streaked with tear tracks, and she refused to look me in the eye.
And as she pulled away, the darkness came to life around her, reaching out and grabbing at her arms and legs.
It was like an animal, this darkness, I was sure. With thoughts and intentions, trying to engulf her, trying to suck her into its depths. Coming at her from every side. Tendrils from every shadow. Writhing blindly. Touching her and wrapping tightly around her limbs, drawing dark lines across her back. Insubstantial yet also thick, wide. Not spider joints, thankfully, but long midnight-black tentacles. Pure black. Spilled ink, etched across a paper-made Taylor.
My heartbeat quickened, and I stumbled forward a half dozen steps, trying to catch her before she could disappear, before the darkness could consume her.
I’d found her. I’d ventured into the very depths of the city and actually found her!
To lose her again, to the darkness, to the tunnel, to the city—
But my vision cleared, and she was still there, in the tunnel before me. Perfectly normal. A stark outline against the dark wall. No tendrils, no errant shadows. Nothing but her back, flickering in and out of darkness as Charlie and Floyd moved behind me, their flashlights swinging up and down.
I took a stutter step back, disoriented. What had I seen? Was it a trick of the light? Vicodin? Spores? Physical and emotional stress?
Floyd, at my side, reached out and grabbed my bicep, holding me steady. I turned and faced him. His eyes were full of questions, full of concern, but I just shook my head.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
At the first hub, I passed Taylor and led the way into one of the right-hand tunnels, wanting to make sure we didn’t head back the way we’d come. I didn’t want Taylor to see Sabine’s bag or, God forbid, Danny. I just wanted to find some way up and out. Back home. Back to our little makeshift headquarters.
Then, maybe, out of the city. And far away. Far away from this fucking place, with its waking nightmares and its constant fucking wounds.
As far as I was concerned, this was it. I’d had enough. Even without Taylor—with her hidden face, always shrugging me off, always turning away—I needed to leave. No matter how painful that might be.
This wasn’t a life.
This was a fugue-state dream that I needed to wake up from. I needed to move on and grow the fuck up. I needed to get real. Finally, for once in my life, fucking real. Not art and photography, not romantic chaos and confusion without a center. Not the end of the world, painted in brooding, melancholy shades of gray and red. Real.
I needed a job. I needed an apartment. I needed someplace stable and calm, something in my life that wasn’t tinged with madness or melancholy or fucking adolescent dreams. I needed to grow the fuck up! And that most definitely meant leaving Spokane and Taylor behind, finding someplace and someone stable. Things I could lean on without fear of falling on my face.
I didn’t need piles of shredded meat bleeding in the dark. I didn’t need deformed flesh and a girlfriend who couldn’t even stand my touch.
As I pressed on into the tunnel, I fumbled the bottle of Vicodin from my pocket and dry swallowed another pill. That was another thing I needed to leave behind.
But not yet. Not here.
Time passed, and I lost all sense of direction. Turning randomly. Tunnel after tunnel after tunnel. Hub after hub after hub. They all looked the same to me, and it felt like we weren’t making any progress at all.
Then Floyd paused and gestured me to a stop.
“Do you hear that?” he asked, turning the flashlight back the way we’d come. Charlie and Taylor had taken the lead three hubs back, and there was only darkness behind us now.
I shook my head. I didn’t hear a thing.
“It was laughter,” Floyd whispered, a nervous smile on his face. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. The smile quivered, but it didn’t quite disappear. “It’s my brother. It’s Byron. He’s down here, Dean. He’s always been down here.”
Charlie and Taylor paused up ahead as soon as they noticed that we’d stopped following. They were out of earshot, about twenty feet away, a semicircle of light in the darkness, their half-moon faces turned our way.
Floyd took a step forward and then stopped. I was worried that he was going to take off into the tunnel, looking for his brother. And if that happened, I knew, he’d disappear. Forever. I knew it, just as I knew that Sabine was gone. And Weasel. And Danny. And Amanda. And Mac—most definitely Mac. I grabbed Floyd’s forearm and held him back. He looked down at my grip. There was no annoyance there, on his face, but no relief either. Hell, there was no comprehension whatsoever. He might as well have been staring at the bottom of an empty bucket.
“He was looking for me that night,” he whispered, “when he died, when I …” He raised his eyes and once again squinted into the dark. “I don’t think he ever stopped looking. No matter where I run, no matter what I take, he’s always there, tortured and alone, looking for his big brother.”
He turned back toward me. “That makes sense, right?” he pleaded. His brow crinkled down into a narrow chevron, and his eyes collapsed into slits.
“I don’t know, Floyd,” I said, pulling him back a step. I urged him down the tunnel, back toward Charlie and Taylor. “I don’t know what’s possible in this place. But I know what’s healthy, and this,” I said, gesturing around the tunnel, “isn’t healthy. We have to get out of here. We have to find our way back up to the surface.”
He gave me a brief nod, then turned and once again started forward.
I stood there for a moment as he walked away, peering into the darkness behind us. There was nothing there. Nothing but dirt and rock.
The tunnel ended at another basement.
The basement in which we’d found Danny and his soldiers had been dark and damp, dingy concrete. This one was different. This one was brightly lit and clean, an underground hallway painted beige, with rows of flickering fluorescents in the ceiling. The floor was linoleum. There were mounds of dirt piled around the mouth of the tunnel, and a single line of footprints led the way down the corridor. Otherwise the floor was spotless, glossy clean, reflecting the overhead lights.
We paused just outside the tunnel. I held my breath and listened. Except for the buzz of the fluorescents, the building was quiet. There was the smell of cleaning supplies in the air. Disinfectants, wax. I wondered who was keeping the floors so sparkling clean.
Taylor cleared her throat and pointed to the wall, just outside the tunnel’s opening. There was a single word painted there, in faded red paint—UP—and an arrow pointing toward the ceiling. It was a small sampling, just two letters, but I was sure it was the Poet’s work. I could imagine her here, her face hidden behind that black leather mask, spray-painting those letters. Cobb Gilles would have been standing at her shoulder, watching, waiting, protecting. When? When had they been here?
“They’ve got power,” Charlie said, stating the obvious. “Just like the research facility.” There was excitement in his voice. “The government must be keeping it running.”
“Well, somebody’s keeping it running,” Floyd said. His voice was slurred slightly. When I turned to face him, he was tossing an empty pill bottle back through the mouth of the tunnel, back into the darkness. He still had that nervous smile on his lips. “Maybe just a generator. Somebody with their own purpose, their own vision. There’s plenty of shit in this city. It’s not just the government.”
“Whatever,” I said. “Let’s just get the fuck out of here.”
I started down the hallway, trying to avoid the footprints that were already there, smeared like black ink across the floor. They were abstract Rorschachs—I saw a butterfly there, a nuclear mushroom cloud, a crying face.
