"We are so not going to make it. Should have gone to the vent."

"Shut up, Specs. We're totally going to make it. But if you fall and break your neck or whatever because you're busy lamenting...how do you like that big word? Then you are on your own. I'm not stopping. Because I'm going to make it. Don't let go of me." Jordan laughed as she pulled against his tight grip on her shirt and squeezed through a narrow opening into a larger cavern with a crack that gaped open to the darkening sky.

Jordan flashed the light briefly on Jinho's shoulder. The canary was gone. She flicked the light to his other shoulder. Jinho's eyebrows arched high when he looked up with his eyes. He pointed to his head. The canary's dark orbs peered at her from where it sat looking down.

"Whoa! Look at the number of bats up there tonight! There's got to be a hundred of them. You know the Jornada Caves get over one hundred thousand bats every year during the migrations." He had grabbed her flashlight and was pointing it up at the bats silhouetted against the last gasp of waning light as they took flight.

"Jinho! Come on!" Jordan pulled on his arm dragging him to another narrow crack in the wall on the opposite side. "We only have three minutes to get back in!"

Around a corner and down a short slope, they suddenly found themselves in the dusky darkening evening.

"Jin-Jin, the light," she growled.

"Stop calling me Jin-Jin," he growled back. He switched off the flashlight.

"So sensitive," she giggled and put the flashlight back around her neck. "I love you, Specs."

"So you'll marry me?"

She laughed and ran to another boulder. "Wrong kind of love, Jin-Jin."

Spotlights lit up a long, empty canvas of arid land occupied by nothing but boulders, brush and a straight, thin ribbon of pavement leading away from the mountain. Long shadows reached out to engulf the two as they sprinted from one boulder to another. They kept as close to the mountainside as they could to avoid the patches of light patiently poised to expose them.

The mountains pinched in on either side of the road and the two stopped behind a boulder to catch their breath. They darted along the road, the soft soles of their tennis shoes padding lightly. Weaving around the last tumble of boulders, they made their way to a guard shack adorned with an imposing security gate.

Inside the shack, a guard sat tipped back in a chair reading a novel under a fluorescent light. The door was open and the acrid scent of a cigarette drifted with the smoke to hang in a cloud just outside the frame.

It smelled good to Jordan. She considered standing up and walking into the shack and wondered what the guard would do if she suddenly showed up and plucked the cigarette from his hand, put it to her lips, and then walked out. Her mother would kill her. She squatted next to Jinho to pass below the window.

"Damn it!"

They froze. Inside the shack, the legs of the guard's chair slammed to the cement floor. A moment later a whiptail sailed by and landed on the ground beside them. It scurried away around the corner of the building.

Jordan's hand flew to cover her mouth and suppress a snort of laughter.

"Poor little Cnemidophorus Neomexicanus," Jinho whispered at her.

"Lizard! It's a lizard!" she mouthed back.

Jinho slowly raised his head, peered into the window and nodded to Jordan. She ran to the security gate and wriggled under it close to the post. The post was blocking the guard from view, but a quick glance around it confirmed he was deep into his novel and she waved Jinho under.

Safely on the other side, they jogged into a row of corn that led down the road. The light green stalks provided cover and crackled as they brushed by on their way toward the entrance of a greenhouse. The large bulk of a glass dome hunched over everything just beyond the nursery. In the near dark, the moon and stars reflected faintly off its surface giving the appearance of a massive hole in the middle of the earth.

A door into the greenhouse slid open as the two approached and revealed corn tinged blue by the pale grow lights overhead. The corn inside was a deeper green and had fuller ears than those of their counterparts outside. Farther in, tomato plants boasted large red bulbs of fruit and Jordan slowed long enough to pluck one off the stem as she passed by. Before coming here, she had never seen heart-shaped tomatoes and the moment she tasted their sweet rich flavor, they became her favorite.

In fact, she thought, more kids would eat their vegetables if they were shaped like this. Or maybe in cool colors. Rainbow fish cucumbers. Or fluorescent pink broccoli. She'd have to mention that to her mom sometime. Maybe when she wasn't griping about chores.

Inside, the lights spaced along the ceiling provided just enough visibility to see faint shadows at their feet. Sprinklers were just kicking on. The wet shoeprints on the greenhouse decking were quickly obscured by the spray from overhead.

Panting from the long run, Jordan ran up to a glass door slick with a thick layer of condensation. She paused long enough to put her hands on her knees and catch her breath. Jinho reached around her to wave at a sensor but she blocked him with her hip. "I got it."

She waved her hand in front of an electric eye. The door didn't open. Jinho brushed past her and waved at the sensor too.

"Oh, what? You think you have some magic touch?" she muttered. "What the–"

A soft beep announced the pressure lock disengaging and Jinho pulled her behind a tool cart laded with hoes and empty pots. As the door slid open, a gardener dressed in a white apron and wearing rubber gloves rushed out, grabbed a clipboard off the cart, and rushed back in. Before the door could reseal, Jordan and Jinho ran through.

The door pressurized behind them, and a lock slid into place with a thunk. A second door of heavy metal slid into place and a beep-beep signaled the seal was secured.

"I told you we would make it, Specs."