On our feet. Through the woods. Across the lawn. Toward the house, a forbidding white mass against the darkness of the night. We walked, exhausted, aching, silent toward the place from which we'd just run. Lucas had something in mind, I could tell, but I didn't ask him what. I felt no need to question his intentions anymore. My wrist hurt from the inflexible grasp he'd had on it hours earlier. A few times I rubbed it, absent-mindedly, and at one point he noticed and offered a curt apology. I made a point not to do it again.

Lucas had been a frustration in my attempts to be with Henry since I'd met him, first pretending to be Henry, then splitting us at the mirror maze, and then dragging me away from Henry and the house when I'd wanted to run to him. Henry had found me, nevertheless. I should feel only animosity toward Lucas, but I didn't. If anything, I felt sorry for him. He'd endured years of abuse from those people, and he remembered it all. Then he'd met with Amirah, the one person that had driven him to hope for something, and she'd been abusive as well. It wasn't a surprise that he was the way he was, cold and reserved and uncaring. But I'd also begun to recognize something in him. While most of my thoughts had been consumed with Henry and Amirah and the new knowledge that she'd always been nearby, I'd have been blind not to notice the attention Lucas had been paying to my safety. I didn't ask for or want the attention, but I did notice it. What exactly his thoughts were, I didn't know, and frankly, I didn't want to know. I just didn't have it in me to care about his feelings--I could care about only so much . . . that's what I tried to tell myself, anyway. Actually, though, the truth of it was not that I didn't care about him; it was that I was beginning to be suspicious of his actions and motivations. If I wondered too much about them, I grew uncomfortable. Better to not care than to question too deeply.

When we drew near enough to the house, I was startled to find that from the back, it was pristine. There were no dead bodies, no broken windows. When we reached the terrace and looked up at the balcony from which we'd descended, there was absolutely no indication that anything had occurred up there. The glass door was perfect. I passed a look to Lucas, but I couldn't read his thoughts. He crossed the terrace and started to walk around the house, presumably to the front, and I just followed him. The stone beneath our feet gave way to grass and then to gravel. The exterior of the building was every inch perfect--until we got to the front entrance. When everything had been happening, there'd been an explosion--that hadn't been so easy to repair. The front door was gone, along with the majority of the wall around it. The area had been cleaned of debris, but this had been too big of a job for a few hours' time, so this missing wall was the only evidence that anything had occurred.

It also gave us an easy entrance.

I wasn't sure why Lucas wanted to go back into the house, but I nevertheless stepped through the opening and into the main hall of the mansion. It was very dark, and we had no light, but I could make out the double stairway flanking the foyer and, at the top of the landing where the stairs met, the floor-to-ceiling windows which were letting in the only light. To think that hours earlier, Henry and Amirah had been up there, preparing for a siege . . . had she blown up the door, or had they? I wasn't sure, but after seeing what she was capable of, I thought it likely it'd been her.

"We've got nothing," Lucas said suddenly, his voice a little startling in the eerie silence. "No weapons, no light, nothing. So stay close."

I nodded, not really considering whether he could see it or not, and kept near him as we moved through the dark toward the kitchen. The whole place was shrouded in suspense, as if any number of villains could be waiting or watching from the shadows, and we were unable to see any of them. And yet, I felt that if they'd wanted us to be harmed, they would've done it when they'd had the chance, not left us on our own in the woods only to have us murdered in this house.

Lucas moved methodically through the kitchen and then through a door that--even in the darkness, opened into a blacker place. "What is this?"

"Pantry," he replied.

I reached my hands out to my sides and did feel shelves. But weren't pantries basically closets?

"Stay still for a minute," he told me, and I did. I couldn't tell what he was doing, but it seemed he'd gone a little forward, and then I heard what sounded like something heavy sliding aside. Abruptly, Lucas was back, his nearness startling me. "There are stairs. It's pitch black. Will you take my hand?"

"What's down there?"

"It's a wine cellar, I'd guess."

"But . . . why are we going in there? Shouldn't we be--"

"I told you, I found something. Yesterday."

"Down there? Can you just tell me what it is?"

"It's a tunnel."

"A tunnel to where?"

"I don't know, exactly."

"Well, then why on earth would we go in it?"

"Just--"

"Don't tell me to just trust you. I'm not going in there unless you--"

"Okay!" He heaved a big breath. I couldn't see him at all, but I could guess he was growing impatient. "Under the beach house, there was a tunnel. I never followed it past where they kept me and Henry. And the whole Circuit was underground, in tunnels."

As irritatingly as ever, he left it at that, and I had to make mental leaps to figure out his logic. "So, what--you think they're connected?"

"Maybe."

"And . . . why would there be one here?"

