“Hurry,” Quinten said, throwing the duffel over his shoulder and following Gloria.
Abraham took one step, then another. From the way his body stiffened against each movement, it looked like it hurt like hell.
If he was already feeling everything, then I didn’t see how my touching him could make it worse. “Here,” I said, sliding my arm around his back and drawing his arm over my shoulder. “Lean if you need it.”
He leaned.
I helped him take the next few steps and wanted to scream for how slow we were moving. But with each step, his body seemed to come back to itself, seemed to remember how to move as one whole.
And then it remembered how to move smoothly and quickly, until we were moving at a fairly fast pace.
“Faster, faster,” Left Ned chanted behind us.
Gloria and Quinten were dragging a heavy cabinet away from the end of the hall and shoving it up against one wall. Gloria crouched down and pressed a button in the floorboards. A hatch popped up, and she pushed it to one side where it slid seamlessly into the floor itself.
“Watch your step.” She started down a ladder, Quinten hurrying after her.
I looked up at Abraham. This wasn’t going to be pretty.
He scowled at the ladder. “Go,” he said, pulling his arm away from me.
“I won’t leave you,” I said.
“Down. I’ll be right behind you.”
I didn’t waste any more time arguing. I sat and slipped my boots down to the first rung, then scurried down as fast as I could.
Not a lot of light at the bottom of the ladder, but it smelled of damp and mold and rot.
“What’s taking them so long?” Quinten whispered from somewhere in the shadows to my right.
Abraham’s boot—first one, then the other—pressed against the ladder rungs. He climbed down methodically, but not nearly as slowly as I’d expected, which was good.
Neds scrambled down almost on top of him.
As soon as Neds’ heads cleared the floor above us, the hatch closed, snicking into place, then sealing with a thud of metal sucking down vacuum tight.
The darkness was complete now.
“This way,” Gloria said. She shook something and a soft yellow glow appeared in her palm.
I heard Quinten shake something too, and then the little packet strapped to the back of his hand glowed.
“Do you need assistance?” he asked Abraham.
Abraham was leaning against the ladder and breathing hard. Sweat caught in small droplets at the ends of his hair over his eyes, and his clothes were soaked with it. He looked like he’d just run a marathon, not walked down a simple ladder.
“We’ll catch up,” I said.
Abraham pushed away from the ladder. “We’ll keep up,” he said.
Neds swore softly, probably Left Ned. He stood next to Abraham and wrapped an arm around him.
I came up on the other side and did the same. I’d expected Abraham to argue, but from how much he was leaning on us both, I didn’t think he had the air for it.
“Don’t like ladders?” I asked.
Abraham breathed for a bit, as if just trying to keep his lungs and feet moving at the same time was taking all his concentration.
