I glance at him. “How do you know?”
He stops at a fork in the tunnel and swings his light down.
Footprints press into the thin layer of mud on the floor. Multiplesets. Distinct treads. They’re not fresh; the edges are a lighter shade of brown, but I doubt it ever fully dries out down here.
“Someone’s been using these tunnels like their own private freeway,” I say, voice grim. The question is: what have they been transporting?
We keep moving.
The deeper we go, the tighter the passages get. The ceiling lowers until I have to duck my head in places. Roots have punched through the brickwork in spots, dangling like bony fingers brushing the top of my skull. Our flashlight beams carve long, jittery shadows across the walls–shadows that always seem to shift just when I look away.
About twenty minutes in, Jace stops short.
“Yo… look at this.”
He sweeps his light across a shallow alcove carved into the wall. Empty beer cans–the shitty, watery kind from the gas station–litter the ground. Cigarette butts are everywhere. Dozens. Some still look relatively fresh, paper pale and not deteriorated.
“Someone’s been hanging out down here,” Mateo says, crouching to inspect them. “These smokes aren’t ancient. Couple weeks old, maybe.”
Slade kicks at a crumpled chip bag and something scurries under the light. “Holy shit!”
My gut tightens. “What the hell was that?”
Jace is down on his knees, brushing aside the trash with gloved hands. The hair on the back of my neck rises and I glance over my shoulder, uneasy all of a sudden. When I look back he’s got something pinched between his fingers.
“Gotcha.” He grins at the squirming beetle.
“Is that–” I squint.
“A stag beetle,” Hunter says, already holding a small container under the beetle’s body. Jace drops it in and Hunter snaps the lid. “Just like the ones in Kelsey’s mouth.”
Mateo winces at the memory and after another quick look for clues, Hunter continues walking, eyes flicking between the map andthe path ahead. We push deeper, heading toward what we think will be the direction of Strong Manor.
The air grows heavier the further we go, stale and thick, like breathing through wet cloth. The tunnels split and branch constantly. According to the blueprints, some veer toward the dorms and some snake beneath the stadium, while others angle toward Greek Row. It’s a fucking labyrinth.
Then Hunter stops dead.
“Shit,” he whispers.
We crowd in behind him.
The tunnel ahead was clearly blocked with bricks on the map. But now? A big section of the barrier has been deliberately smashed open. Someone took a sledgehammer, or something heavier, and carved out a hole wide enough for a grown man to crawl through.
Hunter shines his light into the gap and says, “Someone beat us to it.”
On the other side… more footprints. Fresh drag marks gouged into the dirt. And something that makes my blood turn to ice.
A single dirty hair tie.
Small. Delicate. The kind a girl might wear to class or a party.
No one speaks for a long second.
“Someone’s moving girls through here,” I say quietly, the words tasting like metal. “It’s quiet. No cameras. No witnesses on the surface.”
Mateo nods. “One minute they’re there and the next… poof.”
Hunter looks back at me, his normally pale eyes dark and hard. “Is this how they’ve been doing it? They’re not grabbing girls off the street. They’re taking them underground.”
