“It’s okay. You won’t have to do any shooting,” I assured her.
She looked relieved. Not relaxed, but relieved. I hadn’t fired many guns either, but to be honest, the idea of nailing a couple of dados appealed to me. I didn’t want to go looking for one, but if I had one in my sights, I didn’t think I’d have any trouble pulling the trigger. The guns had shoulder straps, so I slung both weapons over my back.
“What’s the plan?” I asked Mark.
He led us out of the garage to where one of the other exiles, a girl with red hair and freckles, named Maddie, was waiting behind the wheel of an ancient yellow taxi. She didn’t look any older than sixteen. I wondered if she had her driver’s license, though I doubted if anybody checked anymore. Just so long as she knew how to drive, I didn’t care. We hurried into the backseat, slammed the door, and Maddie hit the gas. With a lurch we were off and flying. Fast. She knew how to drive.
Mark explained, “We have to get to the insert point before the sun comes up. Moving cars in daylight draw attention.”
“Insert point?” I asked.
“The city is honeycombed with ancient tunnels,” Mark said. “At all levels. They carried subways, sewage, electricity, pretty much everything that made a city work and that nobody wanted to see. There’s a whole city below this city that most people never saw.”
“It’s still intact?” I asked.
“Most of it collapsed when the fireworks started. That’s what they tell me, anyway. But the deeper tunnels survived, and we have maps. They’re like gold. It’s how everybody moves around without being seen by Ravinians.”
“People live underground?” Elli asked.
“Some do, but mostly the tunnels are used as highways. There’s a service tunnel that runs directly beneath the Ravinian fortress. They have no idea it exists. We don’t use it that often, because we don’t want to risk it being discovered and ruining the one advantage we have over them. But every once in a while we stage a quiet raid, like the one that got these guns. We’re able to get right under their noses without them knowing.”
Elli asked, “Is that how Antonio got to the fortress?”
Mark nodded.
I didn’t want to dwell on that last mission. “Do you know the factory he was talking about?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s outside the fortress. It’s a huge place where they assemble the choppers. I think it’s where they store weapons, too. I don’t know for sure though. I’ve never been inside. Nobody has.”
“Except for Antonio,” Elli corrected.
“We should go there first,” I said. “I want to see what Antonio was talking about. We have to know what we’re up against.”
“Done. I can get us in.”
“Great.”
“Tricky part is getting out again.”
Oh.
On that depressing thought we all fell quiet. Maddie drove us quickly through the dead streets of Manhattan. It was a hairy ride. Our car didn’t have headlights, and there were no streetlights burning, so it was hard to make out where the streets ended and the sidewalks or buildings began. That didn’t stop Maddie. She charged down the streets and took corners as if she were wearing night-vision goggles. For the record, she wasn’t. It was scaring the hell out of me. But I wasn’t about to be a backseat driver. All I could do was dig my fingernails into the armrest and prepare for the jolt when we hit something.
We didn’t, though I’m not sure why. Maddie pulled up to a two-story brick building that had no signage or markings. She hit the brakes, skidded to a stop, and looked back at us with a quick, “Go. Good luck.”
“You too,” Mark told her.
“That was great driving,” I said to Maddie, trying to make friends.
“You should see what I can do in a helicopter,” she replied with a sly smile.
I didn’t necessarily want to experience that particular pleasure. If she flew like she drove, I’d probably pass out from fear.
Mark said, “Maddie’s flying the first leg to search for the exiles.”
“Oh,” I said quickly. “Then good luck to you, too.”
She winked.
We all got out of the car. Maddie barely waited until I closed the door before taking off. She shot down the dark street, took a sharp corner, and was gone. She had to get back before sunrise. These people lived like vampires.
Mark wasn’t wasting time either. He walked straight into the building. We followed. Of course the place was empty. I had no idea what it might have been used for, but if it was sitting over the entrance to an underground utility tunnel, it was probably a city building of some sort. Mark led us quickly across the empty floor that was covered with broken bits of furniture, glass, and I don’t know what else. He knew exactly where he was going. I had Elli walk in front of me so I could keep an eye on her. Mark led us through a few doors, to a stairwell that disappeared down into the dark.
