs. Only in her eyes. And they were pretty amazing eyes.
“You had to have been given some kind of reason. People don’t just dump their kids in a sewer like this and say see you later.”
“This isn’t a sewer.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Down here they do it. They do.”
The muscles in his face tightened with a frown almost immediately. “You mean there are more people down here other than us? Like us?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure how many are still here. It’s been a long time since anyone has made it out this far, you know?”
Panic bubbled up his throat. “I kinda don’t want to know, to be honest. I mean, you’re talking about some idiot treating you like a mangy dog they didn’t want anymore. You’ve been down in this basement the whole time?”
Raven offered up a weak smile. “This isn’t a basement. And I haven’t seen any mangy dogs down here. There are rats though.”
“Shit!” The panic he’d felt earlier multiplied as he looked at the floor.
“Don’t worry. The rats are usually in the city where they can get water and food.”
“City? What city?”
“The underground city. You don’t want to go there unless you absolutely have to. Although…” She sighed. “I suppose we’re going to have to in order to see Endel. But don’t worry, he’s right on the edge. I know how to get there. You just have to make sure you listen to me and not run off like the others.”
“What others? What happened to them?”
Raven turned and started walking again slowly. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. They’re gone. That’s all you need to know.”
“Screw that! What is this place?” he asked, his voice reverberating off the concrete walls around them.
She turned quickly with annoyance. “Keep your voice down. They can still hear loud noises on the other side of this wall. Do you want to get us killed?”
He stared at Raven for a lingering moment. “They’re dead, right? You can tell me. Those kids were brought down here and killed. I always knew this school was a shithole.”
“There are no schools here. And I don’t know exactly what happened to the others. I just know they aren’t here anymore,” she said quietly. “I’ve made a point not to think too much about why they’re not here. It makes things a little bit easier because I’m still here.”
“Where is this guy? Endel or whoever it is you mentioned?”
Raven drew in a slow breath. “Just on the edge of the city like I said. We can get there following this tunnel.”
“You keep talking about a city. We’re in a basement.”
She heaved a heavy sigh. “You have no idea where you are.”
His brows drew together in a tight knot. He pressed his fingers on his forehead to ease the pressure. “Haven’t you explored this place yet?”
She shook her head. “I don’t dare.”
“Why?”
She practically stomped her foot. “Are you really this annoying all the time? I mean, I’m trying to help you. And all you’re doing is asking stupid questions. I could have easily stayed hidden way back there and been safe. But you started making all kinds of noise and bringing attention to yourself.”
“Excuse me for not knowing where the hell I am! I guess I just don’t want to end up like those others you talked about.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“It’s hard to. You sound…nuts,” he admitted.
She sputtered and shook her head. “Then I’ll introduce you to Endel and say goodbye. If he wants to help you, he can do it.”
“Hey, hey, I’m sorry,” he said, walking sideways trying to get her attention when she suddenly picked up her pace. “If it’s so awful down here, why didn’t you ever try to leave and go somewhere else?”
Raven turned to him and looked at him directly. “Because there’s no way out. At least no way for anyone that I’ve ever known. I don’t think any of those kids who came here ever made it.”
“Made it where.”
“To the portal.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
She shook her head. “No, I suppose it doesn’t. Not to you. Don’t you get it? You’re not in this school you keep talking about. This isn’t a basement. You’re in an underground world unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. I know this because that’s exactly what it was like for me when I first got here. What I do know is this. If you step outside this door without knowing what you’re doing, you’ll be dead.”
The old man looked as if he was one footstep away from the crypt. He had to be about a hundred years old, Reese thought as he stared at the tall man with long wispy gray strands of hair on his head and wire rim glasses dangling from the end of his long nose. It was so cliché that Reese wanted to laugh as soon as they’d emerged from the tunnel inside a back room in the old man’s store of odd items. This was the guy who was supposed to save them?
“Careless. Such foolish risks, Raven,” the man said, shaking his head. “You should be in hiding. Especially today. There’s a parade you know. People are out on the streets!”
Reese had quickly gotten past the fact that Raven had been right. They weren’t in a basement. He wasn’t at the Gray Cliffs Academy or in any basement. He hadn’t seen much, but what he had seen made it clear that he didn’t have a clue where he was. That meant that all the other strange things Raven had said might actually be true. The fact that he was believing her, even with evidence, made him feel a bit nuts.
“No, I can’t help you out in the city today,” the old man said, shaking his head. “It’s too dangerous. Why would you even try to come now?”
“The parade is almost over, Endel. I know it was dangerous, but…”
“There are no buts, Raven,” the man said. Then he turned to Reese and glared. “Who is he? Where did you find him?”
“Down by the end of the aqueduct tunnel.”
The old man scrutinized Reese with one eye nearly closed, the other opened wide. The thickness of his glasses seemed off and made his magnified eye look almost grotesque.
“How did you get there, boy?” he asked accusingly. “Who told you to come here?”
“No one,” Reese replied honestly. “I…was just there.”
“Liar!” Endel’s voice boomed through the store. For a moment, he felt that knee-jerk reaction he’d always had when he was a boy and George would scold him about a broken lamp or some other appliance that suddenly didn’t work.
Reese balled his fist by his side. He may be a lot of things, but he wasn’t a liar. He didn’t back down to anything. He’d knocked heads with his stepfather more t
imes than he could count even in the last year before he was sent to boarding school.
“You can help him,” Raven said. “He’s different.”
“You’re wrong, child. I’m not going to waste my time with this—”
“No,” Raven said quietly, desperately as she took him by the arm to keep him from fleeing. “He doesn’t understand.”
Impatient, Reese asked, “Then why the hell are we here?”
“Because you stand no chance at all on your own out there, yungin’,” Endel said. “She knows that. But you don’t.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Reese countered in a low voice.
Endel snickered. “Look at you. You think you can challenge me?” He hobbled over to him as old men do, bent like a spoon and squinting his eyes as if he couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him. “No. He’ll be dead before he gets a block down the boulevard.”
Reese turned to Raven. “I thought you said this place was underground.”
“Ssh,” she said.
“And a smartass, too. You’re too cocky for your own good. You say I don’t know you? You’re wrong. I was once you.”
“And you’re still kicking,” Reese said.
“Are you trying to flatter me? It won’t work. I’ve lived too long and seen too many just like you come out of that hole in the wall. Take him back, Raven. He’s not going to make it in time.”
Confused, he turned to Raven again. As soon as he took in her panicked expression, his stomach dropped. “In time for what?” he asked.
“For the portal to close,” Raven said.
She’d mentioned a portal earlier. “What portal?”
Endel’s mouth twisted into a frown. “If you’d managed to shut your mouth long enough, you’d know already.”
“Is he always this charming?” Reese mumbled under his breath to Raven.
“He’s having a good day,” Raven whispered.
“Okay,” Reese said going along with it. “Tell me about this portal. Is that like a stairway out of here or something?”
“It’s an energy field. A phenomenon caused by the excess energy that flows through the city. It’s the only means of entering and escaping the city,” Endel said.
