I stopped and raised a hand. Libby froze beside me, silent and still, holding her breath.
We listened.
Drip. Water in the walls.
Drip.
Beneath it, something metallic. Distant, carrying through the brick. The hatch, or a weight on the rungs. Hard to tell at this distance.
I dropped my voice to a whisper.
“Quiet,” I breathed, killing the light. The metallic scraping sound carried from behind us.
In the sudden darkness, her breathing hitched.
“The hatch?” she whispered.
I considered a shot.
“Maybe,” I said.
Two seconds of silence passed.
Then I nodded forward, and we moved faster, the phone light jumping ahead across the uneven floor.
Underground meant hidden, not safe, and only if nothing had tracked us down here.
My legs ached, and my water bottle was half-empty by the time we reached the hatch Libby had described. I couldn’t have said if twenty minutes or an hour had passed.
I paused at the base of the ladder and listened.
Nothing. Only the low, suffocating quiet of the tunnel pressing in from every direction.
I looked back at her. “Stay here,” I whispered.
She nodded without question.
I climbed. Each rung rang louder against my boots than I wanted. Near the top, I slowed, pressed my shoulder against the underside of the hatch, and tested it with the lightest upward pressure I could manage.
A faint, rusty squeak.
I froze, ear turned toward the gap above, every other sense narrowed down to sound.
Nothing.
I exhaled through my nose. Alright.
I lifted it just enough to see through. Gray light. The smell of wet stone. Cobblestones, open space, the base of a statue a few feet out.
No movement.
It meant nothing, but it was all I had.
Bracing one hand flat against the rim, ready to slam it shut, I pushed it open.
Cool air hit my face as the hatch swung open. I cleared the rim and turned, slowly scanning the space.
A small, circular, cobblestone park. A bronze statue at the center, arm extended toward nothing. The hatch sat directly behind the pedestal—its bulk breaking the sightline from the street in a way I hadn’t dared count on.
