Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
Miranda’s hunch was dead on. A tunnel did exist, hidden so cleverly in the cliff’s jagged underbelly that you’d miss it unless you were standing right in front of it.
It looked less like an entrance and more like the earth had been split by some ancient, indifferent force.
We clustered around the gap, the night wind clawing at our backs.
Miranda went first, squeezing into the darkness.
I followed, heart pounding, feeling the rough stone scrape my shoulder blades.
The passage was so narrow we could only move in single file, shoulders hunched, half-crawling in places.
I tried to imagine how the box-carriers had squeezed through—the thought made my skin crawl.
It would’ve taken careful maneuvering, and absolute commitment.
Inside, the world shrank to damp stone, the flashlight’s trembling beam, and the echo of our own breaths. Water dripped steadily from somewhere overhead. Our footfalls sounded impossibly loud.
“Thank God I brought this,” Miranda muttered, flicking the beam of her light ahead.
The tunnel bent and twisted, the floor uneven beneath our shoes, slick in places with cold, old water. Nobody spoke. Our nerves were too raw, our senses straining for any hint of movement ahead or behind. The longer we crept, the more the silence pressed in, heavy and absolute.
Robert finally whispered, “What is this place?”
I shook my head, swallowing hard. “Feels like it was dug out by hand, a long time ago. For what, who knows.” It was too rough, too forgotten, yet not abandoned.
We pushed on, the tunnel seeming to go on forever, curving sharply left, then right, doubling back on itself. I lost track of time and distance. Ten, fifteen minutes? Each step deeper eroded any sense of the outside world.
Miranda stopped short so suddenly I nearly collided with her back. Her flashlight dipped.
“Whoa,” she breathed, voice barely audible.
I craned my neck, anxiety spiking. “What is it?”
She lifted a hand for silence. “Listen.”
We froze, barely daring to breathe. At first I thought she meant the water drops. Then I caught it: voices. Not close, but not far either, echoing in that strange way only underground sound can. At least two—no, three or more—muffled, deliberate, too quiet to make out words, but unmistakably human.
“They’re close,” Miranda whispered. “Thirty feet, maybe less.”
Nico shifted uneasily behind me. “What do we do now?”
My own heartbeat quickened, the space feeling suddenly tighter. The thought of meeting those odd strangers—here, in the tunnel, no immediate escape behind or ahead—felt more uncomfortable now we were inside. I gripped Jessie’s sleeve without thinking.
“Let’s not all go ahead,” I whispered, turning to Robert, Rosalie, Jessie, and Nico, who huddled behind me in the tunnel’s gloom. My voice barely carried. “You four stay here… Keep an ear out.”
Their faces were pale in the reflected glow of Miranda’s flashlight, but none of them argued. Miranda met my gaze, eyes wide and a little wild, but she just nodded and tightened her grip on the flashlight.
We crept ahead. Every footstep sounded impossibly loud. The voices ahead shifted and merged, mostly male, but still too muffled to make out. I felt my skin prickle with the knowledge that we were close, so close, to something we might not be meant to see.
“Light off,” I whispered.
Miranda snapped the beam off. Darkness rushed in, so thick it pressed at my eyes and ears. For a moment, I could only sense her nervous breathing beside me—then, slowly, my eyes adjusted, and I saw a faint, flickering orange glow ahead. Firelight, maybe. Or candles.
We crept forward, silent as ghosts. The tunnel widened under our feet, and the light grew stronger, spilling from a rough passage off to the right.
I pressed myself flat to the stone wall and edged forward, pulse pounding.
The voices had stopped. Either we’d been heard, or the group was simply focused on something else.
I risked a glance around the corner, heart thudding.
The passage opened into a wide chamber, its ceiling lost in shadow.
Candles—at least a dozen—flickered along the jagged walls, their glow illuminating part of the space.
I made out a heap of black boxes stacked in one corner, and, near the middle of the cavern, eight figures in black, hunched on makeshift stools of rock and wood.
They sat with their backs to us, bent over something on the ground I couldn’t see.
I leaned in further, desperate for a clearer look. What I thought was solid ground beneath my boots shifted. My foot slipped on loose gravel, sending a cascade of stones skittering into the chamber. The sound cracked through the quiet like a gunshot.
“Tani!” Miranda hissed and grabbed for me, but I was already off-balance, lurching past the mouth of the tunnel and landing hard, barely ten feet from the black-clad group.
Every head snapped toward me. For a split second, all I saw were eyes. Wide, startled, hostile, ringed by candlelight. And then my gaze locked with the closest one—a face I knew, unmistakable even half-shrouded by shadows.
“Hayden?” I choked out.