"Do you think this house was really just sitting here, empty, no for sale signs or anything? This is one of their locations. It's why Amirah brought us here. They have them. This, the beach house, the Circuit--"

"The cabin outside San Judo!" I jumped back to the last time I'd been there, in an underground room very much like the rooms where Henry and Lucas had been kept under the beach house. When I'd watched that cabin from the woods, the people had always seemed to arrive from the inside! Had there been a tunnel to it? In that cellar where they'd kept me?

"This one has to lead somewhere."

"But what if it takes us back to San Judo? Or to the beach house?"

"I think they're all connected. If they have a place north of here, there must be a tunnel leading to it."

I took several deep breaths, chewed my lip in thought. "Well, I guess we can at least look at it. No--" I said firmly, when he again asked me to take his hand. "I'm fine. I'll be able to follow you."

Whether or not he was disappointed, I couldn't tell. I just stepped through the opening as soon as I knew he'd gone through it himself and began to grope for a stair railing. Happy to find it, I then carefully felt the ground with my feet and found the edge of each step before moving forward. I could hear the stairs creak with each of Lucas's steps, and I began to recognize a pattern and knew when to go down myself. It was a deep staircase, about twenty steps, and when we did get to the bottom, it was utterly pitch black. I could've been surrounded by anything in the world and wouldn't have known it. The silence was total as well, save for the sound of open space. Reaching my arms to the left and right, I felt nothing immediate, no walls or shelves or counters. Just emptiness.

"You weren't joking. This is like a cave. Where are you?"

"Can you at least hold my jacket?" Lucas answered right beside me, causing me to jump. "It's huge down here. I had a flashlight the last time; I remember where to go. It will be easier if I don't have to worry about you."

I conceded; his reasoning made sense, now. So I took hold of his jacket, and we progressed through the black slowly but with direction. I didn't do anything but follow; Lucas probably felt in front, around, with his steps, for any obstacles. It seemed that we were down there for a while, feeling out our way, and I was surprised that he'd remembered exactly where to go. Even though it took several minutes, he did at length stop and tell me I could let go, which I did. Then he proceeded to get down on his hands and knees, and, I guessed, feel around for something. Just when I was starting to think he hadn't remembered the place correctly, a scraping, grating sounded, and I could see on the ground, Lucas's silhouette. A square had opened on the floor before us, and from it emanated a dim light, which barely illuminated the edges of many stairs leading farther underground.

Without a word, we descended, and when we finally reached the bottom, we found a tunnel identical to the one I'd seen under the beach house: dark in the distance but with glowing lights lit around us and several yards into the distance. I guessed that as we traveled through the tunnel, the lights would turn on ahead and off behind.

Staring down into the deep darkness, I turned to Lucas, whom I could now see clearly, albeit in an odd whitish sort of light. "This is really risky," I told him. "If we start down this tunnel, we have no idea where it will go. And it probably goes on for miles and miles. I mean, the beach house was a really long way from San Judo, and this place is far from both of those. We could get stuck down there and starve to death before we ever get to the end."

"We won't starve," Lucas replied, not looking at me. "We'd die of thirst before we starved. But we can go a long, long time without food and water. I've done it."

"Ok, but Lucas, it could be weeks of walking . . . a month! Miles and miles--"

"What's the alternative?" He finally looked at me. "This is a direct route to somewhere they'll be. If we stay above ground, we'll be wandering, aimlessly. We have no clues except 'north.'"

I sighed. "It freaks me out--I'm not going to lie. The thought of getting stuck down there--"

"Maybe we'll come across a room, or one of those vehicles they had in the other tunnel."

"Maybe . . ."

We stood staring into the darkness, black ahead, black behind, both no doubt contemplating dying in that potentially interminable tunnel.

"At least we'll be together," Lucas said at last, and though I wasn't sure that was much consolation, we began to walk.

We walked. And walked. And walked. It was as I feared--the tunnel seemed to go on forever. Time became non-existent down there. Neither of us could really tell how many minutes or hours or days passed. Had it been days? It began to feel like it. We'd walk and walk and walk, and then we'd sit and rest for a little while, and then we'd walk some more. Sometimes, we jogged as well, driven more by the madness of it, by an urge, than by any belief that the end was near. We spoke little, in spite of all the time spent with each other, but at one point I felt that I'd go crazy if I kept going in circles in my own mind.

"We have to talk, Lucas, or I'm going to lose it."

He strode along like a tall, pale ghost next to me. "We have been talking."

"Telling me to go faster or stop for a minute is not talking. People have to talk to each other. And don't tell me we aren't people or some nonsense, unless you can tell me what we are. I don't want to hear it."

"I don't have anything to say."