Elli hesitated.
“If Mark says it’s okay, it’s okay,” I said, trying to reassure her.
Mark looked back and said, “This is the easy part.”
That didn’t make me feel any better, which meant it probably did even less for Elli. But like I said, she was brave. We followed Mark down several flights of winding, concrete stairs. After passing through another doorway, we came upon another stairwell. The deeper we went, the darker it became.
“Are we going to be walking the whole way in the dark?” I asked.
“Wait,” Mark answered.
We had finally reached bottom. At least, I thought it was the bottom. I didn’t see any other stairways around. I didn’t see much of anything. It was nearly pitch-black. Elli had a death grip on my arm. Mark shuffled over to a far wall, moving slowly, so as not to walk face-first into something. He ran his hands along the wall until he came upon what looked like a box mounted there. He opened it, reached inside, threw a switch…and we had light. A line of overhead bulbs lit up an impossibly long tunnel that stretched out to either side of us. Dark pipes ran the length of the tunnel for as far as I could see. It was dizzying. We were standing at the foot of metal stairs, surrounded by electric juncture boxes.
“The survivors tapped the electricity that powers the Ravinian’s underground train,” Mark explained. “It’s one of the advantages of living like a shadow.”
“Yeah, no electric bills,” I said, making a lame joke. Nobody laughed.
“This is the insert point that’s closest to the fortress,” Mark said. “I’ve made this trip only once, but it’s not like we can get lost. We’ve got about a mile to go.”
He turned right and started walking. Elli followed him and I followed Elli. It was tough getting my bearings after that breakneck cab ride courtesy of our night guide named Maddie. I figured that if we were headed toward the Ravinian fortress, then we were walking under the river. That was kind of creepy. But if this ancient tunnel had lasted through multiple centuries and a devastating war, the odds of it collapsing and trapping us were pretty slim. We didn’t say much on our journey. I think we had all retreated into our own heads to prepare for whatever we might find on the other side. Every so often we’d come upon an area where the tunnel widened. These areas seemed to be where connections were made and service people worked. Kind of like crossroads. I could see that these areas had been used as homes. There were crusty, crumpled-up blankets, empty cans of food, and some long-forgotten books.
“Did the homeless live down here?” I asked.
Mark didn’t even look back when he answered. “We’re all homeless, Bobby.”
Oh. Right. I started getting a clearer picture of what life was like for the non-Ravinians on Third Earth. They were in constant fear of being discovered by the Ravinians and lived like rats. They kept to the dark tunnels and could only move around without fear at night. They really were like vampires.
“So sad” was the only comment Elli made.
It wasn’t much, but I was glad to hear that she hadn’t checked out completely. Her head was with us, in the
moment.
Our journey took about half an hour. It felt endless, since there wasn’t much to look at. We reached another juncture point, where the only difference between it and all the others was a painted symbol on the cement wall. It was a crudely drawn red star. The star that marked the gates. The Ravinian star. Mark saw that I was staring at it.
“We painted that to mark the spot,” Mark explained. “Kind of fits, don’t you think?”
I nodded. I knew what he meant. Every trip I had taken through Halla had begun at a spot that was marked by a star. This time would be no different.
Mark continued, “Going up here would get us into the conclave. You want to start here or check out the chopper factory?”
“I want to see what Antonio saw” was my answer.
“Then we keep moving.”
Mark led us another few hundred yards until we came to another juncture. Our last. A narrow, metal ladder led up into the unknown.
“This is where it gets risky,” Mark explained. “This is the route we sent Antonio’s team on. The maps show that this comes up outside the fortress wall, next to the factory. We’re going to climb up to a manhole that’s buried under dirt and rubble. The thing is, there’s no way to know if a Ravinian guard is standing nearby until we lift it up.”
