Adam was sure they had been caught in a trap.
How's Jimmy going to talk us out of this one, he thought as his eyes adjusted to the light streaming from the ceiling. It seemed to get less intense with every passing second, and soon his friends began coming into focus.
The rest of the group squinted in the light. Mark seemed to struggle the most, but soon they were all looking around the room. What seemed like minutes was only a few seconds, and they were all jerked back to reality by the sound of the file room sliding door slamming shut.
Mark was breathing really fast and deep, filled with fear. "W..w..what d...d..do we d..do?" he whispered.
Adam thought quickly. "Pick a column and hide behind it. Stay there for a couple of minutes. I'm going back down the hallway to listen. Go." He waved them to their hiding spots.
They walked as quietly as they could while Adam tiptoed up the hallway a short distance. He heard his own heartbeat sounding in his ears and it almost drowned out all other sounds. As he listened, he heard footsteps getting louder as they got closer. Two people were walking together, sometimes in step with each other and sometimes not. Louder and louder the footsteps grew, until Adam was sure they would come face-to-face at the next footfall.
The walkers broke their silence, further away than Adam had imagined, but close enough to hear. "Ellie knows more about this than she's telling us, you know," said one of the walkers. It was Don Chen. His voice was unmistakable.
"Yeah, I know. You know how stubborn she can get. Probably because of her age." Gurpreet Gupta's voice echoed through the tunnel as well. He chuckled at his own comment.
Their pace was casual and didn’t seem to be getting closer, much to Adam’s relief. They stayed silent, and slowly the sound of their footsteps dwindled, but Adam couldn’t tell what direction they took.
During that time, Adam had a chance to look up at the ceiling. The light coming from it was strange, like nothing he had ever seen before. It was as though the entire thing was glowing and there were no individual points of light. Light came from every square inch, with a roughly defined edge at the walls. He was amazed, staring at it until he was interrupted by the sound of another door closing far down the tunnels. The light from the ceiling slowly dimmed and soon went out.
"Are they gone?" whispered Jimmy, clicking on his flashlight and stepping out from behind a column far back in the room. The others popped their heads out from columns even further back.
"I think so, but I don’t know where they went or for how long." replied Adam. "Could you guys hear them from back there?"
The others looked at each other and shook their heads in the light Adam had pointed at them. "Not really," said Mark, "but please tell me one wasn't my dad." He frowned, as he already suspected the answer.
"Sorry, but it was your dad and Don Chen."
"Could you hear what they said?" asked Jimmy
"Mr. Chen said 'Ellie knows more about this than she says’, and Mark's dad said she's stubborn because she's so old."
"Who's Ellie?" asked Mark.
They all shrugged their shoulders and looked at each other.
"So, what now?" asked Jimmy.
Adam thought for a moment. "Let's try and find another exit in this room. You and Mark walk up this wall," said Adam as he pointed to the wall on the right, “and Kevin and I'll walk up this wall. Look for a way out of here. Be quiet, sound carries a long way in these tunnels."
They agreed and each group started walking. After a minute they realized just how massive the room was. Through the columns the teams saw each other’s lights, but the low ceiling and large room played tricks on their eyes in the darkness. Eventually, the teams ended up at the far wall walking toward each other, meeting somewhere in the middle.
"Nothing?" asked Adam.
"Nope," replied Jimmy.
"Why would you have this huge empty room and only one small entrance and exit? There should be another way out," Adam thought out loud.
"I don't think you have to worry about the latest building codes when you're building in secret," replied Jimmy.
"Yeah, but even a hundred years ago they must have had a little thought about being trapped in a big underground room." Adam said, half in reply to Jimmy and half in thought.
"Well," said Kevin, "Why don't we just continue looking at the walls until we get back to where we came in. You go the way you were going and we'll keep going the way we were going."
The others nodded and continued down the walls. Adam was looking more intensely at them, hoping that the others had missed something. Soon, they met at the entrance having found nothing.
Adam continued to scan the walls near the entrance when he noticed a strange impression on the inside corner of the wall. The impression was simple. It was a tall rectangle made up of 4 squares. It wasn't deep in the rock wall, and was easy to miss. The angle of the flashlight made it stand out a little from the surrounding wall.
"What's that?" asked Mark, butting in between Adam and the wall.
"If I knew, I would tell you," replied Adam, slightly annoyed by Mark's curiosity.
Adam touched the top square. Nothing happened. He felt the impression, starting at the top square and sliding his finger to the bottom square. He understood how it could be missed easily, as he almost didn’t feel it carved into the wall.
As soon as he had finished touching the impression, Mark stuck his fingers on it, like a child imitating everything they see. Adam was slightly annoyed by that, even though he knew Mark was just nervous.
In an instant they were blinded by the lights again. Mark yelped a little, but their eyes seemed to adjust a little quicker than the previous time.
"Did you do that?" Jimmy questioned Mark.
"I don't know," he replied.
"What did you do?" Jimmy asked again.
"I DON'T KNOW!" Mark shot back.
The lights faded back to darkness again.
