“Brace yourself against the sides,” I whisper, “so you don’t slide … ”
He disappears lower, hand reaching up to help me in, scooting down to make room for me, and then they are inside the hut, two of them, one whispering, “Stack that one behind the others.”
It’s Annis. Annis, who is a weaver, who has no business being in a supply hut that leads to the kitchens, even if it was being used. And she doesn’t have a light. And the next voice I Know, too.
“We shouldn’t be using it. They’ve looked in here once since the last time she came up … ”
That is Angela, Michael’s mother, and the only “she” coming up through this shaft has been me.
“They’ve looked in here every day,” Annis replies. “But Henry got permission to put in extra food stores, so nothing will be amiss if they glance through the door.”
“And if they open the boxes?”
If Annis answers that question, I can’t hear it. There’s shuffling, the sound of sliding crates. My leg muscles ache. The silence settles back in.
“Gone,” Beckett whispers. His head is somewhere below my feet. “Should we go back up?”
I mark the time. “Down,” I tell him.
We inch our way along the shaft, like a very slow, very controlled slide, pushing side to side against the walls of black rock. I’m worried for Annis. But then again, I have a feeling that what I’m doing is more dangerous.
I start measuring my breaths. The shaft seems smaller with another person inside, with someone else setting my pace. And I’m beginning to feel the weight, my mind telling me just how many tons of rock there are in the mountain, and just how trapped I will be if it falls. Like every time I come back to the city from open air. I didn’t feel this way in the caves, though. I feel this way coming home. Panic untwists in my middle. And then I bump into Beckett’s hand. Or maybe it’s his head.
“I think we’re at the door,” he whispers. “And someone’s shoes are down here.” Those would be mine. From the last time, the day Nita died. They must have slid down from the top. Then he says, “Wait.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s something in front of the door.”
“You mean it’s blocked?”
“No … ” Then he says, “Are you wedged in? Can you stay where you are?”
I can, but I don’t want to. Panic is bringing memories, tentacles stretching up from the deep places of my mind, trying to drag me down. And suddenly I can feel the ache in my lungs, just before breaking the surface of deep water. My father trying to pin me still when I thrashed while Adam burned. The black dress I wore at the last Changing of the Seasons that felt too, too tight. I breathe, and breathe …
“Stay with me, Sam,” he whispers. “I’m almost done … ”
I hear the soft squeak of the metal door lifting upward, and the passage below me clears. I slide out after him.
We’re in a storage room with four rock walls, square, barren but for the shaft door and empty lantern sconces. I only Know this because I’ve been in here before. With a light. I can smell the perfume of the Underneath.
“Someone was expecting you,” Beckett whispers. “Look.”
A faint glow appears at the corner of the glasses, a narrow beam of light in the darkness. He takes them off and aims the light at the metal door, and then I see that he’s holding a thread across his palm.
“It was strung across,” he says, “so it would break when the door was opened. Simple, but effective. I was looking with the glasses, just in case, and for a second I thought it was a spiderweb, but—”
“What’s a spiderweb?”
He smiles. “Never mind.”
I touch the thin string, still wrapped around a tiny tack wedged between the rock and the metal frame. “It’s suture thread,” I say. What I would have used on Michael if Beckett’s technology hadn’t been better. I think of Marcus Physicianson, chasing me through the ruined city. Or Reddix.
“If you’d come through as usual, you would’ve never realized it was there,” says Beckett. “But someone wanted to Know when you were back in the city. Not stop you. Just Know. Unless you think other people are climbing down the shaft.”
I doubt very much that someone else is climbing down this shaft.
“Who knows you come this way, Sam?”
Only Nita. I thought it was only Nita. “We should go,” I whisper.
“Let’s put this back first, don’t you think?” He finds the other tack in the faint glow from the glasses, winding the string back around it.
“Wait. How many times was that thread wrapped?”
Beckett pauses. “I don’t know.”
“If one of the Knowing did it, they’ll Know how many times.”
I watch him think. “Then I’ll do the same number as the other side.”
That will have to do. I step back, hand over my face. If fear can make a bad memory stronger, then smell brings them on more quickly. Nita’s memory is here, waiting, and Adam, too. A thousand others. And I’m already feeling like we’re nearly caught, and that I should have never, ever brought Beckett Rodriguez down here.
He finishes the thread and stands, then takes a good look at me. “Are you okay?”
I nod. My breath is coming short again. I’m not okay.
“I’m watching, remember?” he says. The irony isn’t lost on either of us.
He takes my hand again, like it’s the most natural way to travel now, and I lead him through the empty rooms, strange in the false light, past one or two broken barrels sticky with the remnants of biofuel, to the stairwell that goes both up and down, connecting the different levels of the kitchens.
“Put out the light,” I whisper. It disappears. Now it’s just Beckett’s hand and the blackness.
We make our way down, fast. Me, because I grew up in the dark. Him, because he can see. Down, to the next level and the next. The kitchens are like a piece of the Outside Underneath, and the Knowing are not supposed to frequent these areas, especially during the resting. We should be alone. When we get to the bottom of the stairs, to the lowest level, there is a wooden door, tall and arched, closed, but not locked. I pause, turn toward Beckett in the narrow space. “What can you see beyond the door?”
After a moment he says, “A passageway. Empty.”
I put a hand on the latch, but I don’t push it down. “Beck, we cannot be seen. Not at all. We just can’t be seen.” If we meet someone in that corridor, in the entire Underneath, then this is over. For the Knowing and Outside, Beckett and me.
He doesn’t say anything, just lifts my hand, the one that’s still in his, and presses his lips to the back of it.
And that feeling is something I do not want to Forget.
I push down on the latch, and we step into the corridor of Level One.