Keystone (15 page)

“It’s just a stock room!” Sean groans.

But it’s worse than that. It’s a stock room with nothing in it but piles of books and huge cardboard boxes overflowing with more books. There are no doors and no windows. I twist in a circle, looking for a way to escape, but there’s nothing. Just four walls surrounding a swamp of cardboard and books.

Garrett moves into the maze of boxes and my body drops into a fighting stance, angled toward the door. The shouting from down the corridor roars in my ears…
Find the key! We need the key!

“There’s no way out!” Sean yelps, but Garrett doesn’t answer. Instead, he throws his shoulder against the tallest box in the center of the room. Most of the boxes are as high as my chin. Garrett groans as he muscles each one out of the way. Sean jumps in beside him and the two of them make a narrow path ending at the far wall.

When they clear it all away, all that’s left is one rectangular box left against the wall, on the floor. The box is a little smaller than a basement window, but instead of lifting it out of the way, Garrett kneels down and pulls open the flaps. He pulls out a pile of books and dumps them to the side before jumping back onto his feet. He lifts one foot over the box like he’s going to stand in it.

It doesn’t make sense. Maybe we’re going to stack up the books and climb up through the ceiling. My eyes flick upwards, searching for a ladder or an open tile to escape through, but there’s nothing there.

But instead of going up, Garrett brings his foot crashing down, right through the open flaps of the box. Even though the box is on the floor, something shatters inside it and the echo of falling pieces only whispers around the room, beneath the shouting from outside.

“Here!” Garrett waves Sean toward the box.

“Here where?” Sean says.

“Veritas’ passage way! Go!”

Sean peers into the open box.

“There’s a ladder in there!” He laughs, delighted.

“Go!” I hiss, motioning to Sean from the door. Everything in my body is standing on tiptoes—balancing on the point of a needle. The shouting and fighting beyond the door drowns out the sounds in the room. Any second, The Fury might break through and find us.

“Go now!” Garrett says and Sean climbs into the box. Or, actually, down the box. He disappears the way I saw someone’s brother do once, when he pretended to be walking down stairs, behind a family couch.

The second the tip of Sean’s head disappears, the sound outside the door explodes. The screaming and shouting swells closer…
The key is here! Find it! Find it!

“Nali, now you!” Garrett waves me away from the door and there’s no time to argue. I cross the room and step into the box and my feet instantly find the metal rung of a ladder. As I climb down, Garrett shoves some of the huge boxes back in front of the one we’re disappearing into, obscuring the path he and Sean made to the wall. Before I am out of sight, I see Garrett throw his shoulder against an enormous box that bursts open as it hits the floor. It gushes a gooey liquid. Thicker than water, a clear gel covers the floor all the way back to the door. But the liquid disappears in seconds, soaked up by the rest of the cardboard boxes in the room.

Garrett jumps onto the rungs above me. He pauses to slide a sheet of something over the opening so that everything goes black and the sounds that were filtering into the stock room suddenly go silent.

“What was that stuff you poured out?” I ask, as we climb down in the dark.

There’s a grin in his voice. “It’s a dissolving fluid. The boxes will soak it up and fall apart in seconds. We rigged the books inside to spill all over the place, so it’s going to take a while for the Fury to clear everything away and figure out where we went. Homemade booby trapping.”

“How did you know to do that?” I ask. Focusing up at him, I see Garrett peer down at me with a wide grin. I stop focusing once he looks away, too chicken to look down.

“Nok,” he tells me. “He showed me this escape route, just in case this happened, and how to rig it and how to collapse it.”

“Cool,” I say.

“Let’s just hope it takes care of
all
the boobs.” Sean jokes from the rungs below me.

The way down seems to go on forever.

“Did you hear what they were yelling up there?” I say.

“Yeah, they’re looking for the key,” Garrett answers.

“
The
key?” I ask. My dress gets under my foot and I slip on the rung, whacking Sean in the head.

“Hey! Steady as she goes up there!” Sean wheezes from below me. He doesn’t have the Contego lung capacity, that’s for sure. “The Ianua have long referred to your grandfather’s Memory as
The Key
, since it’s believed he had uncovered the information that would end the Fury.”

“But I thought the Fury have the Memory,” I say.

“So did we,” Garrett says.

The sound of Sean jumping down on solid ground comes up from the shadows. My arms are waterlogged strands of spaghetti. I am relieved to finally step off the ladder and land on hard, cold dirt, but when I do, I also land on the pieces of whatever Garrett smashed in the box overhead. It’s not glass, but big, jagged plastic pieces that poke my toes.

“Ow!” I grab for the ladder and Sean squawks, “What’s the matter?” as Garrett jumps down beside me. I jump back onto the ladder as Garrett brushes the rest of the broken pieces away with the side of his foot.

“Try now,” Garrett’s says and I jump down again on plain, cold dirt. Once I’m there, I focus again and wish I hadn’t. We’re at the bottom of what looks to be a round, brick well.

“Too bad you’re not wearing the orange sweats Nok gave you,” Sean says. His eyes are wide, casting around blindly, even when he looks right at me. “We could’ve used a life-sized flashlight.”

“Nali likes to come to an ambush, dressed for a party,” Garrett says, kneeling down on the dirt floor. His laugh is strained, as he jerks open one of five, hinged, wooden door flaps that are set into the brick at our feet. The rectangular cover flips up with a rusty creak.

“What’re you doing?” I whisper. Garrett looks up with a grin.

“This is the way out,” He whispers back as he grabs Sean’s wrist, yanking his brother down beside him.

Sean grunts as he lands. “Ok, now, what’re we doing again?”