“So we might climb up into the middle of a bunch of dados?” I asked.
“Yeah, pretty much. This is outside the fortress, but it’s inside their security perimeter. They don’t expect anybody to be popping up out of the dirt. So if we run into somebody, it’ll be bad luck.”
“And what if our luck is bad?” I asked.
“Then we come out shooting.”
I had to smile at my friend’s bold statement. He hadn’t only grown up, he’d become a guerrilla. “Are you sure you’re Mark Dimond?” I asked.
He laughed. “I haven’t been sure of anything for years. You guys ready?”
I looked to Elli. She nodded.
Mark went to another electric panel. “Gotta kill the lights. Too risky to leave them burning. Put your hands on the ladder.”
Elli and I grabbed the ladder and Mark threw the switch. It was a good thing we were holding the ladder, because the juncture went pitch-black. I couldn’t see an inch ahead of me. We would have bumped into one another looking for the ladder in the dark.
“Me first, then Bobby,” Mark commanded.
I sensed him move past us and up the ladder.
“You going to be okay?” I asked Elli.
“I’m fine down here” was her answer. “It’s what’s outside that has me worried.”
That made three of us.
We all climbed up. And up. And up. We kept reaching higher levels, where we transferred to other ladders. Luckily, the ambient light grew as we got nearer the surface, so it wasn’t like climbing through ink. I kept glancing back, afraid that Elli might freeze. But she was right there with us. No problem. So far, she was rising to the occasion. We hit yet another level, and Mark waited for us to join him.
“This is it,” he whispered. “The manhole is at the top of this next ladder. I’ll go up and push the cover. Bobby, you stay behind me, but keep your eyes down. Dirt’s gonna fall. Once I’m up, I’ll check to see if it’s clear, then call for you guys to follow.”
“I should go first,” I suggested. “This was my idea.”
I was actually thinking that if we were to climb up under the feet of some dados, I didn’t want them to get Mark.
“Sorry. I’m calling the shots here.” He cuffed me on the arm. “Besides, I can’t let anything happen to the lead Traveler.”
I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to worry, but it was clear that his mind was made up.
“Fine. What do we do once we’re on top?”
Mark shrugged. “Beats me. The map only gets us to here. After that we wing it.”
I turned to Elli and said, “Stay down here on the platform. We’ll call for you to come up.”
Elli nodded and backed away from the ladder.
“Ready?” Mark asked.
I hitched the two guns up onto my shoulder and nodded. Mark scrambled right up the ladder. I followed close behind. In no time he was at the top. I leaned back and looked up to see the circular outline of the manhole cover. Mark waved for me to look away. I waved back for him to keep going and not worry about me. He shrugged and raised a hand up to the circle. Manhole covers are heavy to begin with, and if this thing was covered with dirt, it must have weighed a ton. I saw Mark strain to push with one hand. It barely budged. He had to use both hands, which wasn’t easy while balancing on a ladder. He climbed up one rung higher so he could use his legs as well. Yet again, I was amazed at how much my friend had changed. He was now a powerful, confident guy. I hoped he was powerful enough to get us the heck out of there. I was about to climb up, to see if I could help, when I felt the first trickle of dirt fall in my eyes. I looked away, and not a second too soon because Mark had the cover in motion and a load of dirt hit me on my head. I saw Elli on the platform, looking up. She had to step back to avoid getting hit with the dirt shower. The sound of metal raking across metal meant that Mark was pushing the cover aside. More dirt fell on my head, but I didn’t care. I wanted out of there. Fast. If there were any dados hanging around, we were in the worst possible position.
The scraping stopped and so did the cascade of dirt. I took a chance and looked up, to see a crescent of gray sky. Mark didn’t waste time admiring the sight. He popped his head up and did a quick three-sixty around.
“Bring her up,” he whispered down to me.
