Devon shook his head. "Luray flanks the river. I'll bet you ten to one that this system empties into it. And where the water exits, we may be able to."

"Shades of Harrison Ford," Rita muttered.

"Well, we're not nearly that high above water level, and we'll probably be wading in raw sewage by the time we get there . . . but otherwise, yeah, something like that."

It sounded like a respectable plan, so we let him lead the way, following the flow of the water. Honestly, it could have been a bad plan, and we would have still followed it. When given a choice between, "I have a plan" and "I will sit in the darkness waiting to starve to death" there's not much to think about.

Soon we started hearing noises again, like someone was headed our way. I felt my stomach tighten in dread. If the raiders had thought to block off access to the river, there would be no way out . . . but we couldn't know if that was the case until we got there, so onward we trekked. Other tunnels and pipes emptied into the one we were following, and the water level began to rise around us. It was a good sign, but it made walking difficult. I was starting to get dizzy, and there were moments when I couldn't feel the ground beneath my feet.

Then Devon turned back and gestured to Isaac. "Turn off the lamp," he whispered.

Isaac did whatever you do to turn a fetter lamp off.

For a moment we were plunged into total darkness. In my exhausted state I was acutely aware of the tons of rock over our heads, and a combination of panic and nausea threatened to overwhelm me. But then I realized that it wasn't as dark as I'd thought. Indeed, as our eyes slowly adjusted, we could see there was something ahead of us.

Light. Very faint, very distant, but unmistakable.

Isaac turned his lamp back on, and we began to move forward as fast as the slippery tunnel would allow. Just let us make it to the river, I prayed. Then I can collapse. The ambient light grew brighter and brighter, and soon we got to the point where Isaac's lamp was no longer needed. That was a great moment, when he finally stuck the fetter back in his pocket. Our horrific journey was almost over.

Finally we reached the place where the storm system dumped its waste water into the river. We could see that beyond the large circular opening was clear sky above and free-flowing water below, with tree-covered mountains in the distance. The river was only a few yards beneath us: an easy drop.

All that stood between us and freedom was an iron grate with inch-thick bars, secured by a padlock as big as my fist.

"s.h.i.t," Rita muttered.

I leaned against the slimy wall in sheer exhaustion, fighting the urge to cry. Black water rushed around my knees, threatening to drag me under. Don't give up, I told myself. Not yet. We'll find a way out. Hang in there.

Isaac grabbed hold of the grate and shook it, testing its strength. After a moment Devon joined him. Together they banged on it and pushed it and pulled it and shook it, trying everything they could think of to force it to give way. But it didn't budge. Rita then offered to try to pick the lock, but the mechanism was so clogged with rust and filth that the tools she pulled out weren't strong enough for the job. When one of them finally snapped in her hand she, too, sagged against the wall, too frustrated even to curse.

For a moment all of us were silent, wondering what on earth we should do next. That's when we heard a rhythmic splashing that could only mean one thing: someone was coming toward us. It wasn't a distant sound, subtly alerting us to the fact that enemies were somewhere on the same level, but intimately close, disconcertingly clear. Maybe only a tunnel or two away. And coming toward us quickly.

There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. We didn't even have darkness for cover any more. Is this how I'm going to die? I thought feverishly. Despair welled up in my gut, not only for myself but for all the people who depended on me. Tommy, I'm sorry, I failed you . . . .

Suddenly we heard new footsteps, out of sync with the splashing. Someone was coming toward us from another direction, where the water wasn't as deep. I braced my back against the wall for support-my legs were so weak they could barely support me anymore-and wished I believed in the kind of G.o.d who saved people from being attacked in the sewers. Maybe I should have gone to church more often.

The man who finally came into view wasn't dressed like a tunnel raider, which was marginally rea.s.suring. He was an older man, with gleaming white hair pulled back into a short ponytail and a close-clipped beard to match. His face was weathered and fine lines fanned out from his mouth and his eyes. The latter were a piercing blue, and his gaze as he studied us was intense. Overall he wasn't large, but he bore himself in a way that implied confidence and strength-a stark contrast to how we all were feeling. His long brown leather duster reminded me of an Australian trench coat, and it had small metal ornaments arranged haphazardly down one side. My vision was too blurry for me to make out any more detail than that. In fact, everything was getting a bit blurry. I shook my head to try to clear it.

"You are the visitors?" he asked.

We all just stared at him. No one knew what to say.

"From Terra Colonna?" he pressed.

I nodded to him. To both of him. Or maybe there was only one of him, but it had four eyes. I suddenly wasn't sure.

Dimly I realized that I was becoming delirious.

"Yeah," Devon croaked. "That's us."

The man was about to say something more when the splashing sounds suddenly grew louder; the raiders must have turned a corner nearby. "Come!" he whispered, and he gestured for us to gather by his side. We figured he was going to lead us away or something, so we all obeyed. I think deep inside we were all glad to have someone tell us what to do. I wasn't quite strong enough to make it across the current to get to him, but when I fell he stepped forward and caught me under the arms, before I hit the water. He was surprisingly strong.