“You’re going through this hole you can’t see,” Garrett says. He puts a hand on the back of Sean’s head. “Remember what Dad showed us about getting through a tight squeeze? Do that. And I’m sending Nali in right after you, so crawl through as fast as you can. I’ll be right behind you two.”

“Perfect. A hole,” Sean grumbles as he ducks into the little trapdoor. It seems too tiny, but Sean wiggles through the opening like an earthworm in dress shoes.

“You’re next.” Garrett says once Sean disappears. I kneel beside him, but I don’t crouch down to go through the hole. I’m not claustrophobic…at least I never was until now, but focusing on how small the opening is, it looks like I’ll fit about as well as a wine cork. Even repeating my mantra over and over in my head, I can’t make myself want to stick my head inside.

While I’m worrying over the hole, Garrett’s eyes roll over my dress’s spaghetti straps. He blocks the opening with his knee.

“Wait,” he says as he unbuttons his shirt, leaving him in just his undershirt. “That dress isn’t going to cut it.”

He must think I’m just worried about keeping my dress intact, when really, I’m flipped out about scraping all my skin off as I go through the hole. In my head, I chant my mantra as I take his shirt from him.

He moves his knee aside. I breathe like I’m hitting speed bumps. The shirt smells like him, which helps, but not enough. I can’t stop staring at the hole and wondering how I’m going to make myself go in.

“Think of it as rock climbing, but sideways,” Garrett says. “Instead of using your fingers, use your forearms and elbows to kind of scoot yourself along. Use the balls of your feet to push yourself through.”

He moves completely out of the way and I stop focusing. Garrett and the hole and the shattered bits on the ground disappear. I figure if I’m not looking, it’ll be easier. I feel around for the opening and then Garrett’s hands are on mine, warm and pulsing in time with my own heartbeat, helping to stretch my arms out ahead of me. I push myself into the tiny tunnel.

It’s a round hole and the sides are tight, which makes bringing my elbows back down near my chest a lot tougher. I bang my skull on the top of the tunnel when I try to raise my head.

I don’t focus. Instead, I keep my eyes squeezed shut even though it doesn’t stop me from thinking about what I’d be looking at. Dirt and tree roots, bits of rock. I can feel them as I pull myself along. The dress tangles around my feet. My toes slip off the rocks. I think my foot is bleeding. This is a grave, if I can’t make it out. I can’t stop thinking it.

But I have no other choice than to be brave, especially when I feel Garrett’s hand on my foot and I hear the trapdoor slam shut behind us. Seconds later, the tunnel vibrates with the rolling thunder of an avalanche. I can’t cover my head if I wanted to- my arms are trapped beneath me- but the avalanche isn’t in the tunnel. I’m sure it’s above us or around us but all I keep thinking of how it is burying one end.

“Sean?” I call. My voice comes out wavy.

“You okay?” Garrett’s voice leaks up around me.

“Yeah,” I tell him. Just saying it has to make it a little more true.

“I just set off one of the booby traps to cave in the well.” He sounds as calm as if we were sitting at his kitchen table. “The Fury’s going to have a lot of digging to do if they want to find the doors to these tunnels. Even if they do, it’s going to take them a while to figure out which one we went through. We’ll be days gone by then.”

“Good,” I say. What I don’t say is that now there’s only one way out and no going back.

My nose is nearly rubbing the bottom of the tunnel, so my breath bounces off the dirt and comes back dusty, in my face. The harder I breathe, the more of a cloud I imagine around me. I forget all about the smell of Garrett’s shirt and the Fury blowing up the library a half-mile over my head, the avalanche in the well, and Sean waiting at the other end. What comes rocketing back to me is that I’m trapped in a tunnel that is the size of my shoulders. I can only wiggle myself along by inches.

I’m still clinging to the edge of being okay, until I try to take a deep breath and can’t. My ribs are too squeezed and I can’t catch a whole breath.

The panic blows out my field and I try to dig my fingernails into my composure. I’m not going to lose it in this tunnel. I’m not. I bite down on my lip to redirect my thoughts, but my voice still comes out all jagged as I shout, “Sean?”

He doesn’t answer.

“It’s just a little further,” Garrett’s voice is an unwelcome anchor. As much as I want to be calm, I need to make it happen for myself. I think I’d be okay if he could just be the one freaking out, but instead, he says, “Almost there.”

And I lose it. I totally fail.

“We’re not,” I say. The walls are too close. The fear rises up in my throat and I fight it back down, but it doesn’t feel like I’m getting anywhere. I won’t open my eyes in case I’m not. I’m afraid I’ll be staring at another collapsed end of the tunnel.

Suddenly, hands wrap around my wrists and I’m dragged through the hole. I flop out, onto a concrete floor, and open my eyes on Sean’s dress shoes.

“Sounded like you were bugging out in there.” Sean says as he hauls me up. “We’ve got to tell Nok to make his tunnels a little bigger. That one should be called the Veritas girdle.”

It would’ve made me laugh, if I wasn’t sucking in as much stale air as I could get inside me, while standing in somebody’s creepy basement. The concrete floor and cinder block walls are lit by only a single naked bulb, hovering over what looks to be the foot of a staircase, at the opposite end of the room.

Garrett comes through the hole, rolling onto his back so he can reach up through the opening and grabbing onto some pipes overhead. He pulls himself out, and lands with both feet on the floor like he does this every day.

“You okay?” he asks and I just nod, pushing my hair out of my face. I’m an idiot.

“So, where we at, boss?” Sean asks his brother.

“It’s a condemned house,” Garrett says. “In the sub behind the library.”