"Really? Nothing at all? What are you thinking about? What's in your mind right now?"

"Right now? I'm trying to figure out what to say to you to get you to stop asking me to say something."

I growled, frustrated. "How long do you think it's been?"

"Twelve hours, maybe."

"No . . . it feels like it's been at least three or four days."

"Talking will burn energy. You need to conserve it."

I gave up.

As the time passed, I grew intimately aware of how the tunnel worked. The lights were every hundred feet or so, and they were in pairs, across the tunnel. Only three pairs were ever on at any given moment--once we drew near one, the farthest back went out, and a new pair in front went on. There were also air vents. I didn't notice them for a long while because they were almost invisible in the ceiling, but as I listened, I realized that I heard before I saw them. There was a very faint hissing sound, like someone blowing air out of a mouth, about ten seconds before we passed one; they were small holes about four inches in diameter with grating across them. I started to count them just to have something to do, but after I got to about three hundred, I couldn't take the monotony any more.

When I at last became very tired, too tired to continue walking, I told Lucas I had to sleep for a bit. He wasn't happy about it--I could tell from his expression--but he didn't argue with me. I supposed he saw it as a sign of weakness, because as far as I could tell, he never slept. At least, I'd never seen him do it. I slouched down against the wall, and with some prodding, he sat next to me.

"Just close your eyes and try to sleep," I told him. "Even if you aren't tired, at least you'll be able to dream for a little while, get your mind out of this tunnel."

He didn't respond to me.

As tired as I was, I was out within half a minute. My sleep was dreamless, for the most part--vague feelings of Henry, of waves, of a hand on my shoulder. But there was nothing solid. No memories, which I hadn't had in ages, and no nightmares.

When my eyes did open after who-knew-how long, I caught sight of the tunnel wall across from me and a faint sense of paranoia returned to the pit of my stomach. Then I became aware that I was lying against Lucas, his arm around me and a hand on my shoulder. When I moved a little, his arm slipped down, and I sat up to find him blinking awake. So he did sleep! I'd been beginning to think he was a robot.

I had no immediate inclination to get up and start walking again. At that point, I was pretty sure we were going to be stuck forever. But up we got, and we continued to move forward. By that time, I was quite hungry. Maybe Lucas never ate or drank, but I actually enjoyed food. We didn't talk about it, though, or anything else. Just walked, walked, walked.

It must have been a few more hours after waking that something changed. I'd been hyper-aware of the air vents and their slight hissing, so when I caught a new sound, it was as clear as day to me that it wasn't like the others.

"Lucas, listen--" I commanded, putting out an arm to stop him.

He flicked his eyes toward me, stood stone still, waited.

"You hear it?" I said. "Far away . . . but something is coming. One of those cars?" My body thrilled with hope and fear--hope that I was right, fear that I was wrong.

In all the time we'd had, we hadn't exactly planned what to do if a car came along, thinking it unlikely to occur. But now that the possibility was there, we had to figure something out and quick.

"Put out the lights, three on your side, three on mine."

"Put them out?" Even as I confirmed what he said, I moved to the wall, knowing we had little time. The lights were some type of thin, luminescent tubes, sticking right out of the wall. I quickly removed one of my shoes and struck the one right above me, shattering it. Then I moved to the farther light. When I did, another flipped on in the distance. Lucas took care of the three on the other side while I did the three on mine, and then we moved back to the middle lights we'd put out, and all of them backward and forward turned off. We were left in absolute darkness.

I could hear his excited breathing. "You were right," he said hastily. "Look."

Far in the distance of the tunnel, in the direction which we'd been walking, was a pinprick of light. Something was activating the lights, and they'd be quickly upon us if they were moving at the speed I remembered that tunnel vehicle moving.

"What now?"

"The lights being out will confuse it. Take off your jacket--we can maybe tie them together, hold them across the way--"

"No. That won't work; they'll be coming so fast we'll not be able to hold them. We could actually get hurt that way."

"Then what?" Lucas was asking me what to do?

"If we can't stop it," I said, "it might just keep going, and we'll lose it. Who knows if or when another will come." The light in the distance was the size of a quarter, now, and gaining in circumference. "It has to see us, or hear us. We have to be sure it knows we're here, or it may not stop."

"But we have nothing to defend ourselves, don't even know who's on it. And what if it sees us and passes anyway?"

"You want to do nothing, then?"

"Absolutely not. We'll make sure it knows we're here."

We stood with our backs flat against the side of the tunnel, across from each other. I held my left shoe in my hand; Lucas held the burner phone he'd used to contact Amirah (which hadn't worked down below). We watched the circle of light grow and grow, our nerves fizzling like firecrackers, waiting for the inevitable moment of impact.