I looked down to Elli and motioned for her to climb. By the time I looked back up, Mark was already gone. I climbed quickly and squeezed myself through the sliver of an opening. Mark was right next to me, on his belly, his head near the open manhole.
“Stay down,” he whispered. “It’s clear, but who knows for how long?”
I scrambled out and got down on the ground next to Mark. The whole world looked gray, mostly because of the early-morning light that comes before the warm rays of the sun sneak over the horizon. We were in a wide alley between two high walls that ran parallel to each other. One, I realized, was the outer wall of the Ravinian fortress. It towered high over us like a skyscraper. I guessed that we were a couple hundred yards back from the front wall where the huge doors were. This wall had no doors. Or windows. Or anything. It was a sheer, stone facade that looked more like a giant dam than a wall. About thirty yards across from the fortress was the wall of another building. This wasn’t anywhere near as tall. I’d say it was about four stories high. But it was still pretty huge. We were maybe fifty yards from the front of this building, but it stretched back the other way for several hundred more. I looked at the massive building, then to Mark.
He nodded. He knew what I was thinking.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “The factory.”
The best news was that there wasn’t a dado in sight. We had made it through what Mark thought was the riskiest part of the trip. I had no doubt there would be plenty of risks ahead to make up for it.
Elli poked her head up out of the hole. Mark and I quickly helped her out. After she was safely up, we struggled to push the manhole back into place and brushed dirt over it to hide our tracks. The ground between the walls was nothing but dirt, which made it easy to rebury the cover. We made sure to spread the dirt around enough to disguise the manhole. If somebody was looking for it, they’d probably find it. But if a random dado walked by, I was confident they wouldn’t uncover anything. The whole time we were disguising the manhole I was thinking how there was no way we’d be able to use it to get out of there. Especially if we had to find it in a hurry. When it was time to get back to the city, we were going to have to find another route.
Mark was already scanning the building, looking for a way in. There were no windows in this wall either. No way to get a quick peek inside. It looked to me like the little brother of the much larger Ravinian conclave across from i
t. There was a set of double doors near the front of the building. Next to the doors was a metal ladder that ran up to the roof. We didn’t need to discuss it. This was where we had to go. I looked to Elli. She nodded that she was okay, but her eyes were wild. She was scared. I was afraid that she was barely holding it together.
I motioned for Mark to go first. He jumped up and scampered to the wall of the factory and the double doors. I held Elli’s arm and helped her run after him. My other hand was on the straps of the two rifles. I’d have preferred to have one of them pointed and ready, but I couldn’t do that, hold the other strap, and guide Elli all at the same time. I had to trust that if a shot needed to be taken quickly, Mark would take it.
We got to the door in seconds. Mark tried it. It was locked.
“I guess that would have been too easy,” he said with a shrug.
He tried to force it open. No go.
I looked at the ladder.
“We could climb, or we could head around the corner of this building to look for another door. I’m thinking that the longer we spend sneaking around, the better chance we’ll be seen.”
Mark didn’t wait for any other opinions. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and climbed the ladder.
“One more climb,” I said to Elli with a weak smile.
She went right after Mark. I was last in line. Climbing this ladder was hairier than any of the others. For one, we were totally exposed. Anybody coming by would spot us in a nanosecond. It was scary, too. Underground it was safe and closed. Out here we clung to the side of a building with nothing around us but air. We probably would have been hurt just as badly if we had fallen when we were down below, but being out in the open made this seem much more dangerous. I guess it’s like the difference between walking a tightrope that’s two inches off the ground…or thirty feet up. I made a point of not looking down.
We made it to the top with no problem. When I reached the lip and stepped onto the flat roof, I gasped. I actually gasped. The building was huge. Seeing one side wall didn’t give the full perspective. Up on top we could see the whole thing, and there was a lot to see. The roof was completely flat, broken up by various air ducts and skylights that dotted the surface. From the front corner we could pretty much see to the far side. It was a long way away. The building was probably twice as long as it was wide. It was an enormous, sprawling structure.