And then we all were there, standing next to him, ready for him to lead us . . . nowhere. Seriously. He didn't move. We just all stood there in a huddle, our backs pressed against the wall of the tunnel, while the ominous splashing footsteps came closer and closer. Totally exposed.

If there was a Guinness Book of World Records award for hiding badly, this would have nailed it.

"But-" Rita began.

"Shhh!" he whispered fiercely. "Stay close to me. Don't move. Don't say anything!"

Before any of us had a chance to respond, four men turned the corner. They were cla.s.sic goons, exactly the type you'd hire to crawl around in sewers beating up small children. I trembled as they approached the grate.

"Looks like we missed 'em," one of them said. He was a stocky man with the face of a bulldog.

One of the others stepped forward. He stared at the grate for a moment, then reached out and shook it, to see if it was solid. Then he grabbed the lock and tugged it a few times to see if it would come loose. When it didn't, he grunted. "They'll be back. That or topside. There's no other way out."

He looked down at the water flowing around his feet. "Not gonna find a trail in this place." He looked up at his men. "Fall back. Give 'em room to think they're safe. If we can corner them in here they'll have nowhere to run."

Then they turned to leave.

Seriously. They all turned to leave. As if we weren't there, right in front of them.

Maybe that was a delusion, too.

The bulldog man turned back for one last look. I stiffened as his eyes scanned the water, the grating, the mildew-covered walls, bracing myself for what would happen when he finally saw us. But he never did. It wasn't like we were invisible or anything, more like he looked around us.

Then, with a final dog-like grunt, he followed his fellow goons into the shadows.

"What the h.e.l.l-?" Rita began to whisper, but the man with the white ponytail clamped a hand over her mouth to shut her up. Normally I'd have expected her to bite the hand of anyone who tried that-especially a stranger-but I guess she figured he'd earned the right.

We waited in silence, listening to the splashing of the goons slowly fade away. Only when we could no longer hear them did the man in the leather coat release Rita and wade back to the grate.

"d.a.m.n," Devon muttered shaking his head. "What was that all about? Some kind of cloak of invisibility?"

"Nothing so simple," the man responded. "And it's very costly. So don't count on my using it again."

He took out a ring of heavy bra.s.s keys from his pocket, chose one, and inserted it into the lock. "Used to come this way," he said. He strained to turn the key, but it didn't budge. "Long time ago," he muttered.

Then, with a sudden snap, the key moved. He pulled the lock open and swung the grate back a bit, just far enough for us to get past it. There was a low creaking sound as it moved, and we all flinched, worried that our enemies were listening.

"Move fast," he said, gesturing for us to squeeze past him. Rita was the first to go, and as she was the smallest, it was an easy fit. "Get down to the sh.o.r.e," he told her, "somewhere out of the line of sight from here. Wait for me."

She walked a few feet, looked over the edge, then jumped. A few seconds later I heard a deep splash.

Devon went next.

I tried to approach the grate, but my leg had stiffened up in the last few minutes, and I found I could barely move it. The grate seemed to be moving around a bit. Rippling, like water. I hoped it would stand still long enough for me to squeeze past it.

The white-haired man looked at me with concern, then reached out and pressed the back of his hand briefly against my forehead. The fine white lines between his eyebrows deepened.

"I'll take her," he said.

Isaac hesitated, then nodded. With a strong arm the white-haired man drew me close to him, holding me tightly against him as he urged Isaac through the opening. His coat smelled of things that were not raw sewage, which was nice.

"I apologize for what is going to seem an undignified exit," he said to me, as Isaac went over the edge. Holding me close to him, he squeezed through the narrow opening. Barbs of rusty iron sc.r.a.ped my skin as he pulled me along with him. Great. Teta.n.u.s too. This trip just got better and better.

He closed the gate carefully behind us and reached in through the bars to lock it again. Then without warning he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder, head first, so that I wound up hanging down his back. I grabbed onto his coat, dimly aware that if we jumped down into the river like this it would be really hard for me to swim. But he didn't jump. He walked to the edge of the tunnel, grabbed hold of something off to one side, then swung himself around the opening. It didn't look like there was anything next to the pipe but a pretty steep hillside, but apparently he found some kind of foothold.

And then we stood very still. Well, he stood very still. I hung with my b.u.t.t in the air, very still.

Over the sound of the water I could hear people approaching. The goons must have had heard the gate open, and they were coming to investigate. I prayed my companions had gotten out of sight in time.

I heard people moving around inside the pipe. Saying things I couldn't make out. Then they left. We waited until we could no longer hear them, and then we waited some more. And some more. The blood rushing to my head, meanwhile, made for an interesting sensation. Kind of like an internal roller coaster.

Finally he began to move again. I was aware of him climbing down the embankment, then carrying me a short way along the sh.o.r.e. We came to a big canoe, and he laid me down inside it. Then he pushed off, and we were on the river. The sun warmed my skin. Nice, very nice. I shut my eyes for a minute then felt the canoe jostle as more people climbed into it. Three in all. I opened my eyes but couldn't see anything clearly. Feet pressed against me on all sides as my companions packed themselves into the narrow s.p.a.ce. Not such a big canoe after all.

And then the strange man with the white ponytail pushed us away from the sh.o.r.e and let the current carry us south. Away from Luray. Away from pursuit.

Away from Tommy.

No! I screamed inwardly. No! This isn't what's supposed to happen!

I opened my mouth to protest, but no sound would come out. My tongue was hot and swollen.

"When we get to where the water's clear," the man said, "the three of you are going to take a dip. I won't bring someone who smells like fresh manure into my home."

But I smelled like fresh manure, too. Didn't that matter? Wasn't I going home with them?

"Who are you?" I heard Isaac ask him. "Why are you helping us?"

There was silence for a moment. Then soft laughter.

"I thought you'd have guessed that by now," he said. "They call me the Green Man."

That's when I pa.s.sed out.

22.

OBFUSCATE GUILDHOUSE IN LURAY.

VIRGINIA PRIME.

THEY PUT A BAG over Tommy's head when they moved him. But that was a good thing, he told himself. You put a bag over someone's head when you didn't want him to see things he might report on later. There was no point in doing that if you intended to kill him. Right?

He kept telling himself that. Over and over again. But it wasn't enough to fend off a tide of raw panic as they dragged him from his cell, blind and bound, and carted him off to unknown places. He probably would have p.i.s.sed his pants in terror if he hadn't just emptied his bladder before they arrived; as it was, the more sensitive bits of his anatomy pulled up so tightly against his body that it felt like they were trying to take shelter inside him.

Where were they taking him? He asked, but they wouldn't say. He might as well be whimpering questions to the wind.

He knew he should pay attention to the world around him, memorizing whatever details of sound or smell he could identify, in case he needed to find this place later . . . but that was easier said than done. And besides, what good would it do? He hadn't been hooded when the aliens brought him through the crystal gate, so he wasn't under any illusion about where he was. Or, more accurately, where he wasn't. Even if he managed to get away from these people, it was going to take a lot more to get him home than a brisk walk through a bad neighborhood.

He knew when they took him outside, because the heat of the sun started to turn his head-bag into an oven. Then he was led up a couple of steps into an enclosure that was marginally cooler. From the echo of his movements, it sounded like he was in a small s.p.a.ce. A van, maybe? No, because when it started moving he heard the clip-clop of horse hooves on pavement. For a moment the sheer incongruity of it distracted him from his fear. Was he was being transported from one alien stronghold to another in a horse-drawn carriage? Seriously? What kind of low budget aliens were these, anyway?

The noise of the surrounding city was m.u.f.fled by carriage walls and the bag, but it sounded like a crowded place. He thought briefly about screaming for help, but then he figured that the odds of someone responding to a m.u.f.fled cry from inside a vehicle in the middle of a crowded city were not nearly as high as the odds of his captors hurting him if he tried it. The last thing he wanted to do right now, bound and helpless, was p.i.s.s them off.

Eventually the outside noises faded, and the carriage began to move uphill. After a while Tommy could tell it was entering a cool, dark s.p.a.ce. Then it stopped.

He heard the door open. "Is this the boy?" someone asked.

"It's a boy," someone else responded gruffly. "Are you the one who signs for him?"

They pulled him from the carriage, and there was more walking. More stumbling. They were indoors now, and once or twice he had to go down a staircase, a precarious feat that required he feel for each stair with his toes.

Then they put him in something that felt like an elevator, but didn't sound like an elevator. Heading down.

The air in the lower level was chilly. As the sweat of fear evaporated on Tommy's skin he shivered, and the bag was finally removed from his head. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the dim blue light.

He was standing in a cave. Well, mostly a cave. Someone had laid down a smooth concrete floor and stuck eerie glowing b.a.l.l.s to the ceiling, then put metal bars across the openings of several natural alcoves. Call it the world's creepiest jail. The door to one of the alcoves was open and Tommy didn't need a degree in rocket science to know that they wanted him to go in there.

Were they going to lock him up and leave him alone down here? It was a scarier thought in this surreal environment than it would have been aboveground. Despairing, he tried to come up with an alternative to entering the cell-any alternative-but he couldn't think of any option that these guys were likely to accept.

They untied his hands and let him walk into the alcove of his own accord. It was a long and narrow s.p.a.ce, with black, ominous shadows at the far end. The short walk through the door felt like a death march.

The door clanged shut.

"There's a journal on the table," came a voice from behind him. He turned around and saw a man with a deathly pale face, whose eyes and voice were devoid of any emotion. Two men stood behind him, equally dispa.s.sionate. Clearly scaring the h.e.l.l out Tommy was just a job to them. "You will record your dreams every day. For so long as your information has value to us, you will be kept alive."

"What if I don't dream anything?" he asked. Not because he thought the answer would enlighten him, but as a stalling mechanism. Every minute he kept the man talking was one less minute he had to be alone down here. "This place isn't exactly conducive to sound sleep."

The cold eyes stared at him, unblinking. A lizard's gaze. "Then we will turn off the lights until you do dream. Do I need to demonstrate what that would be like?"

"No," he whispered. "I'll take your word for it."

As the man began to turn away from him, something flitted in between them. A wisp of smoke, that moved against the air currents in the room. A hint of shadow, that didn't have the shape of a shadow.