It smelled like . . . home.
The next second brought memory and a sharp stab of fear. Was he alone? Had the others been lost somewhere in that terrible, screaming silence? But no, he heard a scrape of movement and a moan and rattling, phlegmy coughing, all from different spots around him in the dark.
He heard Morgan whisper, “Jess?” and flung his hand out toward her. He missed and slapped wet stone, then tried again. His fingers brushed cloth with hard edges beneath. A pack. A pack full of books. He rolled over, every muscle seizing in pain, and managed to crawl another foot closer. This time, he touched Morgan’s skin. Her arm. “Jess?”
“I’m here,” he croaked. His mouth tasted like sewage, and he desperately needed water to wash it clean. “All right?”
She burst into frantic tears and threw herself into his arms, and he held on. He didn’t know which of them trembled harder. It didn’t matter. They’d seen something so terrible, neither of them would ever forget.
All that knowledge, lost. Wolfe’s mother. So much gone.
Someone was upright, stumbling in the dark, and fell over something in the way.
“Scheisse!” Thomas. Thomas was alive. “Jess? Jess!” He sounded desperate. Of course he would be. Alone in the dark again.
“Here,” Jess gasped. He let go of Morgan, though he kept tight hold of her hand. “Thomas?”
“Here,” the other boy said faintly. “I fell on something.”
Jess reached into the pouch at his belt and pulled out a glow; he shook it and held it out, and there was Thomas, sitting spread-legged on a damp concrete floor. What he’d tripped over was the mound of bags—packs, canvas duffel sacks.
The books. The Black Archive books.
The last ones. The survivors.
“Easy,” Morgan said, and knelt beside Thomas with her hand on his back. “We’re here. We’re all right.” She looked up at Jess with a panicked question in her wide eyes. “Aren’t we?”
He didn’t answer. “Khalila? Glain?”
“Here,” Glain groaned, and Khalila responded a few seconds later.
“I’m here, too,” Dario said, very quietly. Jess swung the light around and saw the Spaniard against the wall, shivering. The light reflected weirdly in his eyes.
Tears.
“Jess. Jess, stop,” Morgan said, and Jess realized he’d been moving toward Dario with a deadly serious intent. “Leave him! He helped us!”
“Leave a traitor to put a knife in our backs again?” Jess still had the gun he’d been firing in the Iron Tower, and the deadly weight of it felt good in his hands as he stared at Dario. “Khalila?”
“Leave him for now,” she said. “We’ll watch him closely. Where are we?”
“Smells like London,” Jess said.
“London smells very bad.” Thomas’s voice was choked but a little steadier now. “This isn’t a Serapeum.”
“No. It’s—” Jess raised the glow and looked around. “Where are Wolfe and Santi?”
“Here,” Wolfe said. “Nic?”
“It’s not a Translation Chamber.” Santi, Jess realized, was already on his feet and shaking another glow to life. The sickly yellowish light revealed an empty hall with a high, arching ceiling like a church, but no windows to let in the light. Underground, Jess thought. Somewhere near the river.
A symbol up high in chalk caught his eye, and Jess held his glow closer. “Smuggling route,” he said. “Belongs to the Riverrun Boys.”
“Yours?”
“Competitors,” Jess said. “My father’s not the only smuggler in town. The Riverrun Boys specialize in things other than books. Drugs, mostly. Nasty bunch.”
“Charming,” Wolfe said. His voice was as low and raspy as Jess’s. He’d breathed in a lot of smoke. “Why would she send us here?”
“There wouldn’t have been any chance for us at the Serapeum,” Jess said. “Dario’s betrayal would have seen to that. She must have known about this place. Maybe she’s even been here.”
“Unlikely,” Wolfe said. “My mother— Did you see—”
“Yes,” Jess said. “I did. I’m sorry.”
Wolfe said nothing. His eyes looked flat, lightless, utterly unreadable. The silence stretched a moment, and then he said, “We should find a way out.”
Jess broke out a glow of his own, and Glain had one, and they separated into teams to explore the room. It was wide and bare, and the exit that the Riverrun Boys must have once used had been blocked up with stones. Solid ones. London Garda had found this place. If she brought us all this way only for us to die in a trap . . .
“Over here,” Glain called. She was leaning half her weight on Thomas, but she had a look of elation on her face. “I think these are steam tunnels.”
Jess felt a wave of disquiet. “Did you find a way out?”
“There’s a staircase leading up. It’s barred with a grate,” Thomas said. “Welded shut, with the symbol of the English lion on it. London Garda?”