"Cover your eyes," said Adam, so they did.
The lights came back on and faded to darkness again.
"That's just cool," said Adam as everyone opened their eyes.
"What did you do?" asked Mark.
"I noticed that you slid your fingers up when the lights turned on, so I slid my finger down and it turned them off. Slide up for on, down for off. I bet there's one of these by every door."
"This place seriously freaks me out," said Mark. "Secret tunnels, light coming from nowhere, magnets that shouldn't be magnetic..."
"Yeah, it's pretty cool," replied Adam, still trying to examine the light from the ceiling.
"Maybe we should we keep the lights off," said Kevin. "They’ll know someone’s here if the lights are on. We'll also know if they come into the tunnels if the lights turn back on again."
Adam nodded, "Good thinking." He slid his finger down and the lights slowly fizzled out. "Lets go back to the junction and take the next tunnel to the right. Agreed?"
They nodded in silence and turned to the doorway.
"What do we do if we hear a door open again?" asked Mark, clearly still nervous.
"Just follow Adam and be quiet," said Kevin. "We need to stay together."
Adam led the way back to the main junction. He stopped at the entrance to the first tunnel on the right, shining his flashlight against the walls just inside the opening. After trying different angles he felt the walls.
Light blinded them again.
"QUIT DOING THAT!" exclaimed Mark, as the lights turned off again
"Sorry," replied Adam, as he continued feeling the wall.
He worked his way down in a back-and-forth pattern. Near the bottom of the wall, he felt something. It was small, but not an imperfection in the wall. It was a raised bump, like a circle, and a line attached to it, almost like the hand of a clock pointing to 7 or 8 o'clock. He shone his flashlight on it, and could barely get a shadow, let alone see it. Whoever made this tunnel and these impressions knew how to hide them in plain sight.
"Feel five
from the floor,” Adam muttered to himself. “Come feel this," he said to the others, "close to the floor."
They all took turns.
"What do you think that is?" asked Kevin.
"I'm hoping it's a marker for the tunnels. If you know the tunnels and know where to find the mark, you can figure out where you are pretty easily. You guys stay here for a second. I'm going to check the tunnel to Town Hall."
Adam walked over to the tunnel and felt the wall near the floor again. In a couple of seconds he nodded his head, stood up and checked the next two tunnels the same way.
"12 o'clock is the way to Town Hall. 10:30 is the way to the bar. 9 is the big room. Should be easy enough to remember," he said, shuffling past them. "Let's see what happens at 7:30."
Adam started down the 7:30 tunnel when Mark stopped him.
"What if this is the tunnel Dad went down? We should go back to Town Hall," he said, still nervous.
"The door to Town Hall doesn't open from this side, remember? And the cooler to the bar is probably still locked this early, not to mention that it’s probably being watched. This is our only option," said Jimmy.
"As for meeting your dad and Mr. Chen, that's a chance we have to take. I don't want to be stuck down here any more than you do. Besides, we've only got a one in six chance of taking the same tunnel as them anyway," said Adam.
"Same odds as Russian roulette," muttered Mark.
The others laughed at the remark, even under the circumstances.
Adam led them through the tunnel and they followed single file. Mark stayed close to Adam, followed by Jimmy and Kevin. After a short distance, they reached another 4 way intersection. Adam motioned for the others to stop and felt the wall near the floor of their current tunnel and the tunnel that intersected. Next, he went to the tunnel on the other side of the intersection and felt it as well.
"The intersection we keep walking straight past in each tunnel has a marker that feels like a circle. I'm guessing it makes a ring connecting all the tunnels - like a shortcut,” said Adam.
“Shortcut to getting lost,” muttered Mark.
They continued in silence, trying to minimize the sound of their own feet in the tunnels. No matter how hard they tried, every footstep echoed both ahead and behind.
The tunnel itself was laid out strangely, curving right to begin with, switching left then right again. Because of the curves, it was difficult to judge exactly what direction they were headed. Shining their lights forward or backward looked like a dead end due to a trick of the light, the color of the tunnel and how it was constructed. It seemed to be built so you could easily get lost.
Curves left, curves right, on and on they walked. How many curves was that so far? Adam didn't know.
As the tunnel continued, they walked louder and louder. Mark dragged his feet more each step, walking with his shoulders hunched and hands dangling. The monotony of the tunnel had seemed to calm him down, but because he was so excited earlier, Adam guessed that Mark's energy was pretty low.
Adam stopped the group and motioned for them all to sit down. Kevin and Jimmy looked confused, but did as Adam indicated. Mark looked happy to have a break.
"If I was down here alone in this tunnel, I think I’d go nuts," whispered Kevin. Everyone nodded in agreement.
Jimmy added, "Yeah. It feels like I’ve been walking on a treadmill. I'm tired of walking but don't feel like I've gone anywhere. It's depressing."
Adam agreed. "We'll take a short break. We don’t know how much further to the end of this tunnel, and with our luck we'll have to turn around and go back."
As Adam finished speaking, blinding light came upon them once more.
Not again! he thought.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN