But the whistling recedes, and I’m alone in the dark. Think, I tell myself, fighting back panic. Stay calm.
With shaking fingers, I turn on my phone light again. I lift it high, casting a pale shimmer of light along one tunnel and then the next. They look identical. The third one inclines slightly upward. I don’t recall going up or down while I followed the whistler with his stretcher, so that’s no clue. The floor lacks the double tracks from before, so I have definitely wandered off the original route, but I can’t have come very far. It isn’t possible. If I can just find the tunnel with the two tracks in it, I can follow that back to the vault.
That’s my logic. I have to be methodical. I can’t give in to panic, even though the battery life on my phone is now down to fourteen percent. I take off one of my socks, marking one tunnel as number one, and then I walk along it, counting my paces until I reach fifty. It has no intersections. No smell of fire or moving air. I go back to my sock and repeat my search in the second tunnel, with similar discouraging results. But in the third tunnel, the slanting one, at my thirty-fifth step, I find an intersection with the two smooth, worn tracks along the floor. Relief pours through me. I count backward again to where I left my sock and retrieve it, and then I return to the tunnel with the tracks.
This has to be it. In one direction or another, I have to believe I’ll find the main vault again. I put down my sock again to mark my place, and I peer to the right. My phone’s battery is now down to eleven percent. I can barely stand to turn off the light, but I might need it even more later, so I do. Then I start forward, keeping my shoes on the smooth track and counting my steps.
At twenty-three steps, the tunnel veers left. At fifty steps, I round another corner, and far ahead, I see the faint light of the vault again, reflecting on the puddle. My heart nearly bursts with relief. Forget my sock. I’m not going back. I put my phone back in my pocket and walk quietly to the end of the tunnel to peek into the vault again.
In the five o’clock direction and near the center of the room, a couple dozen red lights are on above the dreamers. The whistling man with the headlamp is wheeling his cart out of the vault, through the nine o’clock archway, and he has a dreamer on top of it. Alarm rocks through me. I stretch up on my tiptoes and scan automatically for my sister. I can’t see exactly from this angle, but my gut already knows. Her sleep shell is empty. They’ve taken her.
“No!” I whisper.
And then my fear turns to raw anger. I have to stop them. I’ve had enough of being worried. And scared. I have to save her!
I kick a stone by accident and it rattles down the steps into the vault. A red light goes on above the nearest dreamer, and I ball my hands into fists. Don’t do this, I think. I take a steady breath to cool my temper and frown at the light, willing it to go off. A moment later it does, and then, stealthily, I slide around the perimeter wall of the vault as I did before, circumventing the dreamers.
At the nine o’clock arch, I pause to peer up the tunnel. This one is more cleanly hewn, like a hallway, with small lights set in the walls at ankle height. It smells different, too, with a trace of cleanser or disinfectant in the air. I slip inside and hurry along until the sound of voices makes me slow. Around the corner, ahead of me, light comes out of a larger doorway, and I stop, listening.
Voices talk calmly back and forth. More than two. I can’t make out what they’re saying. A shifting noise is followed by some clicking. I back against the tunnel wall, flattening myself as much as possible, and then I peek in the doorway.
Medical equipment gleams under bright lights, and five occupied operating tables are arranged in a star, with the dreamers’ heads toward the center and their feet out at the points. I can’t tell if one of them is Dubbs, but all the dreamers are child-sized. Two women in green scrubs and a man, Jules, stand around one, aiming their attention toward a nearby computer that swivels out by an arm from a central pole. It’s odd to see high-tech medical equipment in a room that’s rough-hewn from the rock. The black-topped counters near the back of the room remind me of the science labs in my old high school.
I shift back out of sight and glance farther along the hall to a second door that would let me into the back of the room by the counters, but it’s closed.
“Tilt that closer, would you, Anna?” Jules says.
A series of quiet clicks follows, and then several squeaks and the shuffle of shifting feet.
“She’s younger than she looks,” says a woman. “Look at this.”
“That’s distress,” Jules says. “Isn’t it time to call Sandy? He’ll want to see this.”
I need to see, too. Carefully, silently, I edge past the doorway. For an instant I’m exposed to their full view, but they don’t look up, and then I’m across.
A telephone ringing sound, amplified through a speakerphone, comes from the operating room. I know the rhythm of the ring. I set my hand on the knob of the second door, and when the phone rings loudly again, I pull the door open and crawl inside. Then I pull the door nearly closed again. When the phone rings a third time, I shut the door all the way, with the softest click covered by the ringing. Then I creep behind the nearest counter. A familiar trace of vinegar laces the air and triggers my fear. I wait, motionless, to see if I’ve been noticed, but the phone keeps ringing and the doctors or whoever they are remain absorbed by their work.
A generic voice from the speakerphone announces that the voicemail box is full.
“Sandy Berg is the most exasperating person,” a woman says. “Can’t he tell time?”
“He’ll know we called,” Jules says. “He’ll call back.”
“When he’s good and ready, you mean,” she says. “What do you say? Do we park her again?”
“Let’s just take a proper look,” Jules says. “No harm in that.”
They go quiet. I’m bursting with curiosity and fear. Silently, I shift along on my hands and knees until I can see around the far corner of the counter. I hold my breath. From my angle, I can see the legs and undersides of three of the operating tables, including the one where the doctors are busy. They hover around in their green scrubs. A vast array of equipment extends down from the ceiling on metal arms and coils, and a complex network of IV lines and wires runs between the patients and the computers.
A rustling comes from the doorway, and I shift to see the man from the oven, the whistler, enter with a large plastic bin. If I had stayed in the hall much longer, he would have found me.
“Any word on our visitor?” asks the woman.